Eve Fairbanks: That’s the problem with the positive case Palin made for herself, with its emphasis on all that small-town stuff: It convinced me that she makes a good PTA mom, that she may make a fine mayor, that she hasn’t totally bombed as the essentially brand-new governor of the third-least-populous state in the Union, even that I might like to have a beer with her, or a glass of fermented whale milk or whatever one drinks with mooseburgers. But just because we’re a nation of a hundred thousand Wasillas doesn’t mean all those hundred thousand mayors ought to be in the White House. Tonight, she sounded for all the world like an unusually sharp version of those “regular people” they drag onstage at conventions to tell their stories in the off-primetime hours.
UPDATE> More condescending, patronizing, elitist crap, this time from Fromma Harrop:
I had dinner last night with a Republican-leaning independent who was despondent over John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. She had been looking forward to supporting McCain as a fiscal conservative with a deep understanding of foreign relations. But all she could now see was that picture of Palin's pregnant 17-year-old looking defiant and stupid as she held mom's fifth baby.
Many religious conservatives are jubilant. They regard Palin as a swell choice because her high-schooler was going to have the baby. The line sent my friend into shock. This is not a matter of abortion politics, she said, but of managing one's own affairs.
"Don't they have birth control up in Alaska?" she asked.
***
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has five children, but she waited until they were grown before she ran for high political office. Palin returned to the job three days after giving birth to a special needs child, all the while her 17-year-old is entertaining a lover. And what about plans to have the girl wed the stud, author of some very unromantic remarks on Facebook? Note that she's been pregnant for five months and still no matrimony. These nuptials couldn't be a last-minute political move, could they?
Palin supporters insist that her out-of-control home life will resonate with many American families. Yes, if they're from Mars or perhaps on welfare.
WTF! How arrogant! How condescending! How patronizing! How presumptuous of Ms. Harrop!
Was it really necessary for Fromma's friend to say that Palin's 17-year-old daughter looked "stupid"? Did she have to chide this poor girl for not using birth control (and who says she didn't, by the way)? And, is it really rational to change how you're going to vote for this reason? I mean, what kind of logic goes like this: "I was going to vote for McCain, but now I'm not because he chose a running mate whose 17-year-old daughter is too stupid to use birth control." Yah, presumably that line of reasoning makes perfect sense to brilliant people like Fromma and her friend who, we are implicity assured, are not "on welfare."
Finally, even if we can forgive Fromma's friend for blurting out such a vile thought to an apparent confidant in a one-on-one meeting, how does Fromma justify publishing it in writing? What possible purpose does it serve other than to cause great personal pain to Palin and her family?
Like I said, it's condescending crap like this that will cost the Dem's this election.
1 comment:
Now that I can read this with more leisure and without distraction, truly it is appalling isn't it? They are absolutely going to cost themselves the election with this stuff--yet again.
Also, about our conversation, it did make sense, and you're right. As usual. There is still dissonance between the way I want the world to be an the way it is, and that's always emotionally frustrating for me.
-- Your Sister
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