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

[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?

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

One bonus of this, though, is I might actually be able to convince my mother who's rather liked McCain for his "maverick" image that he's an idiot with this choice.

[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*

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

I know. How does her daughter's behavior have relevance to her ability to be VP? After spending most of last night trying to find real issues to look at, I got completely fed up to the eyeteeth on anything even remotely discussing of her kids.

I don't like that she and the campaign are pushing her image as family first because I have a hard time understanding how she thinks she'll ever have any time to spend with her new baby as VP. But this is something a great many people would give a man a pass on, which bugs the hell out of me, too. And it's not news, it's spin. In fact, it's such pointless spin people went looking for scandal instead.

Also, can I just throw in a random other thing that bugs the hell out of me? All the ageism against McCain? WTF?! I understand being concerned about his health, but dude people are going really ridiculously off point about it.

This campaign really does have everything. Sexism against Palin, ageism against McCain, and racism against Obama (which include 'not really black' which just *facepalm*). And classism of one sort or another against all of them (since it's the equal opportunity -ism).

[femmequixotic]

Yeah, see, I see absolutely no relevance in Bristol being preggers to Palin not being a good VP. Now, I personally think she'd be a bad VP because she's got no national experience at all and I disagree with 90% of her politics. But that's got nothing to do with her kid being pregnant. I also don't think that makes her a bad mom. I mean, dude, don't we ourselves argue in fandom that it's totally normal for a teenager to be interested in sex and that they should make their own decisions about it? Bristol made her own decision. It differed from her mom's beliefs. I don't see the Palins throwing her out of the house over it, you know? They look like a family who's being supportive and understanding. And Bristol's 5 months pregnant and hasn't gotten hitched yet, so I don't smell shotgun wedding in the air either...sigh.

And yeah, a man would without a doubt get a pass on the new baby issue and that drives me batshit. Really, it's her personal decision whether or not she can run with a special needs infant. I myself wouldn't ever make that choice because yeah, I have no idea when she thinks she'd see the baby, but maybe she sees it otherwise. Or maybe she has resources she knows she could call on for help.

There's a lot of -isms going on right now. It's making my head hurt, to be honest, and making me despair about humanity as a whole.

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

When I learned that her kid was named after Van Halen, in my head I went "Aw, wrong 'Van'". Most of the blogs I've seen are about as relevant to her ability to be VP as that thought. Since yesterday I've developed a twitch and a tension headache. Also, I seriously need to stop reading comments on political blogs. *twitches*

[femmequixotic]

When I learned that her kid was named after Van Halen, in my head I went "Aw, wrong 'Van'".

AHHAHAHAHAAHAH! I had that exact same thought. :D

And yeah...I've just been reading this morning since I got to work thanks to still being internetless at home, but I'm already frustrated and wrung out by it all. I'm not sure I can make it through the next two months. I might end up with my keyboard permanently implanted in my forehead. *G*

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

:D

I think we all need pillows over our keyboards. Or to step back from the internet. I spent something like 18 hours yesterday looking stuff up and reading threads, which was not a great thing to do. All I got from it was pain and rage and disgust. And a very little bit of information. Particularly facepalmy was the Kos diary entry on the editing of her wikipedia entry.

[femmequixotic]

Yeah. I'm starting to feel that same twisty sick feeling that I got when I read crap about Hillary during the primaries. :/

I haven't read the Kos diary yet...Salon's comments have made me headdesk this morning...

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

What really pisses me off is that I'm this wound up over it mostly by reading liberal blogs. I get a whole different sense of horror and despair when I read comments on news articles and such, which is why I'm now avoiding that, mostly. *sigh*

Disgust and anger vs horror and despair. Such a charming choice. *facepalm* Remember how happy it was on Thursday? Someone on my flist posted this on Friday, and sometimes I look at it to make me laugh because I think otherwise I'd spork someone to death.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hey, Femme, I've been meaning to pop back in here and respond to this, so, better late than never. As I've said elsewhere, I don't see hypocrisy in Palin at all - she's nothing if not consistent. And I've got no quarrel, at all, with her religious beliefs. And I'm honestly impressed with how well her political actions map on to her religious beliefs. It's just that I wish that she were capable of more flexibility and open-mindedness in making policy that also affects people who don't share her beliefs. That's all. Maybe all I mean by this is that I'm not so sure hypocrisy is such a failing in a politician, all the time.

Also, she keeps getting referred to on the blogosphere as a fundamentalist, but is that right, do you know? She worships at an Assembly of God church - aren't they Pentacostals? Isn't that different from fundamentalist and/or evangelical Protestant? The only Pentacostals I ever knew well were Guatemalans, and they got quite annoyed at being called fundamentalists, but maybe Guatemalans are different? Or maybe it was a language difference?

[femmequixotic]

Oh, I know, and I agree. I've just been reading a lot of political blogs this week and their comments, and it's kind of frustrating to see people calling her a hypocrite because of Bristol's pregnancy which makes me uneasy.

It's actually driving me crazy that people call her a fundamentalist. She's really not a fundie. Assembly of God, like you say, is Pentacostal and even we fundies thought they were nutty, to be honest. But people use the term fundamentalist wrongly, I've found. They lump evangelicals and fundamentalists together too, and, um, no. Evangelical =/= fundamentalist at ALL. Entirely different theological viewpoints in some major ways. When I was at BJ, I wasn't allowed to attend evangelical churches because they were too religiously liberal. And they wouldn't have touched the Pentacostals with a ten-foot pole because of the whole speaking-in-tongues, touched-by-the-Spirit charismatic element of those churches. Very looked askance upon by fundies.

And don't get me started on the term Dominionist...sigh.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

HAH! See, that's what I thought. But I figured it was best to check with you to make sure.

My fondest hope is that somewhere on the internet, there's video of her handling snakes and speaking in tongues. Because there goes the entire non-Pentacostal right-wing Christian vote, right there, don't you think? Except for the right-wing Unitarians, maybe. Are there any right-wing Unitarians?

[femmequixotic]

You've seen the video of her church, right?

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/04/video-footage-of-sar.html

(This is so very not fundamentalism at all, BTW...)

Not to mention the video that her church's taken down already:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1vPYbRB7k&feature=related