Why are the boys in the media so obsessed with proving that Sarah Palin is stupid, evil, and ambitious? Is this a case of straight-up sexism? Because it sure is beginning to sound like it. Is it because the sexy ambitious girl always has to come to a bad end, to be destroyed by society? Or the female who forgot her place must die by the end of the novel, be shunned, disgraced, and thrown out of society?
I know, she's hideous. I do not dispute that. The problem I'm having is that I think George W. Bush is much more stupid than Sarah Palin ever dreamed of being, and he didn't get this treatment.
George W. Bush may have been our first "special needs" president. It's like one of those cruel childish stories we hear from schools across the country, only this time it was the grown-ups. Here's little special needs George, totally clueless, the definition of the kid who Does Not Get It. And then the bad kids, like Cheney and Rumsfeld, go get Clueless George in the cafeteria and tell him to go into the bathroom and light the trash can on fire. Except of course in our situation, George dropped tons of bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan and brought about the deaths of possibly over a million human beings. But other than that, same thing.
And George W. Bush was patently limited right from the start. Could not properly phrase a sentence. Started a sentence and got lost somewhere in the middle. Limited vocabulary. Short attention span. Wandering eyes, apparently unable to focus. Inappropriate behavior and comments. Sounds like a candidate for drug therapy, right? Oh that's right -- never mind, bad idea.
But when George opened his mouth and came out with the really stupid comments, what did the press do? They loved him. They laughed with him. They hung out and joked with him, even though he was "palling around" with people with Cheney and Rumsfeld.
So what's the difference? Is Sarah Palin also stupid? Certainly ignorant about many things, but I don't think she's stupid. Remember, George W. Bush never accomplished a thing in his entire useless life except be born to a rich family. Everything that he ever has done is because his daddy made the arrangements. Does anyone really thing George got into Yale because of his brains, intellect, or grades? Maybe his drinking skills, arrogance -- those may be desirable at Yale. But the only reason George W. Bush got into Yale is likely because his Daddy was rich and connected. Although they deny it, there have been reports that Daddy also got George W. into the national guard champagne unit so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam.
Contrast that with Sarah Palin. Her parents are what? Schoolteacher and homemaker? No obvious inherited wealth there or in her husband's family. Whatever her accomplishments, she got them because of her own efforts, not because her daddy got it for her.
So yes, I despise her, I think she represents the extreme right-wing ideologues who want to destroy democracy and replace it with a theocratic dictatorship from the right. And I would do everything in my power to keep her out of the Lower 48.
In fact, why don't we demand that Congress build a wall between the U.S. and Canada. We can have a gate for the Canadians to come in, because they're pretty nice people. But we'll keep Sarah out. We can call it the Sarah Palin Wall, and she'll never even get it. Like San Francisco naming its garbage dump the George W. Bush Garbage Dump, and George thought he was being honored.
Anyway, I just think that the boys in the media have gone way overboard attacking Sarah Palin. At this point in time she's being ridiculed because she is female, because she is in the non-traditional-female role of an elected politician, because a big percentage of the population liked her, because she has become governor of a state without being too tied in with the state's political parties, because she is pretty and charming and able to give a speech like few politicians can.
Because she is female and she forgot her place, some men need to put her down. It needs to end because it's getting a bit sickening. If the boys in the media want to prove how tough they are, maybe they could go up against Mr. Paulson and see if they can get our money back.
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