OK, so I'm a little late to the Palin party. I wanted to see how things were shaking out. So far I've got: She's unqualified, inexperienced, too religious, frumpy, and a bad mother. Also, she's evil. She purposefully afflicted an innocent baby -- her own baby --with a genetic disease. Your baby could be next.
Of course none of this is true. Alaska's pretty big and it borders on two foreign countries, one of whom hates us while the other merely tolerates us. You pick which one's which. People in the lower 48 ( No, really, Mr. Obama. 48. ) tend to forget about Alaska, all tucked away up there like that. It's got military installations, some that are en clair and some that aren't. I suspect she already has a working relationship with the top brass. They produce and export energy, although I don't think they have refining facilities up there, so they pay the most for the petroleum and propane they consume. More than Hawaii, even. Sucks. Because Alaska's so big it's a logistical challenge to get anything civic done statewide, like law enforcement. Mrs. Palin has to coordinate the activities of state and local authorities with the Feds, who are run from DC, the opposite of Alaska. She's had as much experience running a government as Harry Truman did when he became President. He managed.
So she's got to be on the ball to do all this and coordinate the activities of all those kids. And don't start on the pregnant daughter. The same thing happened to my son, his cousin on dad's side, my oldest uncle on mom's side, Mr. Obama, and several members of your own family whether you know about it or not. The dinosaurs of feminism, Quinn and Steinem, for whom Sarah Palin represents everything they claim to admire, say she has too many children and she can't look after them properly and work outside the home. Nobody said that to Al Gore, who has four kids, or Grammaw Pelosi, who rounded up every child in a five-mile radius and a couple of short adults for her swearing-in photo, or JFK, who had his kids in his office with him while he was President. Maybe men are better at thinking about more than one thing at a time.
I think I know what the problem actually is. I ran into this attitude a lot when I was working construction. The idea of me appealed to the "hear me roar" crowd. You know, single mommy gets herself off welfare, works in a nontraditional field, competing with the menfolk on their level, yada yada yada. The most patronizing and obnoxious people, the ones who took the most care to remind me that I was there because of affirmative action and not because I worked damn hard, the ones who expected me to be grateful to them specifically, were my union reps, every man Jack a good liberal. When I made it clear that I not only did not feel beholden, but that I thought they should thank me for making it so they could work indoors swinging a pencil was when they started in with the "stupid girl" crap. Like in that movie -- "Full Metal Jacket," I think it was-- where the soldier slaps the Vietnamese guy upside the head and says "We're doing you gooks a favor, here!"
Sarah Palin's problem is that she's uppity and she doesn't know her place.
About Me
- A.G. Clifton
- Miss Clifton was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus rolling down Highway 21. The only child of itinerant grifters, she supplemented her family's meager income through faking food poisoning and stepping in front of cars. Later in life she discovered a talent for Faith healing. She toured the continent healing people named Faith. Along the way she met and married her son's father, but sadly, the two parted ways after she discovered what he actually meant by "animal husbandry." Miss Clifton lives in an abandoned railroad shed on the outskirts of town where she pursues her life's work of constructing the world's largest ball of aluminum foil. Donations cheerfully accepted.