Susanna J. Sturgis   Martha's Vineyard writer and editor
writer editor born-again horse girl

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My First and Last (I Hope) Blog About Sarah Palin

September 13, 2008

I was about to title this blog "Why I'm Not Writing About Sarah Palin" but I used that trick way back in the early weeks of the bloggery, in "Why I Don't Write About Dubya." Which holds up pretty well, I think, although I can't hide behind Molly Ivins any more; I and the whole country are a whole lot poorer for that. Still, it's impossible to write about why you're not writing about So-and-So without writing about So-and-So, and overused rhetorical devices get old real fast, so I'll be upfront about it: I'm writing about Sarah Palin.

Sorta.

I'm writing about the dozen or so e-mails I've received from friends and casual acquaintances, mostly inviting me to sign on to an effort called Women Against Sarah Palin and even contribute a few words about why I think her nomination as vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket is a bad thing. (I should probably initial-cap "Bad Thing," but I won't. See? There I go again. Once those rhetorical devices get into your brain cells, it's hard to root them out.) So far I haven't accepted the invitation. It's not that I think that the nomination of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket is a Good Thing (oops), it's that her nomination is way, way down my list of things to get excited about. If I expected great things from the Republican Party or John McCain, sure, I might get excited about Sarah Palin's nomination -- for or against I can't tell you. I've got an active and adventurous imagination, but I can't in my wildest daydreams imagine ever having expected great things from the Republican Party or John McCain. If I had, I wouldn't be the person who's writing this blog.

The person who's writing this blog doesn't give two hoots about Sarah Palin. I wasn't planning to vote for McCain anyway. If McCain gets elected, and President McCain dies in office, and Vice President Palin becomes president -- OK, I guess I could get down and obsess about the possibility, but I've got enough to handle living one day at a time, so I won't. It's looking like the country is going to survive eight years of the second President Bush, and if we manage that, we can probably get through a few years of Palin. If we don't -- well, the thought has occurred to me that if the USA were a dog, it would have been kicked off the continent and maybe off the globe by now, and the world might be a better place for it.

Besides, people, get real: Do you think Ronald Reagan was running the country when he was president? How about Warren Harding? How about Dubya Bush, for that matter? Don't get too bent out of shape about the personalities. They're just the sparkles on the water. Pay more attention to the river.

When I contemplate John McCain and Sarah Palin, I can't for one minute seriously entertain the possibility that the former invited the latter to be his running mate because he admires her record or her smarts, or even her looks. McCain invited Palin to be his running mate because his handlers and their pollsters thought Palin had the right demographic appeal. She'll grab the right-wing women. She'll make the left-wingers make fools of themselves. (Ain't hard, let me tell you.) Is this any way to run a country? Are we really that stupid?

That's the important thing. We're being played for suckers. And people who are treated like dimwits long enough tend to start acting like, well, dimwits.

Stop salivating about Sarah Palin. If we stop acting like experimental rats, maybe the experimenters will find something better to do with their time.

 

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