Martyr-making for leftwing dummies
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Congrats to the kitchen-sink Obamacrats for the low-blow attacks on Sarah Palin and her family. You didn't insist on truth and fairness in the intramural scrimmages, and now that we're headed to the big game, you're giving the other team locker-room material to die for.
Well, it's a great moment in post-partisanship, building an inexperienced Christianist VP-candidate who's running with John Fucking McCain into a folk martyr!
Shakes sees the sexism. Glenn doesn't, though he offers some substantive oppo (and he may be right on his challenge in the Update*), what one wishes the left had led with instead of personal attacks that Our Party's Candidate decried to little avail.
And as always, The Howler, poor sap that he is, stays stuck in the truth-and-fairness-based community. Some people never learn.
But those of you who demean Gov. Palin as a trophy candidate or a slut, and who play the "it's irresponsible not to speculum" game, you might still luck out. An undervetted candidate is still a risk factor, and if she doesn't go the distance you can feel proud of your pube crawl up the Palin family fallopian tubes.
Otherwise, not so much.
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* Glenn challenged the claim that liberals are holding Palin's motherly obligations against her.
I hope that the left doesn't want to claim Sally Quinn as its own (though she does seem to be leaning Obama and tried to drive a stake through the heart of his Democratic opponent), but this is a genuine postpartisanship opportunity. Let's loudly join the GOP in speaking out against crap like this:
Is she prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job? She is the mother of five children, one of them a four-month-old with Down Syndrome. Her first priority has to be her children. When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make? I'm the mother of only one child, a special needs child who is grown now. I know how much of my time and energy I devoted to his care. He always had to be my first priority. Of course women can be good mothers and have careers at the same time. I've done both. Yes, other women in public office have children. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has five children, but she didn't get heavily involved in politics until they were older. A mother's role is different from a father's.
Ironically, two sentences later she says "This is no time to to play gender politics." Indeed.
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Sally Quinn: Enemy of the People
Let's face it, all roads lead back to Sally. Hillary Clinton snubbed her, probably inadvertently, probably thinking that Sally had a lot of entertaining to do and whe wouldn't mind if Hillary sat in on a policy session instead of attending one of her soirees.
Sally reminds me of the suburban women who give cocktail parties where all the men end up in the kitchen nex to the garage where they talk about sports and lawn care and women congregate in the living room around the newly delivered mothers and her pregnant acolytes to talk about pseudoscience and epidurals.
Been there. Done that. Never felt quite comfortable in the living room and the men's club doesn't mind you being there but their wives sure do.
But this is the niche Sally has carved out for us. A boring, segregated suburban cocktail party where the smart and the smartasses have nothing to do but watch.
Come together at The Confluence
The Palin Family
In addition to Sarah Palin putting on quite the performance last night, I was really struck by her family and I've been trying to figure out why. I think it's because she has - one son going to war, one daughter who is pregnant at seventeen, and one child with Down's. Sure, everyone knows that, right? But what makes it powerful is if you think about the context. If you had to list parents' biggest fears about their children, worries that keep them up at night, those three things - son going to war, daughter getting pregnant, child born disabled - would probably be pretty high on the list. And she doesn't have one of them, she has three of them. But there they were, looking pretty strong and loving in the face of it. Add in the fact that their children have those very American, working class kind of names (this is definitely part f the class war). A lot of people are going to identify with them and admire and respect the way they seem to be handling their family issues.
The danger, of course, is that that identification, admiration and respect will then cause Americans to believe things about Palin's policies that aren't true. This is a natural thing, you presume people you think are like you and that you respect believe the things you believe. It's how all those "creative class" people were fooled into thinking Obama is a progressive - he seems just like them!
It would be easier to prevent this if the Dems had used the last week to set out her policy positions as out of the mainstream. But they didn't. They made her family the most important and compelling thing about her because many "progressives" are sexist snobs.
If this election becomes a referendum on Palin's family, the Dems are fucked. They will have done it to themselves (don't they always), but they're fucked nonetheless.
on the names--
i read them as tacky suburban/middle and upper-middle-class names, actually.
Working-class names to me are things like Haylee, Britney, Kaylee, Tiffany, and millions of variations of girly names like that---girl names especially are all very gendered, and the Palin kids' names aren't at all.
Lindsay Lohan and Dakota Fanning are not workingclass names in my view, but obviously middleclass ones.
boy names are trickier-- is someone named Hunter called that bec the parents hunt? or is it an old family name?, etc...
My understanding
All the kids names are from locations in Alaska.
Bristol Bay, Willow Creek...
I think they are more modern names, I do NOT see the names you listed as "working class". Most working class people I know pick very mundane names, Sarah, Heather, Amber.
In my area, names like Tiffany, Kaylee, Haylee and Rochelle are considered "black" names. Of course some of the biggest working class rednecks I know named their daughter, MaKyndria(it's a combo of the 3 names they couldn't choose between).
I think child naming today, the focus is more on originality, than anything else. It was my main focus when I picked Layne for my daughter, and my BFF when she picked Jaylee for hers.
But hey, if they are all places in AK, maybe that's where each child was concieved :)
Good Points
I guess I always associate Bristol with Bristol Tennesee and so it sounds kind of rural to me. Piper, however, definitely is upper-middle class.
& i thought Bristol, England
--i didn't even know there was a Bristol Tennessee. : >
Place names to me are very middleclass -- and definitely attempts to be "creative" and "original".
i love Layne --
great name!
Have all the Grandma/Grandpa names gone out of style already?
Recently, Sam/Max/Abe/Grace/Sarah/Sadie/etc were all the rage here in NY.
Referendum
If this election becomes a referendum on Palin’s family, the Dems are fucked.
If this election becomes a referendum on Palin's family, we're not only fucked, we're fucking idiots. Personally, I could give two shits about Palin's family or McCain's family or Obama and Biden's families. Everything I need to know about Palin I learned researching her political and professional history and then listening to what she said last night. I lost count of the lies. I simply couldn't keep up.
She's no different than the thugs running the show now. And, she's a bible thumping young-earth creationist whack-job to boot. Any Hillary supporter that votes for McCain because of the addition of Sarah Palin to the republican ticket needs some serious help. She is antithetical to everything Hillary stands for. I had to take a shower before I went to bed. I hope Joe Biden destroys her in the debate.
Before last night, I was disgusted with the republicans. Now, I'm just pissed. I'm sending money to Obama and I'm going to help fund any 537 that goes after McSame and McPalin. THey are terrifying.
Of Course She's a Liar
but how many people knew that? They had a week where they could've focused on defining her by noting that she hates the environment, lied about her bridge to nowhere, etc., etc. So that when people heard the bullshit, they knew it was bullshit. But instead they put the focus on her family. That's just stupid.
And I think they realize it, which is why they're denouncing sexism this morning. When Obama/Biden denounce sexism, you know they've fucked up somehow.
She's fucking terrifying.
Watching CNN
they are showing all the best lines from last night. What's more, even when you can't hear her, they are showing wonderful photos of her family.
BTW, Soledad O'Brien, stupidest person on television or just a close second to Glenn Beck?
Carl Bernstein is criticizing McCain for going to the right-wing base with Palin, but at the same time keeps talking about McCain as if he's some sort of maverick and not a right-wing nut. Helping or hurting, can't tell.
What I tried to say
here except you say it better.
What really rankles is the people who were thinking anyone not on board with the speculumators and pantie-sniffers was a faux outrage concern troll Palin-lover. The truth is we were trying to keep children from hurting themselves with sharp objects. Now, the right-wing can describe any criticism of Palin's dishonesty, asinine policies, lack of substantive experience, flip-floppery on "the Bridge to Nowhere" (i.e. pork barrel politics) etc. as just another unfair assault on this upstanding mother's personal character. The opportunity to define her as she REALLY is now is lost, instead, having gone the sleaze route it is difficult to regain the high ground. But that was entirely predictable wasn't it? McOldster anybody?
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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites
Cuts to the heart
The truth is we were trying to keep children from hurting themselves with sharp objects.
Great phrase. Just what I was thinking, but better said.
I have nothing to add, except: I'm glad to read your posts, VL, as always, except that I know you want to be dealing with other things, and I wish (for your sake and ours) that there were fewer of the things that occasion your posts.