A few months ago, not really that long ago in the scheme of things, a virtually unknown governor from Alaska emerged on the political scene, apparently molded from a Hollywood GOP machine: vibrant, attractive, mother of five and soon-to-be grandmother, an accomplished huntress at close range, and as conservative as Ronald Reagan. An unusually giddy Ann Coulter, who had promised to vote for Hillary before she voted for McCain, showed her complete approval in her endorsement of her as the new Ronald Reagan. Another female pundit, very early on, said something like, "I think the American public will greatly underestimate Sarah Palin." I believe she was right.At first I hated this woman. I admit, I shed a few tears during her dazzling convention speech (you have to give her major points for public speaking and her ability to charm the pants off a crowd), especially when she looked at the camera and promised that she would champion rights for special needs children when she is in the White House. I don't have a special needs child but I'm a mother and she just reached in and plucked at those maternal heart strings a bit.
But then I began to get really hot around the collar about her politics and her apparent inability to tell the truth about her political background. I also cringed at her book banning in Wasilla and her emerging jabs at her opponents. Another angry, hate-mongering Republican. Just what the world needs now. I tried to keep that she was a woman out of my realm of thinking but that was easily replaced by an image of her firing at wolves at close range from the open door of a low-flying plane. A GOP man's wet dream come to life or a living poster girl for her own self-proclaimed Joe Six-Pack. YOU betcha!
When Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson interviewed her after weeks of being kept from the media, I actually began to feel sorry for Sarah Palin. Here is this sacrificial lamb, put up by the men in the GOP, who think she will get the votes needed to bring more of the same, if not worse, to the White House. Her deer-in-the-headlights "sentence to nowhere" blunders belied unpreparedness, a lack of intelligence almost like G. W.'s (but she seems smarter than he, or at least more shrewd). So I eased up on my feelings for her, hoping she would just quietly go away. In the debate, I cringed with the expectancy that Biden would pummel her but he did not and she did not falter. While her responses, or "talking points," seemed well studied, her ability to look at the camera, into the hearts of undecided American voters and her own fan base, was positively Eva Peron-esque. In her sweetly-tempered but angry populist rantings and ability to incite a crowd she is divisive and dangerous.
While the polls are way down for McCain, it is likely the economy and not Palin's behavior and performances that is driving that reality. With her recent hate-mongering at rallies, attacks on Obama, and mention of the word "terrorist" in the same sentence as Obama, this is enough to get some of the uneducated masses near hysterics. This woman is doing the political process no favors while certain clergy members liken Obama to the anti-Christ. I live in a region of the country, where, sadly, racial and "hate in the name of Christianity" comments are still muttered and the people who make these remarks are what give rednecks a bad name.
However, racism and hateful behaviors behind the cloak of Christianity span all classes and genders--and regions of the country--and I do not mean to single out one group of people. Any pandering in that direction, or racial innuendos, and that's all the fuel people who live by fear and ignorance need. Sarah Palin, and her operators in the GOP, are just savvy enough to know this and their populism belies a scarier agenda. Country First! Yeah, right. It is more like divide and conquer. [But it is heartening, on a brief search of the Internet to find a website or blog devoted to Women Against Sarah Palin, and many of them Republican. If I were a registered Republican, conservative or moderate, I would be appalled by McCain's selection of Palin: this is the best you could come up with? If he was playing the gender card, what about well-respected long-time Maine Senator Olympia J. Snowe for starters?]
In the words of Betty White on a recent Late, Late Show appearance, this Palin woman is "one crazy bitch." There, I've said it, too.
So, Sarah, you're in my sights again as a distasteful candidate for vice-president but also as a non-representative woman for our country or for someone who could be the first woman vice-president (and God forbid, president). No, this shouldn't be about gender but, speaking as a woman, mother, citizen and voter in this country, you are really beginning to piss me off. Please take a cue from the Jesus you claim to follow and stop the hate-mongering. It isn't becoming of a Christian or a politician or a woman. You need to stay up in Alaska, keep a close watch across the Bearing Straits for Putin (mmm, kind of sounds like PALIN), and do some more reading. I'm certain that your local librarian can point you in the right direction (and I'm not speaking about politics--and hey, I know some Cupcakes who could set you straight, also, with their own reading lists and Democratic thinking). Please stay close to home and take care of your babies, defend it if you have to with your own close-range weapons, but leave the lower-48 alone. I wish you many prosperous years ahead in the splendid isolation of the Alaskan wilderness. I'm not going to waste any more time thinking about you.
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