Thursday, November 13, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sarah Palin-The First Reality TV Candidate
You take an attractive person. You thrust them into the national spotlight without any preparation. You watch how they can think on their feet under pressure, parroting cliches heard before. It's not Big Brother; it's John McCain's running mate.
Like most people, I was impressed by Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the the RNC. She displayed an innate command of public speaking that you just can't teach. There was also deftness in her ability to push her identity while obscuring her record. But that's the problem.
Her record stands like this: War with Russia is acceptable, Banning free speech is acceptable, Firing anyone with a different opinion is acceptable, and Secession from America is acceptable.
Yet she retains a buoyancy. Mrs. Palin reminds of Richard Hatch from the first season of Survivor. The truth doesn't matter since she's sticking to an alliance to get herself ahead. John McCain's acceptance speech was centered on eliminating earmarks. Sarah Palin secured, through a Washington lobbyist firm she hired, the most earmarks of any Governor in America. But so what? Now that Mrs. Palin won a place on a ticket that will make her rich and famous, earmarks are her enemies.
Here we are in America during the 21 century, bogged down in two wars, and some still defend her complete lack of knowledge about The Bush Doctrine; ideas that dumped us in a war of choice in Iraq in the first place. We are flooded with defense of her foreign policy experience; that Alaska is within sight of Russia. Well it also is closer to Canada than America. So by that reasoning are we to believe that the proximity to Canada makes Sarah Palin more likely to accept health care free of country club price gouging?
Is John McCain so cynical that he believes that the American people can be bought by a popularity contest won on TV with an American Idol bent? Does John McCain expect people to believe that the Governorship of Alaska is on equal terms with the Senate Foreign Relations committee in terms of experience, an issue McCain repeatedly harps on? That the Mayor of an Alaskan town of under 3000 people is the same as representing 100,000 in Chicago in terms of nuance?
No. John McCain expects us to make an alliance with the person willing to tell us whatever we want to hear. To John McCain, that's all that counts. Someone who will play the game.
Like most people, I was impressed by Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the the RNC. She displayed an innate command of public speaking that you just can't teach. There was also deftness in her ability to push her identity while obscuring her record. But that's the problem.
Her record stands like this: War with Russia is acceptable, Banning free speech is acceptable, Firing anyone with a different opinion is acceptable, and Secession from America is acceptable.
Yet she retains a buoyancy. Mrs. Palin reminds of Richard Hatch from the first season of Survivor. The truth doesn't matter since she's sticking to an alliance to get herself ahead. John McCain's acceptance speech was centered on eliminating earmarks. Sarah Palin secured, through a Washington lobbyist firm she hired, the most earmarks of any Governor in America. But so what? Now that Mrs. Palin won a place on a ticket that will make her rich and famous, earmarks are her enemies.
Here we are in America during the 21 century, bogged down in two wars, and some still defend her complete lack of knowledge about The Bush Doctrine; ideas that dumped us in a war of choice in Iraq in the first place. We are flooded with defense of her foreign policy experience; that Alaska is within sight of Russia. Well it also is closer to Canada than America. So by that reasoning are we to believe that the proximity to Canada makes Sarah Palin more likely to accept health care free of country club price gouging?
Is John McCain so cynical that he believes that the American people can be bought by a popularity contest won on TV with an American Idol bent? Does John McCain expect people to believe that the Governorship of Alaska is on equal terms with the Senate Foreign Relations committee in terms of experience, an issue McCain repeatedly harps on? That the Mayor of an Alaskan town of under 3000 people is the same as representing 100,000 in Chicago in terms of nuance?
No. John McCain expects us to make an alliance with the person willing to tell us whatever we want to hear. To John McCain, that's all that counts. Someone who will play the game.
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