Sarah Palin

[Guest]

Let's not get all hoity-toity, now: At one time or another, or on some particular subject, that could be about every last person on this board. Especially when the subjects are political issues which are by definition ambiguous.

You, accusing others of being hoity-toity? (That should be a sexual phrase, shouldn't it? It is fun to say.)

Puh-leeze, Roxy.

Reference a bit of previous attempts of discussion with the person in question.

You'll see what I meant.

 

[Safe_Bet]

SAFE-BET

I was involved in civil rights before you were a stain on the mattress or back seat.

In 1965 I was involved in an election where a black guy was elected to the city council of our small, bigot town. His opponent, white, came across like Boss Hogg. Bill Blackshear, on the other-hand was an army veteran of Korea, college educated engineer, and married w/children.

Blackshear was responsible for important progress in his part of town, and he seemed interested in helping whites with their problems, too. He got elected. He was the first black elected to anything in almost 100 years.

Michelle and Obama have the attitude that most of us are unwashed Palookas, and it comes across.

Who's side were you on?

 

[Guest]

Ooh, SNL got Sarah Palin again.

Thing is, much of her acting script seems to have been taken directly from the interview.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/28/gov_palin_gets_the_snl_treatme.html

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Ooh, SNL got Sarah Palin again.

Thing is, much of her acting script seems to have been taken directly from the interview.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/28/gov_palin_gets_the_snl_treatme.html

Saw it. Died. Laughing. It was too good to be believed. Fey has really got her down!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

SAFE-BET

I was on my side. People are always on their own side. Politics is never about moral sentiments.

 

[Guest]

Saw it. Died. Laughing. It was too good to be believed. Fey has really got her down!

It's scary how accurate her responses are, too.

After this Thursday's debate I have a feeling there will soon be an SNL skit about vice presidents. Wonder who will do Biden?

 

[cloudy]

Ooh, SNL got Sarah Palin again.

Thing is, much of her acting script seems to have been taken directly from the interview.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/28/gov_palin_gets_the_snl_treatme.html

Much of it does come directly from Couric's interview.

"One in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation, that, you know, also...."

http://bestsmileys.com/lol/1.gif

I also liked "fight terror-loving terroritsts" and "when cornered, you become increasingly adorable."

 

[Safe_Bet]

Ooh, SNL got Sarah Palin again.

Thing is, much of her acting script seems to have been taken directly from the interview.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/28/gov_palin_gets_the_snl_treatme.html

Screw it. I'm voting for Tina Fey!

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Hoity toity.

I'll take your word on the context, but still . . .








(don't like to discuss third parties)

 

[Guest]

Hoity toity.

I'll take your word on the context, but still . . .

(don't like to discuss third parties)

Well, this is silly.

You criticize me for having an opinion on a discussion with someone.

When I defend myself because of the other person's information, or lack thereof, you again criticize by taking the high road and refusing to debate, since they are a "third party".

They were not a third party to me at the time of the discussion, Rox.

You go have a discussion with them, as is your wont. Leave me out of it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I think it's kind of interesting to look at Sarah Palin as a symbol.

Someone I was reading described her as a "baby-making furnace", and whether you agree with that or not, that's a pretty powerful metaphor. It made me think that what she really is, is like the Right's version of a "liberated" woman, an entirely different vision of female liberation than the Left's version, which has been the only one for the past 40 years. The cliche for the Left's liberated woman is strongly feminist -- anti-male, anti-family, liberal, intellectual -- and here's Sarah Palin: girly, cute, obscenely fertile, anti-intellectual, conservative, shooting wolves from a helicopter. She's Tammy Wynette toned down for the sockey moms of 2008. She shows an alternate way to be a liberated woman for those who don't want to be Ellen Degeneris, and they've latched onto her with a vengeance.

George W Bush won in 2000 simply by being a good ol' boy. That was the essence of his strategy. Sarah Palin's helping McCain by being a good ol' girl. That's basically all she is politically, though dramatically she brings this fierce pride and energy to the role. She doesn't just have 5 kids. She pops them out like cannon balls while running city hall or state government and standing by her man. She's woman; hear her roar. Ever see her in Hillary's pantsuits? No? How come, do you think?

I think she scares McCain. She has this image of riding the skies in her chopper like a bouffanted Valkyrie shooting moose or anyone else that gets in her way, and watch them when they're together. The man looks scared, like he's got a tiger by the tail and doesn't quite know what to do with her. I on't think he counted on this kind of reaction for her. It should really be a Palin/McCain ticket.

Meanwhile she's become a symbol of triumph to millions of women who feel disenfranchised and unrepresented, who are looking for a role model to show them that it's possible to stand on their own but who reject the Left's model of the "liberated woman", and they've embraced her with messianic fervor. For them, she can literally do no wrong.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Well, this is silly.

You criticize me for having an opinion on a discussion with someone.

When I defend myself because of the other person's information, or lack thereof, you again criticize by taking the high road and refusing to debate, since they are a "third party".

They were not a third party to me at the time of the discussion, Rox.

You go have a discussion with them, as is your wont. Leave me out of it.

Me, I was just pointing out that the statement Sarah made could be contributed to either Sweet or Palin... I really had to go back and check to see which she was talking about. They both seem to "have their talking points down" (see the SNL skit for a parodied example of Palin's... it's not too far from the truth, actually...) and "it is impossible to argue with someone who has already made up their mind and refuses to read or think about any other information presented." Yep, seemed to apply to both parties.

If that makes me hoity-toity than I'll toit that hoit all the way to the voting booth...

 

[Guest]

Me, I was just pointing out that the statement Sarah made could be contributed to either Sweet or Palin... I really had to go back and check to see which she was talking about. They both seem to "have their talking points down" (see the SNL skit for a parodied example of Palin's... it's not too far from the truth, actually...) and "it is impossible to argue with someone who has already made up their mind and refuses to read or think about any other information presented." Yep, seemed to apply to both parties.

If that makes me hoity-toity than I'll toit that hoit all the way to the voting booth...

See, now THAT sounds sexual.

Toiting your hoit.

 

[rgraham666]

I've been reading reviews of a book by a Canadian author recently; What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order .

In it he breaks America down into two camps, what he calls 'Enlightenment America' and 'Backwoods America'. I find 'Backwoods America' rather pejorative so I use 'Frontier America' instead.

He traces the lineage of 'Enlightenment America' to people like Jefferson and Franklin, 'Frontier America' to people like Jackson and Daniel Boone.

I'm regarding Obama and Palin as avatars of these two facets of America; Obama on the Enlightenment side and Palin on the Frontier side.

 

[Guest]

I think it's kind of interesting to look at Sarah Palin as a symbol.

Someone I was reading described her as a "baby-making furnace", and whether you agree with that or not, that's a pretty powerful metaphor. It made me think that what she really is, is like the Right's version of a "liberated" woman, an entirely different vision of female liberation than the Left's version, which has been the only one for the past 40 years. The cliche for the Left's liberated woman is strongly feminist -- anti-male, anti-family, liberal, intellectual -- and here's Sarah Palin: girly, cute, obscenely fertile, anti-intellectual, conservative, shooting wolves from a helicopter. She's Tammy Wynette toned down for the sockey moms of 2008. She shows an alternate way to be a liberated woman for those who don't want to be Ellen Degeneris, and they've latched onto her with a vengeance.

George W Bush won in 2000 simply by being a good ol' boy. That was the essence of his strategy. Sarah Palin's helping McCain by being a good ol' girl. That's basically all she is politically, though dramatically she brings this fierce pride and energy to the role. She doesn't just have 5 kids. She pops them out like cannon balls while running city hall or state government and standing by her man. She's woman; hear her roar. Ever see her in Hillary's pantsuits? No? How come, do you think?

I think she scares McCain. She has this image of riding the skies in her chopper like a bouffanted Valkyrie shooting moose or anyone else that gets in her way, and watch them when they're together. The man looks scared, like he's got a tiger by the tail and doesn't quite know what to do with her. I on't think he counted on this kind of reaction for her. It should really be a Palin/McCain ticket.

Meanwhile she's become a symbol of triumph to millions of women who feel disenfranchised and unrepresented, who are looking for a role model to show them that it's possible to stand on their own but who reject the Left's model of the "liberated woman", and they've embraced her with messianic fervor. For them, she can literally do no wrong.

I'm not certain which kind of woman she appeals to, Zoot. I mean, she obviously does appeal, you hear the chanting of "Sarah" and the Lipstick bumper stickers and whatnot.

But who does she reach, exactly?

Is it the Nascar crowd? The NRA crowd? The deeply religious zealots? The stay at home moms?

Most of the women I know, educated or no, Dems or Repubs, are deeply offended by her lack of qualifications.

Even my mother has expressed doubts, though they will still vote for McCain.

Did you see the Rolling Stone article about it? Selena posted a link previously in this thread.

It scares the hell out of me.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I think it's kind of interesting to look at Sarah Palin as a symbol.

Someone I was reading described her as a "baby-making furnace", and whether you agree with that or not, that's a pretty powerful metaphor. It made me think that what she really is, is like the Right's version of a "liberated" woman, an entirely different vision of female liberation than the Left's version, which has been the only one for the past 40 years. The cliche for the Left's liberated woman is strongly feminist -- anti-male, anti-family, liberal, intellectual -- and here's Sarah Palin: girly, cute, obscenely fertile, anti-intellectual, conservative, shooting wolves from a helicopter. She's Tammy Wynette toned down for the sockey moms of 2008. She shows an alternate way to be a liberated woman for those who don't want to be Ellen Degeneris, and they've latched onto her with a vengeance.

George W Bush won in 2000 simply by being a good ol' boy. That was the essence of his strategy. Sarah Palin's helping McCain by being a good ol' girl. That's basically all she is politically, though dramatically she brings this fierce pride and energy to the role. She doesn't just have 5 kids. She pops them out like cannon balls while running city hall or state government and standing by her man. She's woman; hear her roar. Ever see her in Hillary's pantsuits? No? How come, do you think?

I think she scares McCain. She has this image of riding the skies in her chopper like a bouffanted Valkyrie shooting moose or anyone else that gets in her way, and watch them when they're together. The man looks scared, like he's got a tiger by the tail and doesn't quite know what to do with her. I on't think he counted on this kind of reaction for her. It should really be a Palin/McCain ticket.

Meanwhile she's become a symbol of triumph to millions of women who feel disenfranchised and unrepresented, who are looking for a role model to show them that it's possible to stand on their own but who reject the Left's model of the "liberated woman", and they've embraced her with messianic fervor. For them, she can literally do no wrong.

You know, you really do hit the nail on the head here. She is a seemingly more feminized version of the left's liberated woman. She's actually not truly feminine... but she's feminized. The SNL skit pointed out in their parody, "Is it just me, or do you get obscenely cute when you're flustered?" or something along those lines, and it's true. This is a woman who comes from beauty pageant mentality...she's got all the deadly feminine wiles down pat. She is a vicious manipulator... and I think she scares John McCain to death. I think she bewilders Obama. And backs Biden into a gentleman's corner.

This woman could easily, EASILY, connive and manipulate her way into the big chair at the white house. That's beyond frightening.

Where it breaks down for the rabid religious right who are peeing all over themselves like excited cocker spaniels and jumping up and down at the sight of her, at least on a logical level (never mind that they, ya know, never really pay attention to logic), is the running for mayor and governor and VP part. They smack into a wall when you consider a woman with five children should be at home taking care of those babies.

But for those on the right who don't fall into the rigid religious beliefs category, you're correct... she's a good fascimile of what they think they want to be--the Super Sockey Mom who can do it all. That's what JBJ means when he says, "Women love her." There are women out there who are longing, craving, needing some sort of model for "woman" after the anti-feminist backlash and now that most are riding the crest of third wave feminism.

Sarah Palin is like giving them a shrink-wrapped Twinkie when what they ordered was baked Alaska.

But any port in a storm, I guess.

 

[Guest]

FOX News just put out this article -

"Conservatives Begin Questioning Palin's Heft"

http://www.iexecutiveoffice.com/sarah-palin/conservatives-begin-questioning-palin’s-heft-foxnews/

Except that now you cannot access it, except for the first paragraph.

It's already been pulled.

Interesting.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Well, this is silly.

You criticize me for having an opinion on a discussion with someone.

When I defend myself because of the other person's information, or lack thereof, you again criticize by taking the high road and refusing to debate, since they are a "third party".

They were not a third party to me at the time of the discussion, Rox.

You go have a discussion with them, as is your wont. Leave me out of it.

You're right. What set me off was someone else coming in and piling on.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

You know, you really do hit the nail on the head here. She is a seemingly more feminized version of the left's liberated woman. She's actually not truly feminine... but she's feminized. . .

Thank you sir may I have another?

Keep it up. Just keep it up. (The silent "you" in that is second person plural.)

Camile Paglia, Salon, 9/10/08

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling Republican convention debut, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.

Sarah Palin's brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism -- is a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Sarah Palin scares the turds out of the elites. But they better take care because she may be CARRIE.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Yep... Paglia's just the type of "feminist" woman who would look at Palin and think, "You go girl!"

But what Palin represents is a far, far cry from the liberation of any woman from anything. Much further away than Madonna ever was. And Madonna herself didn't exactly usher the feminine into the 20th century so much as shove Aphrodite into the face of detractors. She was just playing the bad girl against all the good Catholics.

The fact is a majority of women from roughly ages thirty to fifty can't find "themselves" in other woman out there in the public eye. They're stuck in this liminal space between "old" and "new" feminism, and there are simply no women out there who really fit the bill.

And nature abhors a vacuum.

So we're stuck with a Twinkie. And I hear they'll outlast a nuclear blast.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

more from that Camille Paglia, and here she puts her finger on what I mean by "keep it up" (and you'll be sorry):

Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics -- which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama's campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don't see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

Adding a little more - God I love this woman. Not surprising, since I've beens saying exactly the same things here.

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Let's take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women's movement -- leading to feminists' McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton's support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women -- an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

One more:

But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

more from that Camille Paglia, and here she puts her finger on what I mean by "keep it up" (and you'll be sorry):

"I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist."

Is Paglia still waiting for evidence that dinosaurs existed before man walked the earth, too?

Please. Paglia doesn't represent modern feminists or feminism anymore. She's the Steinham she once fought against.

If she (or you, Rox) can't see the mounting evidence showing Palin is just as (if not more) extreme as the liberal left bloggers have said she is... (let's see, extreme pro-life, more than McCain himself - only in the case of a mother's life being at stake; she comes from a Pentacostal background, was recently prayed over by a man who believes in witches and mentioned witchcraft in his sermon, and she has been overheard on numerous occasions from several sources that she believes dinosaurs and man walked the earth at the same time... and that's just the tip of that proverbial iceberg...)

Well, you can choose to keep your head buried in the sand if you like.

It might be a good place to be, if she ever gets her hand on that big red button.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Yep... Paglia's just the type of "feminist" woman who would look at Palin and think, "You go girl!"

But what Palin represents is a far, far cry from the liberation of any woman from anything. Much further away than Madonna ever was. And Madonna herself didn't exactly usher the feminine into the 20th century so much as shove Aphrodite into the face of detractors. She was just playing the bad girl against all the good Catholics.

The fact is a majority of women from roughly ages thirty to fifty can't find "themselves" in other woman out there in the public eye. They're stuck in this liminal space between "old" and "new" feminism, and there are simply no women out there who really fit the bill.

And nature abhors a vacuum.

So we're stuck with a Twinkie. And I hear they'll outlast a nuclear blast.

I recommend reading that entire Paglia article and actually engaging it with an open mind, rather than just tossing it and her off sneer.

 

[Guest]

I recommend reading that entire Paglia article and actually engaging it with an open mind, rather than just tossing it and her off sneer.

That's an amazingly insulting comment.

That presumes that those who are against Palin's nomination chose to have that opinion without any sort of research or effort or thought into who she is and what she stands for.

That is not necessarily the case.