The Question of First Spouses

In the midst of the headlines attached to articles about the findings against S. Palin in "trooper-gate" are increasing revelations about the role of Palin's husband in his wife's governorship of Alaska. Every article I have read presents him as perhaps more than a "just being supportive" spouse. There are allegations of his being present at closed-cabinet meetings, copied on official state e-mails, meeting separately with state official on his wife's behalf, etc.

All of this explores the question of spousehood. What are the boundaries of influence when it comes to spouses and our professional work? If we accept as a given that all spouses naturally talk to each other then it is only natural that spouses are going to occasionally opine about each others' work issues. For the most part - we are ok with this? Yes?

Or no? The questions swirling & twirling around Scott Palin raise 2 questions - does it make a difference when the one spouse is an elected official? And - does it make a difference whether the other spouse is a wife or a husband?

Remember Nancy Reagan? And the snide remarks about her propping up of her husband in his final term? Remember Hilary Clinton as Fiirst Lady? And the snide remarks about her involvement in her husband's administration? HC upped the stakes by not just trying to be a supportive spouse but by actually trying to be a useful First Lady who does more than play hostess to the world. She dared to try to change her job description. And oh how the country breathed a sigh of relief when Laura was elected, but I digress.....

And then there was that woman who challenged Obama for the nomination. We were faced with the prospect of out first FIRST Gentleman. What would he do? Play host to the world? HE was a particular problem because he had actually once had a career of his own & might not want to quietly sit back & play host. Mmmm kinda like Hilary Clinton the lawyer when she was First Lady being asked to play hostess.

Life was a lot easier when FIRST spouses (wives) had no careers of their own.

And now we have Scott Palin participating in his wife's governorship. Appropriate? Is he just trying, like Hilary Clinton in Washington, to redefine his FIRST spousal role? Or is he really just being, well, inappropriate?

I raise these questions because of my own arguably sexist & politically biased reaction to the stories I read today. I can't stand Sarah so I found myself disinclined to like Scott or to be the least bit sympathetic towards him. Then I thought - wait a minute, Squid - don't be unfair. Don't be sexist. Don't apply a different standard to him than you applied when you were sympathetic to Hilary as First Lady. Or the standard you apply when you feel sympathetic about the struggles ahead for Michelle O.

I do actually think, based on the evidence, that Scott P. over-stepped certain boundaries - though given the arrogance of his wife it could be that they just didn't handle the situation as well as they could have if they had been more up-front about the situation. However - I will be interested to see how this continues to be discussed in the media - whether Scott will be discussed in a sexist fashion as were Nancy & Hilary or whether he will be treated more "fairly" as a "just trying to be supportive" spouse.

Terrible Sarah the terrorist

Most people who only know me casually are surprised that I'm interested in politics. I rarely talk about it in this coven of Republicans. That's changed recently. I've begun to tell off the people who forward me these e-mails claiming Obama was put through school by Muslim extremists from Malaysia, that Obama is "palling around with people who attacked America" and horror of horrors, was seen wearing a USMC T-shirt when he hadn't "earned" it.

It's hard to tell which GOP cesspool some of these things come from, but the business about Obama being best buddies with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers comes from Sarah Palin - you know, the same Sarah who believes in witches and knows all about Russia because someone told her you could see an uninhabited rock from a tiny Alaskan island she's never been to.

She's been making the Slime Circuit, or cruising the Bullshit Belt if you prefer, telling the folks that Obama is a terrorist and a friend of terrorists. She cites a New York Times article as a source although, true to the Palin Practice, the article does not say anything of the sort and that's been affirmed by most of the mainstream media. Of course back when Ayers was raising hell trying to stop the Vietnam war by blowing things up, Obama was thousands of miles away and eight years old. They do, now that Ayers is a 63 year old professor at the University of Chicago, live in the same neighborhood and both once did sit on the board of the Annenberg Foundation, but that's as far as it goes. Close enough though for someone devoid of conscience, uncaring enough for responsibility and in utter contempt of truth like Sarah Palin.

Of course if having once said hello to a former radical makes one a terrorist, then the U of C, who employs Ayers as a professor must be an al Qaeda stronghold, but I'm rapidly running out of cynicism here. I'm just too damned angry.

Actually, if anyone is effectively participating in terrorizing Americans and interfering with the democratic process, it's Slimy Sarah and now we know why she was selected. It would have been damned hard to find anyone else low enough, un-American enough, deranged enough to believe her own lies. She allows McCain to wash his hands and pretend to be unsullied. She allows bigots and racists to pretend they have legitimate reasons for hating Obama.

Maverickism

According to dictionary dot com, a MAVERICK is

a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates.

Mmmmm now that's curious. So SP & JM are arguably also aligning themselves with INTELLECTUALS & ARTISTS. Ha! Oh the irony!!!

Now, admittedly this definition says "or" which means one has a choice of what kind of maverick one would like to be. However, I find it amusing that the dictionary people also recognize intellectuals & artists as being of maverick behavior - two groups of people that the Republican party traditionally finds suspect. Very suspect. I know because I fall into both of those categories. Intellectuals & artists tend to be creatively thinking people. People who ask new questions & seek new answers. They are people who resist being pigeon-holed. They - We - are people who are often accused of not toeing the mark with respect to good old fashioned American values (whatever the heck they are). AND - we are people who are by & large APPALLED at the thought of JM & SP sitting in the white house.

Go figure. "Maverickism" - it would seem - makes for curious bed-persons.

So - here's a thought - maybe if all of us intellectuals & artists start calling ourselves "mavericks" all the time (following JM & SP's example) proudly embracing & owning our maverickism, then maybe - just may be - we can take the wind out of the sails of this now nauseating word. In other words, we can defuse its individuating effect by loudly assigning it to all who qualify. Rendering it meaningless by over-use. (In other words, speeding up the process begun by JM & SP - though I think they are genuinely clueless as to how meaningless this word is becoming)

Ya betcha!

Somebody needs to tell Sarah Palin that Nucular isn't a word nor is ya a pronoun. Someone needs to point out that if a maverick is one who doesn't follow the herd, a team of mavericks isn't going to work well -- particularly if one is promoting that team to a leadership role.

Of course these things bother pedantic elitists like me far more than they bother most Americans. I'm not convinced actually that most Americans are bothered by anything I would call reality. We're an entertainment culture and entertaining lies will be repeated and believed while the boring truth is ignored.

Take Sarah's assertions and accusations of last night: Virtually all were either outright lies or misrepresentations. The General who said "surge" tactics won't work, Obama voting for tax increases 95 times, Obama saying he would talk to Ahmadinajad without preconditions, Obama refusing to admit surge worked, -- lies. How many people will bother to check, and of those few how many will be able to dismiss the facts as "liberal?" How many people ever asked "is this the best we can do?"

What we are going to see; what we're seeing already is a focus on making Biden out to be a liar while completely ignoring their own lies. It's the only safe bet in this world of lies.

Palin wins!

Style often trumps substance in debates, says MSNBC. It's very true, at least in terms of public opinion. We can see it illustrated in the extreme in the TV coverage of the crowds already forming in St Louis: wildly enthusiastic young women are waving "Palin Wins" signs hours before the event is to begin. To them it's a fait accompli. What actual words, what answers, what debate can change a mind like that?

I would go further and say prejudice trumps everything. Partisanship trumps everything. Reality means nothing. In a world where a truck can have the "soul of a sports car" it's about style, it's about fantasy, it's about self-delusion, it's about lunacy.

There is far too much speculation going on about tonight's Punch and Sarah show. Will she make a fool of herself? Will she demonstrate nearly total ignorance of all the things a chief executive is expected to have mastered even to be considered for office? It won't matter. If she breaks down and cries, if she begins to writhe on the floor, spouting glossolalia and moaning about witches, it won't really matter. If she thinks Bear Stearns is an Alaskan delicacy, they will love her for it. We'll be told that Joe Biden was condescending for knowing what the first amendment says or who the Chief Justice is and that will be that. Even though McCain got away with saying "Horseshit" twice during his debate with Obama, Biden will have been ungentlemanly, elitist, condescending, smug -- just for knowing the right stuff.

She will have shown attitude and edge and poise and style, or any number of nebulous and irrelevant attributes and that will be that. Palin Wins!

CNN's Brown Misses The Sexist Mark

I just sat on my couch, in front of my tv, & watched in amazement as Campbell Brown of CNN delivered an op ed sort of commentary that she called a "rant" on behalf of all women who are "sick of the sexist treatment of S. Palin."

Now the first amazing thing was the C. Brown expressed a personal opinion so forcefully - I've never seen her do so before. Then - that she claimed to be speaking for women - not just herself - wow! I held my breath, thinking, "yeeaahhhhh....be careful of what you say on MY behalf!"

So here's the gist of her plea - to the McCain campaign itself!! She complained that Palin's own campaign was treating her like a "delicate flower" who needed to be cloistered away from the press - not allowed to show "her stuff." Brown said, "She's from Alaska, she's tough . . . let her be treated like a bonafide candidate like the others." Brown was referring to the press being denied access to Palin today - as Fogg has already noted in a previous post.

OK - this is tricky - I AGREE with Brown, yes, to a point. To not allow Palin to speak her mind would be sexist if that was what was actually happening. I suspect that Palin, however, wants to shield herself from the press until she can acquire enough knowledge to be able to sound like a viable candidate and THIS is the point Brown was plainly missing (no doubt on purpose in an effort to NOT seem biased) that Palin is being shielded from the press by the McCain campaign NOT because of sexism BUT because if she starts having to field tough questions she will fall apart. Crumble even. Then the REAL & TRUE sexism of the McCain campaign would shine through - picking a candidate who is unqualified in order to entice female voters as if to say - "all they want is a woman so any woman will do, even one who is unqualified."

Oh the irony - that such a candidate has been nominated by the party that is notorious for complaining about Affirmative Action because it puts unqualified people in positions ahead of those more qualified all due to tokenism!!!

It's my party and I'll lie if I want to

They're taking the girl from the streets of London to Ascot and passing her off as a debutante. A few weeks of diction lessons, some new clothes and they can pull it off, but for Chrissakes, don't let her say more than two words to anyone! No cameras, no audio, no reporters to observe what fork she uses, what diphthongs she distorts -- and be careful to introduce her to the Duke and the Dauphin so she won't mistake them for the Prime Minister.

Yes, you've seen the Broadway show, the movie, but no, this isn't a bet between two upper class gentlemen over brandy and cigars at the Reform Club. It's a bunch of thugs, goons, warmongers, Jesocrats, robber barons and Mafiosi trying to pass off the most unsuitable major candidate in American history as a statesman by pretending she's having substantive conversations with important people.

Palin's crew locked out AP and CNN from her introduction to Mohmmad Karzai today before they could catch her picking her nose on camera or asking the President of Afghanistan how things are in Australia. She will go through the same farce with other leaders tomorrow and her supporters and other damned fools will look shocked if we mention the absolutely unprecedented ( at least in America ) attempt to usher a candidate into office with no questions asked.

No, it's not a couple of tweedy old professors playing condescending games with the proles, it's the outfit; the wise guys taking over the country of the gleefully oppressed.

From lie to shining lie

Many of us saw the photos of the anti-Palin rally in Alaska recently, and patriots took heart at the negative reception. The Palin Rally in The Villages, a planned community near Orlando, Florida yesterday was a different scene entirely. Estimates of the size of the turnout ran from 30,000 to 50,000.

The South is Palin Country read the banner, although the area is home mainly to retired people from the North. Just as her performance with Sean Hannity suggested, she spent 23 minutes slinging wild and wicked lies about Barak Obama because, like her enthusiastically stupid supporters, she has very little to brag about in terms of knowledge, experience, education or intelligence.

The Tax and Spend straw man, which should have been relegated by current events to some bonfire of the vanities, was aired along with the promise that more regulation is what the Republican ticket is all about. No word yet from the Reagan grave site as to subterranean rumblings.

McCain "fought for the surge" lied Palin, as if that surge and not the ethnic cleansing, slaughter and forced exile had caused the death rate to descend from cataclysmic to simply horrible. Of course although she claims to have been on the battlefield, she's never been to Iraq. She briefly visited Kuwait and lies about it. Perhaps we should forgive the gross ignorance because you can't see either country from Alaska. '

'At a decisive moment in the course of the war in Iraq, John McCain fought for the strategy, the surge, that has brought victory within sight,''

said Palin, neglecting to note that it's been in sight and around the corner since 2003 and failing to explain what the hell victory might mean in terms of long term occupation of a devastated, depopulated country that insists we leave now.

Although Obama does openly favor responsible offshore drilling, along with investment in alternative energy, Palin continued her bleat with:

''Maybe if he'd been the governor of an energy-rich state, he'd get it. Maybe if he'd been on the front lines of securing our nation's energy independence, he'd understand.''

Of course she's never been on the front lines of anything. Although she lies by insisting that Alaska, with 3.5% of domestic production provides 20%, in truth it doesn't have enough oil to make a dent in energy independence and Texas provides more oil. Canada provides the lion's share of imports. George Bush, whose qualifications regarding oil greatly exceed hers, hasn't proved to be much of a help in the energy independence department and both Palin and McCain are staunch and relentless foes of energy conservation and alternative energy.

Her reception confirms several things, among which are that there is no lie so transparent or so gross that the party faithful will not believe it with enthusiasm, nor is there a candidate so obviously unqualified by intelligence, knowledge or character that she will not be supported. A new Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9 poll showed that 40 percent of voters who back McCain said Palin made them feel stronger about their choice. Meet it is, I set it down -- a woman can lie, and lie and lie and be Vice President.

''She's the sunrise, not the sunset,''

said Linda Cusumano, 57, of Orlando, quoted in today's Miami Herald.

"She makes me feel there's nothing we can't do.''

Indeed she's right. Linda and the other Visigoths can destroy the United States of America far better than any invading army ever could, much less a ragtag bunch of amateur suicide pilots. Linda and her ilk have, in fact, made it not worth saving. Perhaps future historians will try to fix the exact point at which the collapse became irreversible. Perhaps that moment will be this one.

Cross posted from Human Voices

keeping it personal

Resolved: that Squid and the Captain feel personally insulted by Palin's anti-female policies. I'm sure that Sarah doesn't care what you or I think because her opinions are God's will and we're just farleftliberals waiting for the Lake of Fire, but you can return the insult with a gift that serves two purposes. It will remind the McCain campaign that we aren't going to sit still while decades of progress are wiped out -- and it will help Planned Parenthood.

Kate Goldstein at Huffington Post suggests today that you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. They will send her a Thank You card. You will feel better, she will feel offended. It's only fair.

Make sure you use this link to the Planned Parenthood web site, and use the McCain headquarters address so that everyone at the viper's nest will see how you put your money where your mouth is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington, VA 22202

Use that link above or choose the pull-down menu of Donate--Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular "Donate Online."