A race that began as the West Wing now looks alarmingly like Desperate Housewives. Six months ago, you couldn't help but notice the striking similarity between Barack Obama and Matthew Santos, the fictional but charismatic ethnic minority candidate who promised to heal America's divide. Now, you can't help but feel you're watching an especially lurid episode from Wisteria Lane, as the real-life Sarah Palin fends off rumours of a fake pregnancy - and the accusation that her son is actually her grandson - by revealing that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is expecting a baby and will soon marry the father, a young hockey player. Meanwhile, Palin has hired a lawyer to beat back a state investigation into claims that she abused the power of her office to remove her sister's ex-husband from his job as a state trooper, a man who has admitted tasering his own 10-year-old stepson! Would even America's trashiest daytime soaps dare squeeze that much action into just the first four days of a new storyline?-- JONATHAN FREEDLAND
Why is it we get massive national coverage of VP candidate Sarah’s Palin’s daughter Bristol — including three NYT page one articles in one day – while the fact Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s half-brother lives on a dollar a day in a Third World war-zone hellhole, despite the Obama family’s millions, goes pretty much unnoticed outside of British papers?-- DAVE PRICE
Consider that just one month ago, the media was doing its level best to ignore some very solid evidence that John Edwards had an affair and a baby with Rielle Hunter, and that he was (is!) spending a fortune trying to cover it up. And some of that money may have come from campaign donations. "Leave him alone, he’s not running for public office!" Well, does Bristol Palin have more delegates attending the Republican National Convention than Edwards had at the DNC? Is she a scheduled speaker? Is she getting buckets of cash from Fred Baron? Is her old press secretary now working for Joe Biden? (Those are all "No," by the way.)
The news went out of their way to ignore the Edwards story for almost
three weeks10 months, until he gave them no choice but to cover it. But now they’re climbing all over each other to get at any possible dirt they can find on Palin, less than a week after she was announced as John McCain’s running mate.-- SIMON SCOWL
With his choice of Sarah Palin, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.
McCain's selection of [Palin] is applied McCainism -- a visceral judgment by one who is confidently righteous. But the viscera are not the seat of wisdom . . . Many cultural conservatives, who are much of the GOP's base, consider McCain's adherence to their persuasion perfunctory. By his selection of Palin, he got the enthusiasm of the base. But what has he got in Palin? In coming days he and we will learn from a stern teacher, experience.
While there would seem to be no obvious connection between the two groups, it occurs to me that the same ultimately baseless hope that has motivated certain Obama supporters is driving anti-McCain conservatives to cheer on Sarah Palin. Like some antiwar and pro-J Street progressives waxing rhapsodic about the potential of Obama to revolutionize foreign policy, some dissident conservatives are grasping at any shred of evidence of Palin’s supposed ties to various parties and past campaigns that are very close to our own views in an expectation that someone sympathetic might be in a major leadership position.
There are senior-level advisers in the campaign who opposed the pick and who are leaking details about the vetting process to undercut the pick.
Too many women have been patronized out of jobs they wanted with pseudo-considerate treacle like "I thought your priority right now was your family." It's happened to friends of mine; it's happened to me; if you have ovaries, chances are pretty good it has happened or will happen to you. That's the reality of living in post-women's lib America, and that's why one part of me is heartened by the Palin pick. People may find lots of reasons why she shouldn't be in the White House--but at least, having little kids didn't put her out of the running in the first place. And for that, I have to confess, I'm grateful to John McCain.
Life begins at conception and ends at birth, which no doubt explains why a good conservative like Sarah Palin would want to slash funds for a program that provides transitional housing for teen mothers.
I'm the comother of a girl child who, as a teen and young adult, got pregnant twice from birth control failures, once with a condom, once with the pill. It was excruciating for her and all of us. I'm frankly still not over it. She was smart, well-informed (I may be a lifelong dyke but I trained myself how to apply condoms before I bought some for her and insisted she learn as well), and in love. It happens.
I'm not willing to pass judgment on what Bristol Palin has done or not done. I don't know. What matters is not her personal struggle, or her mother's interest in using her children for public approval. All politicians do this, it's just a question of degree. I don't thinks kids should be hauled up on stage, period. I love public figures who refuse to allow their kids to be photographed at all: The kid has nothing to do with that adult's career. Zip.
Call me crazy, but if the Palin family really wanted the media and everyone else for that matter to leave her daughter Bristol and the father of her illegitimate child alone, wouldn't it more appropriate for the two of them to stay out of the spotlight instead of appearing together at the Republican National Convention?
-- LIBBY
Imagine if Hillary had done what Palin did when Palin had her most recent child. This would needless to say have been taken as incontrivertable proof that she was a career-obsessed feminist bitch, who was legally unfit to be a mother and should have her child taken away from her before she actually killed the poor kid out of sheer callous indifference if not actual malice.
-- PAUL CAMPOS
The dominant question at the GOP convention is: Will John McCain make the huge mistake of abandoning Sarah Palin?
Some claim he made a mistake in choosing the Alaska governor. My bet is the reverse - that she'll turn out to be a big win.
Even if I'm wrong, dropping her now would doom him in November. If McCain lets baseless, sexist smears set his course, he'd turn all the good Palin has already done for him, and should do in the weeks ahead, into a negative - demoralizing the GOP base and losing independents.
Understand: Palin is under attack because she was such a good choice.
-- DICK MORRIS
Most Alaskans like Sarah Palin. I know I do. Both as a politician and a person, there's a lot to like.
Despite the fact that we're from different parties, for the 20 months that we've both been in office we've been allies on oil and gas issues, which are important in a state where 85 percent of the government's general revenue comes from oil production. I've appreciated the way she has not knuckled under to the oil companies as governors before her have.
And when I turned 60 a couple of months ago, Palin served cupcakes at a gathering at the governor's mansion. Nearly flambeed herself holding a big tray of the things so I could blow out the candles. Who wouldn't like that?
But that doesn't mean I think John McCain made a good decision when he picked Palin to be his running mate. I don't. Sarah Palin is simply not qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, especially when that heart beats in the chest of a man who would be the oldest president ever elected to a first term.
-- MIKE DOOGAN
Reporters have been sent to Alaska! "The world arrived here more than a century ago with the gold rush and later the railroad," The New York Times reports from Wasilla. Yet one aspect of American life did not come to town until this week: the national press! William Yardley reports that frontier maverick Sarah Palin introduced culture war "wedge politics" to a sleepy little Northern Exposure town by turning the friendly mayoral race into a Newt Gingrich scorched earth battle for the soul of Wasilla. Then on her way out as mayor she campaigned against her own step-mother!
-- PAREENE
Cartoon by Signe Wilkinson/Philadelphia Daily News
No comments:
Post a Comment