Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Experience

It's nice to see that Campbell Brown does occasionally do her job:

And another thing...

Much as I love a good scandal, it's absurd that this mess is front-page news when the unlawful arrest of Amy Goodman, Nicole Salazar, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous in St. Paul isn't even noted by major news sources. If Goodman doesn't warrant mainstream media attention, the actions of the St. Paul police against peaceful activists are doomed to go unnoticed.

According to several news reports I have read, police are staging a frightening number of preemptive strikes against protester targets. The New York Times buried its article about clashes between police and activists far down the page, and its coverage tiptoes around the blatant violation of civil liberties even as it documents them. Alternet, Democracy Now!, and Firedoglake all feature on-the-ground reports of the clashes and the protests. As a friend's pictures show, it's not just hurricanes and Juno jokes in Minnesota this week.
I'm deeply conflicted about this whole Sarah Palin/Bristol Palin/Trig Palin/yet-to-be-named-but-probably-to-be-Algebra-or-Triangle-or-Wolverine Palin-Johnston baby situation. I want to leave the poor girl alone, and I know all the terrible jokes I want to make about how Bristol may have had mono but wasn't "too tired" to get herself up the stick are in terrible taste, but I know that this is something that matters for the election and I think it needs to be discussed.

Others have said this, but it's worth saying a million times: no matter how, or whether(I'll concede it's probable she felt that "choosing life" was the right thing to do, but good luck convincing me that her upcoming GOP-sponsored shotgun wedding was her idea), Bristol Palin came to the decision to continue her pregnancy, John McCain and Sarah Palin don't believe any other woman in America deserves that freedom. They believe that grown women of all races and backgrounds are less capable of making decisions about their bodies than a small-town, backwoods child.

It is not necessary to impugn Sarah Palin as a mother in order to have a discussion about the hypocrisy that the Republican party and the religious right have shown since the decision was made to sacrifice a young girl to political ambition. You want to talk about how great it is that this girl made the "right" choice? It's fair game to talk about how you want to take it away from others. You want to talk abut how great it is that you made a difficult but rewarding decision to give birth to a disabled baby? Let's talk about the fact that you don't support funding special education programs.

John McCain picked Sarah Palin because he honestly thought women voters would be dumb enough to believe that an incompetent, corrupt, anti-woman woman was better than no woman on the ticket. He believes we're all trollops, cunts, and morons, and he was so mad that he didn't get his way with Ridge or Lieberman that he made a bad decision and expects us all to think that "history" is enough of a reason to overlook his blatant disregard for women and their abilities. The best thing women can do to fight back is to tear him and his running mate to shreds on everything they stand for.

While I'm on the subject of attacks, I think it should be fair game to attack Sarah Palin for being just a pretty face. Remember John Edwards and his $400 hair cuts? It was okay to criticize him for lacking experience because of his short Senate tenure, his career as a slick ambulance-chaser, and because he was attractive. This woman is not smart. She is not informed. She has no experience. But she knows how to smile pretty and speak in good soundbites because she used to have to do it for the beauty pageant judges. The Vice President has to do a lot more than go to Wal-Mart ribbon cutting ceremonies, and anyone who thinks it's unfair to criticize Palin for being all surface is painfully naive.