If you’ve been watching the election news coming from the US this past month, unsure whether or not the shenanigans you were hearing about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin were true or just some silly political trash talking, I have some sad, horrifying news for you. Yes, it’s true that there’s an individual here who is potentially “a heartbeat away from the presidency,” as we like to say, and therefore one of the most powerful people in the world, who satisfies all of the following criteria:
• Is a dangerously fanatical Pentecostal, who believes in witchcraft and tribal, superstitious fairytales
• Can’t name even one printed news source that she regularly reads
• Is determined to knock women’s rights back into the 1920s
• Is even more duplicitous, petty and self-serving than the average politician
• Has a wayward teenaged daughter that can’t keep her legs together
• Has a son that was forced to enter the military as punishment for felony vandalism against his school’s buses
• Didn’t get a passport until age 42 and has since only traveled to military bases in Kuwait and Germany
• Suggests that people who travel and demonstrate an interest in the rest of the world are spoiled, noncontributing members of society
• Can’t answer a direct question truthfully or coherently (notice how the spoof clip and the real clip are nearly verbatim in places)
• Blindly repeats any outlandish, slanderous lies that her weasel advisors tell her to say
• Can’t pronounce ‘nuclear’ – though it appears sometimes she can with judicious assistance
• Is the epitome of white trash while scorning people who are too professorial, worldly and open-minded (i.e. “Stupid is the new smart!”)
Just like in 2004, I find myself in the position of having to apologize to every baffled, bug-eyed, distraught person watching our election from abroad, and wondering how, in Buddha’s sweet name, 59,054,087 people can be so DUMB?
I was content just laughing at her ignorance, but that thing about people who travel hit too close to home.
http://www.jeelago.net/work/2008/10/04/oh-now-its-personal-sarah-palin/
Gah! Does this woman not understand that it is entirely possible to actually save up your money to, I dunno, buy a plane ticket and a Lonely Planet and just go somewhere? I may not be the most well-traveled person in the world, but where I have gone has been funded solely by my continuing series of crappy second and third jobs with the occasional medical trial. Most support I’ve gotten from my parents is a trip to the damn airport! Stupid, stupid person.
Leif,
I am seriously disappointed as how you presenting Sarah Palin.
You are giving the world the wrong impression about this person.
You are making her out as being half-bad.
With the shenanigans that both her and her husband have been involved with back in Alaska—including the current investigation on her abuse of her office as Governor, she is truly Dick Cheney incarnate …but worse (and has already promised to take Cheney’s abuse of power to a higher level if elected).
If elected she would certainly invoke an imperial presidency without limits to her power while forcing her constitution-ignoring, book-banning, voodoo version of religion on the world.
If it were only absurd.
I am looking forward to legal travel to Cuba in my lifetime. If Palin gets into office, I will be lucky if I can travel between states without showing my papers.
“Has a wayward teenaged daughter that can’t keep her legs together”
Whoa. Wtf kind of misogynistic bullshit is that?
But she will be all mavericky in the white house! lol
Don’t forget she also likes using her power to get people she doesn’t like out of office and has her husband on the payroll.
59,000,000 people are that dumb because they are equally as stupid…
What in the Hell is going on back there? I seriously hope he picked her to keep from getting elected.
//craig in romania
The attacks on the Palin family are pathetic. If you read the article about Track with the slightest bit of care, you ought to notice that it’s a series of hypotheticals that are far-fetched.
Also, did someone who calls himself a writer just cite wikipedia? Come on, now, Leif.
Palin thing too alarming to be very humorous to me. T.Fey, for instance, makes her appear too lovable.
One thing I forgive her for is inability to pronounce nuclear.
Here’s a excellent write up on the Real John Mc Cain from Rolling Stone Magazine http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print
Well Worth a Read.
If the people of America put as much effort into worthwhile issues as they do people-hating then without doubt, the world would be a better place.
True, Sarah Palin doesn’t appear to be the best candidate for VP, but for me, her true colours coming through are just a shade of the true colours of what appears to be a spiteful, callous factions of the US population. Personally I’ll be glad when it’s all over and the lynching is taken off the international agenda.
Have to agree with Bree concerning Palin’s daughter. What is wayward about having sex? Coming from a similar conservative upbringing, my guess is that Palin and her husband never needed to have the ‘birth control” talk because their kids ‘just wouldn’t do that’.
Stausty – I believe ‘Gah!’ was my exact reaction to Palin’s comments too.
Bree/Mulbry/James – I’d like to invite you to reread the whole of the post and consider *context* this time. Citing Bristol’s enviably active sex life (seriously), and her apparent ignorance of, or refusal to employ, prudent birth control measures and Track’s history of thugishness notwithstanding, this post is a careful and clearly cited character assassination of Sarah Palin. The two lines about her kids, who admittedly aren’t *wildly* out of control, are nevertheless in support of the overall assertion that Palin does not lead by example. Calling out her kids for the hell of it is a cheap shot, sure, but I’m trying to prove one of the many hypotheses here, which in this case is: Palin preaches Puritanical family values. Both of Palin’s children, that are old and independent enough to do so, have demonstrated a conspicuous *lack* of effective parental guidance or Puritanical family values. Ergo Sarah Palin does not actually enforce her alarming vision of family values in her own home. If she can’t/won’t satisfy her rigorous standards, she should not be permitted to impose these ideals on others, which she most certainly will do if she ever reaches office. Her hypocrisy stinks of a budding deluded, marginally informed megalomaniac, a la Nicolae Ceausescu.
James – Wikipedia being an overall dubious source doesn’t lessen the credence of facts when they are facts. Discrediting a fact based on a source alone is classic political damage control and avoidance bullshit. Let’s stick to the facts. Remember back when the Drudge Report was considered nothing more than a hacky rumor mill? Then he broke the Lewinsky story. Also, I was already linking to the video where Palin herself confirms her passport/travel history in the line below the passport line and didn’t want to cite the same (long) video twice. And by the way, Track’s involvement in the vandalism of his school’s buses has long been an open secret in Alaska. Ask any resident. There’s nothing hypothetical about it.
Ant – Testify brother. I can’t even watch the effing Daily Show anymore without being driven into a rage. However, this is no different from any election in any country, is it? Just because the US gets more press doesn’t mean our candidates conduct themselves any worse than others seeking high office. Or would you like to go on record stating that elections in the UK are measured, clean and affable?
The reason I commented as I did was because that particular bullet point was *out* of context. I didn’t comment on the Track bullet point because it looks like that one is nothing but rumour.
Everything else you mentioned is valid criticism – they’re all about Palin herself. “Blaming the parents” is a very weak argument in any case, no matter whether we’re praising or deriding a kid’s behavior, and fails to take into account the fact that kids (especially teenagers) have the ability to make their own decisions, no matter what their parents do, say, or preach. I mean, maybe *you* did everything your mom said, but most kids aren’t like that.
Is it hypocritical for Palin to crow about her daughter making a “choice” to keep her pregnancy while simultaneously advocating for the removal of *any* choices for the rest of female America? Absolutely. So should Palin be criticised for that? Absolutely. But leave her daughter, and her sexual choices (including birth control, which she may well have been using – there is no 100% effective birth control, and failure rates among teenagers are particularly high), out of the debate, particularly in that kind of language. Maybe it was meant to be funny, but I think it was excessively and unnecessarily crass.
Bree – I strongly disagree on several points, but I think the overall reason why I’m being so unapologetically ‘crass’ is quite simply the Republicans have snatched two consecutive elections on the strength of trash talking, lies and fear mongering. So, I’m calling this election the ‘Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it’ election – or for the Jesus Freaks ‘do unto others as you will have them do unto you’. Exposing Palin as a nut-job and hypocrite shouldn’t be derailed by whining ethics when they’re out there trying to paint Obama as a terrorist-friendly mama’s boy. The freedom-of-choice point cannot be made without calling Palin out on her daughter’s situation, so chalk it up to collateral damage. No one went easy on Jamie Lynn Spears when she got knocked up, did they? How is this any different? So now we have proof that Palin can’t lead by example and therefore can’t lead, so we gotta hit that point home. The Democrats pulling punches and standing around mouths agape and too stunned to react at the abominable antics of the GOP has cost this country and the world dearly. Gloves off now, give as good as we get. If being crass is what it takes to win this election, then do it. We’ll talk about ethics in 2012.