Cherie Priest

Submitted for your reading pleasure (or at the very least, interest): this essay by Adam Greenfield, which addresses some of the discombobulation I’ve been feeling about the whole Sarah Palin thing, albeit from a peculiar and peculiarly apropos angle.

And because I now have about a dozen emails wanting to know why I’ve kept so quiet on the subject, when I’ve a reputation for being such a merry and vocal little liberal, well, it’s like this: For the last couple of weeks I’ve been sitting here in dumbfounded silence — in wholehearted shock, really, over McCain’s VP choice and the reception she’s received from the public at large.

My consternation begins with the obvious: Somebody out there really DOES think I’m dumb enough to vote with my vagina. For Christ’s sake, I wouldn’t trust Sarah Palin to sort my laundry, and the GOP thinks that — because she and I share matching plumbing — I ought to rise up and embrace her. Ladies, be assured! Voting Republican is okay, this time, because now they’ve totally got a chick on the ticket. The time has come to forget all about that evil laughter we hear while they try stripmine family planning/sex-ed/women’s healthcare programs, education and funding, while steadily and sometimes secretly working to disable our administrative permissions on our own bodies.

So who is this woman anyway, and what do we know about her?
Well, let’s see.

She tries to force abstinence-only education, because apparently her daughter is more special than everybody else’s; and she crows about the “decision” her daughter has made to keep an unexpected/unwanted child — even while bracing herself to strip the decision-making ability from other women (even in case of rape). Speaking of rape, when Palin was in charge in Wasilla, victimized women had to pay for their own rape kits in order to “save money.” What a feminist!

She doesn’t believe in global warming; she advocates the hunting of Alaskan wolves via the sportsmanlike activity of exhausting them with low-flying airplanes and then shooting them to death with high-powered rifles.* She’s fought tooth and nail to keep polar bears off the endangered species list. What an environmentalist!

In a real fit of pique, this “fiscally responsible” “maverick” who bleeds integrity billed the state of Alaska for 312 nights which she spent in her own home. She advocates the banning of books from public libraries, and once threatened to fire a librarian who vigorously opposed attempts to do so. But that’s not so surprising, considering there’s ample evidence to suggest that she also tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired, too. What an upstanding public servant who would never abuse power!

Left to her own devices, she’d just as soon take her state and mount a secession from the union. That whole “Bridge to Nowhere” thing? Yeah, she’s a rather mistaken when she sings about her virtue in refusing it. She’s also been known to fudge her travel/diplomacy credentials. And oh, wait. There’s that whole malarkey about the jet she so cavalierly sold. That didn’t happen like she said it did, either. But maybe she was just confused. The record will reflect that she’s not much of a businessperson. What a qualified leader!

Gosh. She sounds like a real peach.
(And all this with just a >2-year stint as governor and a 7-year run as a small-town mayor.)

Anyway, thanks but no thanks.
If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick with my present preferred candidate.

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