I can quit any time! I do not have a problem!

[lolaraincoat]

Okay, so, I am powerless to control my need to read every bit and byte anywhere in the whole internet about Sarah Palin. It's not even about politics - she's like the most implausible fictional character ever, and the more I read, the less plausible she seems, and I'm fascinated.

So anyway, here are some of the my favorite random Vice-Presidential-candidate facts:

When her youngest child was born, she sent an email to her friends and family explaining that even though he has Down Syndrome, he is still "perfect." Nothing odd there, and yay for her for continuing the pregnancy and cherishing her child (pro-choice means pro-choice, not pro-eugenicist-decision-making, all right? Just my opinion of course.) It's just that Palin wrote the letter "in the voice of and signed it as 'Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father.'" according to this story in the Anchorage Daily News.

All her kids have appalling names! The youngest kid's middle name is Van because his parents are Van Halen fans! One of the others is named after an airplane! Another is named after a fishing port! And another is named after a city that never got built!

She modeled for Vogue - while pregnant!

She is more willing to throw her vulnerable family members under the national-media train than John Edwards ever was! (I don't even care about his screwing the videographer. He lost me when he decided to stay in the race while his wife went through chemo.) I think anyone likely to be morally offended by her daughter having premarital sex will be mollified by her daughter's marriage, while anyone worried by the possibility that the daughter is not making all her own reproductive and marital decisions with complete autonomy wasn't going to vote for McCain anyway. So it's a wash, politically. But what a story!

She had her ex-brother-in-law fired, and then she fired the guy who didn't fire the ex-brother-in-law fast enough! The ex-brother-in-law either did or did not use a taser on her nephew! She fired the only librarian in Wasilla, Alaska! She fired the Chief of Police too! She loves her family and she loves firing people!

She's just as confused as I am about what the Vice-President is supposed to do all day besides waiting around in case the President dies! And I'm not running for Vice President! But then, Dick Cheney was really sure what the Vice President should be doing, and look how that turned out.

She's very loyal to Wasilla, in the context of Alaskan politics, and to Alaska, now that she's on a national stage! This is great! We might end up with mid-twentieth-century-Mexican-style patria chica politics to go with our mid-twentieth-century-Mexican-style elections!

She only got a passport for the first time in 2007! eta: She used it to visit Kuwait! Thanks Heidi for that important info! /eta

She shoots polar bears! To save them from drowning because of global warming! It's mercy killing! (Okay, that last part, I made that up. She does hunt polar bears, but she does not believe that human interventions are changing the climate, and I'm guessing she would be anti-euthanasia as well, though she's pro-death-penalty so maybe not?)

eta:She may or may not have belonged to a very silly Alaska-secessionist-movement party at some point in her past! As someone who has signed on to more than one obscure and annoying-to-others political organization in my time, I say: She really is just like us! /eta

In sum, even if McCain loses, I think we can expect to see more of Sarah Palin and her family - either in national politics, or on the Jerry Springer Show. Or both.

Comments

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

And she thinks the Founding Fathers drafted the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm sure even more delights like that lie in store for us in weeks to come.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

yes! including the phrase "under god"!

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I'm truly hoping that at least a few undecided voters hear all this and get very insulted at being told, "She's a typical average American just like you!"

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Really? I missed that one! That's brilliant! Where did you find it?

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Scroll down to Question #11 and enjoy the facepalming. If I found out she also thinks the Bible was written in English I would not be the least surprised.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

what about that awesome rumor that her baby is really her grandbaby?

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Meh, that is - sadly - probably merely an awesome rumor. Though it is also true that if the rumor is untrue, she was far less cautious than I might have been about her own health and the health of the fetus (all the stuff about giving a speech at a conference in Texas and then taking an 11-hour flight back to Alaska after her waters broke would be true, if it really was her pregnancy.) Plus she went back to work like three days after the baby was born. But then this was her fifth pregnancy, so maybe she was just really, really relaxed about it?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I dunno--maybe it's a rumor but maybe not--if the timing with her daughter's pregnancy now is right--that means that the daughter got pregnant while she had MONO?

the waters breaking thing--eh--the medical industry norm is "must deliver in 24 hours after waters break"--not immediately--but even that is the super-medicalized "deadline"--plenty of women (who deliver with midwives or at home or whatever) go over 24 hours, and it's generally fine.

the going to work thing after 3 days is more crazy to me--although if she works in her home, then maybe.

[robriki.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the way late reminder, but could you post your fanaticize points ASAP, please?

Thanks!!

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Already done! Thanks for the reminder!

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

It's like watching a train wreck. I'm actually kind of getting grossed out by all the flailing at this point, because it's so focused (at least what I'm seeing) on her wife and mother aspects and losing sight of her professional OMG Unqualified aspects. Except that it's such a train wreck! The hypocrisy evident in her behavior even if everything she claims is true is just boggling on top of all the other boggling. I was glad to have found this today, however, as I like having all the boggling in one place.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm just enjoying the introduction to her as a crazy-ass fictional character. If I thought of her as potentially the President of the US someday, well, her strengths and weaknesses as a mother, sister, or spouse would be pretty much irrelevant ... but I'd be appalled by her actual, you know, policy positions. She thinks states should pay parents for homeschooling! She thinks schools should teach creationism! She can't decide what her policy is on Iraq! She thinks the federal government should not tax oil company profits but that it's great for Alaska to do so!

Meh. Why get all worked up about it when I could just write the story about her Dream Date with Thomas Eagleton?

[femmequixotic]

Honestly I'm having major problems with the misogyny I see being thrown at Palin from the liberal blogosphere. Just...WTF. Seriously. Sigh.

And I'm also having major problems with people calling Palin a hypocrite because her daughter got pregnant. Mainly because, dude, that'd be like calling my mom a hypocrite in her beliefs just because my brother knocked my sister-in-law up before they got married, and frankly if someone called my mother a hypocrite for that I'd kick their ass.

Gah. I'm being torn between my liberal politics and my need to defend the right of the people I love to hold their religious beliefs despite the fact that I disagree with them and walked away from that belief system myself. Sigh. It's disconcerting to say the least.

*is bitter at McCain for putting me in this place, dammit*

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Oh lordy, you are just feeding my own obsession here. Vile enabler! Thanks for the links.

Her children's names bug the heck out of me. Isn't it sort of cruel to name your mentally disabled son after a branch of higher mathematics? Will future children be named Calc and Chem?

One of my Shibboleths of Adult Dating was to vet the names of any children of dating candidates. Non-names and kreativ spelinz are huge red flags to me.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

See, if she had named her kids after art supplies, that would be all right with me - Bristol Board Palin! Pipe Cleaner Palin! Willow Brand Colored Pencils Palin!

But that's why nobody asks my advice when naming their children, I guess.

[fishwhistle.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I love it when someone uses "shibboleth" correctly, rather than as a synonym for "canard." :)

[snegurochka_lee]

I am powerless to control my need to read every bit and byte anywhere in the whole internet about Sarah Palin. It's not even about politics - she's like the most implausible fictional character ever,

OMG I have been exactly the same way! *headdesk* It's the best summer movie yet. :)

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

I know!!! I just can't look away! It's making me abuse punctuation wildly! !!! I hope it never ends!!!

Seriously, I hope that in about three weeks they all give up and she quits "to spend more time with her family" or whatever and then McCain gets to have Leiberman for a running mate instead. You know his aides fixed him up with this beautiful woman but all he really wants is Joe.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

It is a trainwreck and I have spent far too much time watching, too!

Gah!

Oh, and did you know that she was a member of the Alaska Independence Party, who are more or less pro-secession - or at least, pro-a-vote-in-Alaska-on-seccession?

To be fair, as I understand it she did go to Kuwait back in 2007, so she has been beyond the continent of North America. Once.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Now, see, I don't know that a trainwreck is exactly what I would compare it to - I can look away from trainwrecks, whereas this ...

I'd seen that about the Alaska Independence Party, but it wasn't confirmed at the time I wrote the post. I hadn't heard about the Kuwait trip - will edit in the correction, thanks!

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

This is what I think I should start calling the Latin Americanisation of US politics. That is to say, the continuing process whereby the script of US politics (or at any rate of the Partido Republicano) is written by Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Amado, Alejo Carpentier, and Mario Vargas Llosa, while under the influence of both Kafka and too much rum.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Ah-HAH! Yes, I have been saying this for YEARS. Inadequate-to-say-the-least government response to disaster in major city as an inspiration to civil society leading eventually to democratization? Hurricane Katrina = Mexico City quake = Managua quake. Insanely single-minded devotion to the "free" market leading to massive sell-offs of public goods right down to the post office? Chile in the era of the Chicago Boys got there way before the US did. And let's not even mention the destruction of habeus corpus rights and reliance on torture in cases of "national emergency" - Cold-War era Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and those are just the places where states formally acknowedged what they were doing, more or less.

Of course in Latin America they could always blame the gringos. The gringos don't really have that luxury.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I feel exactly the same way. Maybe we need to start a support group.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

re: Palin--have you seen this yet?

http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/09/05/alaskans-speak-in-a-frightened-whisper-palin-is-%E2%80%9Cracist-sexist-vindictive-and-mean%E2%80%9D/

also OT but have you heard from La Sloth lately? She has vanished under the radar, and I am unsure as to where she is and what is going on with her.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Huh. Probably all true, but hard to prove.

La Sloth, I hear second-hand, is back teaching at the same gig she had last year, after a summer in Mexico. Reliable sources report that she's doing well. Book should be out any minute if it isn't already.