I know I should be outraged over this; I just can’t bring myself to be so. It’s so funny. It’s like watching little mice run around and over each other, squeaking and squawking. I assume they’re speaking some little mice language, but it makes no sense and is just cute and funny. Or it’s like watching a hamster furiously running on its wheel like it’s actually going to get somewhere. You can’t help but marvel at the little bugger’s drive, but also at its innate stupidity.
Who am I comparing to cute but mindless rodents? These people:
I was around in 2000, and I understand the zeal when you have a President-elect who shouldn’t be. But even we, who had something of a case, got over it. But watching these people scurry about in total delusion provides entertainment I thought I’d lost when Sarah Palin went back to Alaska (though her bills keep coming in!)
Thanks little people. In the post-election glow, I needed something to continue to make me laugh.
I hope this will be the last I write of Sarah Palin. The best thing Sarah Palin could do right now is to shut up. Let the McCain camp tear her to shreds and show her sophistication and strength by rising above it all and refusing to engage. Do the “I’m rubber you’re glue” schtick and preserve what’s left of her reputation.
But she won’t do that and in a big way, that’s indicative of the overall Palin problem. She’s not that smart. She’s definitely not sophisticated. And she’s not strong.
Many people equate sophistication with celebrity, money, and the trappings thereof. That’s not what I mean. If being sophisticated meant wearing Valentino, then I’d say she was sophisticated. She wore Valentino very well. But it’s more than that. And that’s what she doesn’t have.
Sarah Palin never built on any of her education, such as it was. Being educated isn’t just earning a degree. It’s taking what you learned and building upon it as you go through life. It’s making what you learn relevant to many facets of life, policy, and ideology. It’s understanding your limitations and building on your strengths. There is no evidence that Sarah Palin has done that in the context of the national stage. She may have done that for her role as a small-state governor. I leave that to the Alaskans to decide. But translating and making relevant that experience on the national stage. Oh no she didn’t.
It is my opinion that when you enter the presidential race, you are leaving yourself open to have your entire life and every word under a microscope. The Clintons had to go through that, and they still do. Barack Obama had to endure that, and he emerged victorious. John McCain has endured it for many years. So cry no tears for Sarah Palin. When she entered this race by accepting, she opened herself to that same scrutiny. My only question remains, why on earth McCain picked her? Oh, I know the stories about how he was forced to over Lieberman or whoever, but in the end, he has to own his shit. He made the choice, he defended it. It’s unseemly for his camp to attack her now.
However much fun it is to watch. Call me cruel, I don’t care. I love this country and she told me I wasn’t part of it. I don’t forgive her that. Own your shit Sarah. You said it, and I believe by your subsequent statements and insinuations you meant it. You hate us urbane, intellectual types because we make you feel dumb. But whether you are smart or not is within your power. You are not dumb, but you are not smart. You do not use your intelligence to make good decisions and that is ultimately what made you unqualified for the highest office in the land.
You are the ones who supposedly vetted her, and then told the American people she was qualified for the job. You are the ones who after meeting her a couple of times, told us she was ready to be just one heartbeat away from the Presidency. If even half of what you say NOW is true, then boy, did you try to sell the American people a bill of goods. If Sarah Palin is the reason some voters chose Barack Obama, that is no one's fault but your own. John McCain, as he so graciously said himself the other night, lost this election. He lost it with your help, your advice, your guidance, and yes, your running mate recommendations. And that is crystal clear to everyone, no matter how hard you try to blame Sarah Palin or anyone else.
She’s exactly right. McCain’s choice of Palin is indicative of his wisdom in general. If it’s true, as it’s rumored, that the only reason she was picked is because she’s A) a woman and B) pro-life, what did that tell us about a candidate running for president during these extremely troubled times? McCain shouldn’t blame Palin, but Palin should blame herself as well for accepting.
As I said, I hope this will be the last I write of this lady, and it will be as long as I don’t continue to hear that she’s ready for national office. To be prepared you have to have an intellectual grasp—or even curiosity—about the world around you. She didn’t. She may have a fine intellectual grasp of Alaska, again, not my state. But she doesn’t look outside it (even when gazing at Putin from her front porch). Folksiness and small town “real” America “values” isn’t going to do us jack shit against this failing economy and our troubles overseas. Can we please, finally, realize it takes exceptional intelligence to run this country and that is what we elected?
Everyone can grow up to be President. But not everyone deserves it. Please, let’s hear no more about Ms. Palin except in context of Alaska.
Oh, and if I were her—after getting treated like this by the McCain’s—I’d totally keep the clothes.
I’m too hung over to write anything particularly good, witty, congratulatory, mocking, anything. I should, I will, but right now I can’t given how fantastic last night was (that’s code for I’m hungover).
So for now, I leave you with LOLs (that aren’t actually LOLs, but they’re good):
It’ll all be over soon, but the drinking. The champagne if it goes one way, whatever makes you pass out faster if it goes the other way. Some bar must have a Joe the Plumber or Caribou Barbie shot ready for us in case we need to be put out of our misery.Not likely, but I’m hyper superstitious right now. I still won’t declare victory until it’s actually declared. And today will be extra long for me as a result of it. Bated breath is starting to feel like a permanent state of being. So I’ll stick to the inane until I wake up tomorrow and know whether this is a dream or a nightmare. I had committed myself to write something every week day during my sabbatical; I didn’t commit to it all being good.
Joe the fucking Plumber? That’s a new low in a campaign. The celebrity of him, I mean. After McCain tried to compare Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears he inflates a nothing into national celebrity? And Joe’s his role model? That’s going down in the annals of ridiculousness. If McCain were to end up in the White House, is he going to give Joe a staff position? It can’t be White House plumber, because the guy’s unlicensed. And it can’t have anything to do with money, since the guy’s a tax scofflaw. I know, court jester! Wait, I think Sarah Palin is actually qualified for that job.
I doubt any McCain supporters will remember this, but Obama made a big deal about texting anyone who wanted when he was officially declared the nominee. What was this all about? Getting cell phone numbers. The youth vote generally don’t have land lines, they only have cell phones. This means they don’t get included in the major polls. But Obama’s campaign has those cell phone numbers so his campaign’s polling is probably a lot more accurate, and a bit higher.
Overall, Facebook has been fascinating for me for this election season. I live in the liberal bubble of Seattle so I didn’t really know McCain supporters at all until my friends list exploded after my high school reunion.
I wonder if Battlestar Galactica will come up in the profanity case before the Supreme Court. If you don’t watch the greatest show that ever hit television, I’ll explain the relevance. BSG has in its vernacular, frack. This word is used exactly as the majority of us use the word fuck. Frack me, frack you, mother fracker, what the frack, and on and on. And the FCC can’t do a damn thing about it because they’ve so narrowly focused on the word, not the meaning. Language evolves. The FCC is “protecting” children from nothing by such narrow mindedness.
It’s tempting to bemoan money in political campaigns. And there are problems. But money is the currency by which speech is enabled. Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of money (the launch of the blogosphere), sometimes it takes a lot (Obama’s network infomercial). But like everything else in this country, money is the means by which a message gets out. Tinkering with the system will never end, of course, but it’s also important to remember that money is speech as well. Ah, the complicated Constitution in our times.
As far as I know, I don’t know anyone who is voting for Prop 8 in California. I hope I never know anyone who would vote for it.
Halloween the day may be last week, but Halloween the season never ends in America. Not as long as we fear what lurks in the closet of the Oval Office or what might pop out from under the bed where Lincoln once slept.
Before this year, I would lay money that very few McCain voters ever thought about, at least not often or outside of a classroom—Ayers, Wright, or any of the other bogey men that have been raised regarding Obama. But for we Obama voters, our bogey man has been dominating our waking hours (and our sleeping nightmares) for eight years.
Americans love them a good bogey man. We are excellent at looking for someone to pin blame on, to rally against. Americans love tearing down celebrities, leaders, dictators, etc. It’s practically the national past time. So it’s no surprise that this election has been dominated by the fear of the bogey man. Even after the election, as this NYT op-ed piece shows, the media as the bogey man will continue.
Tomorrow we will find out whose bogey man is the scariest. And if my guess (and my vote) is correct, we will learn that the scariest is not the unknown, but the known danger (that would be George W. Bush & Co. in case you were wondering). While Ayers (that old washed up terrorist) can be pretty scary, everyone knows he’s not exactly going to get to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom much less a cabinet position. And Jeremiah Wright (that blathering fool) is so at odds with Obama on his message that it really doesn’t raise much of a specter of fear of his influence. But Bush, well, there’s some real fear and why Obama’s bogey man is resonating more than McCain’s.
Based on the information we have, we know what the Republican Party is capable of. We stand in the ruins of it. So the fear of any repeat or continuation of it is very real. And McCain has—with only a handful of notable exceptions—stayed lockstep with the Bush Administration on almost everything that has led to where we are today. So who’s the scarier bogey man?
After the election, the media will return to its place as the national bogey man. I’ve stated already that the problem isn’t the media, it’s the people. That the American people put the media in a Catch 22 position that doesn’t allow for real objective reporting. Objectivity isn’t just fairness, i.e. making sure you have equal numbers of words on a page about either side of an issue. Objectivity also requires that information be weighted appropriately according to its accuracy and relevance. So when McCain raises the bogey man of Ayers, the media should objectively weight that with all the other information they have about Ayers AND with the information they have about the possibility of his influence on Obama. With all that, the Ayers story becomes nothing. Conversely, when Obama raises the Bush bogey man, the media needs to weigh that against the likelihood of McCain would continue Bush’s policies. That’s objectivity, and the American people aren’t interested in it. Their more interested in picking the next bogey man.
Even after tomorrow is over, it’ll still be a long Halloween in this country.
