It Ain't No Use to Sit and Wonder Why

Having neglected the Govacuda last night, I am feeling some compulsion to compensate here, especially in anticipation of tomorrow's "debate." However, not being possessed of a truly cast-iron digestive tract, I will start with something a little easier to take (buttermilk before a binge, sort of), and may even take the liberty of planting something lighter along the way. But just so you know, I'm saving the best for last!

Being a bit Gaye-transfixed while posting, I was briefly enamored of "Let's Get It On" for title here with innocent On With The Show implications. But with more intimate implications of MG's song-in-my-ear threatening to produce gag-reflex in light of blog theme, A Change Is Going To Come.

Jon and Stephen apparently have been having fun in front of the camera. Digby is on it like a bee on honey:

Dear God, I love these guys:



In the midst of re-creating the controversial New Yorker cover illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama for the cover photo that graces this week's print edition of Entertainment Weekly, Jon Stewart stops briefly to pose a taste question. As he stands by the catering table in ''secret Muslim'' garb, he ponders, ''Would it be weird to be dressed like this and have a bagel, salmon, and a schmear?'' Pseudo-blowhard Stephen Colbert has his own worries. Striking his best Michelle-as-Black-Panther pose, he glances at the original cartoon and realizes that he's ''hippier'' than the potential First Lady. Gesturing at his own waist, he moans, ''I could drop a baby like a peasant.''

[...]

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you think anything will change if the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress?

JON STEWART: Look at what they promised when they took over Congress. I've never heard such hardcore rhetoric. ''The era of the blank check is over! And we will send a sternly worded memorandum — nonbinding — to somebody at the White House. Not necessarily the inner executive circle, we certainly don't want to offend, but...'' And then they got in and were like, ''Really, you want to eavesdrop? Okay, we'll let this one go. But this is the last blank check! Unless you want another. But let me say this: The next one will not be blank, because we'll just write in the memo line. Can we write in memo? Would you be bothered by that?''

STEPHEN COLBERT: One of the things I love about my character is I can make vast declarations and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I love being wrong. So my character can tell you exactly what's going to happen: The Democrats are going to change everything. We're going to have gay parents marrying their own gay babies. Obama's gonna be sworn in on a gay baby. The oath is gonna end ''So help me, gay baby.''

STEWART: Then they'll head right over to the abortion mixer. There'll be a dance, and then there'll be a little tent set up outside, just in case anybody wants an RU-486.


I've honestly been wondering lately how I ever got along without them. They are truly instrumental in keeping me sane.


I believe I know of what she speaks!


Josh Marshall at TPM noted a while back the increasing squeaking of wrung hands on the far right over their vp candidate:

From Politico ...

A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin's uneven -- and sometimes downright awkward -- performances in her limited media appearances.

Conservative columnists Kathleen Parker, a former Palin supporter, says the vice presidential nominee should step aside. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing on the conservative National Review, says "that's not a crazy suggestion" and that "something's gotta change."

Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin's recent CBS appearance isn't disqualifying but is certainly alarming. "You can't continue to have interviews like that and not take on water."

And Blue Texan takes note at Firedoglake of the apparent conclusion that Palin is so high-risk that she can't even be trotted out to do the traditional post-debate ankle-biting.

The polls and the CW are coalescing around a solid win for Obama last night. But one thing that shouldn't go overlooked is that after Obama's steady performance, Biden was all over the talking heads shows after the debate, stomping on McSame's head.

I especially like this clip because he specifically mocks McSame's lame claim that Obama didn't know the difference between strategy and tactics.

And this begs the question -- where the hell was Palin?

The total mismatch between the veeps continues to drag the McSame campaign down. Biden was able to get his tasty shots in while the pie was still cooling, while Palin was sequestered somewhere as far away from a TV camera as physically possible.

If the McSame campaign doesn't even trust Palin to spin for the top of the ticket after a debate -- about as easy an assignment imaginable -- what does that say about what they think of her?

And then we have Cynthia Boaz posting at Truthout with a truly upsetting post that points out a disturbing case of life-mimicking-art in connection with Palin with the title "Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin." Although I have not read Handmaid's Tale, I have read enough other Atwood (Assassin, Oryx) to be confident she can do dark futurism with the best of them. Boaz sees Palin as somewhat of a protype of the "Aunts" in Handmaid, sinister figures with the assignment of keeping the childbearing Handmaids subservient and submissive on behalf of the uber-dominant males. Sounds like David Lynch doing a guest spot directing Big Love - or just a normal Cheney clan reunion (hopefully without the guns). But here we are, suddenly thanks to McEgomaniac's willingness to sacrifice all for personal power living la vida dystopia:



If you've ever read Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," you will recall the key role that was played by the women assigned to be the "Aunts." The story revolves around a futuristic American society in which fundamentalist Christians install a gender-based caste system where each woman is assigned a specific societal function. It is a commentary on the dangerous erasing of the line between church and state in the contemporary United States. The merging of religion and government is carried out by a group of older, white male "commanders" whose propaganda demands that citizens be constantly terrorized into submission and obedience. The resulting regime is Atwood's vision of the worst-case scenario: an American police-state theocracy where every woman's identity is reduced to her sexual attributes, and each is assigned to a category based on her physical qualifications. Subtle references to racist philosophy are mixed into the literalist religious rhetoric.


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Joan Walsh at Salon has been tracking the Palin "interviews" more closely than I. Frankly, when I have watched in real time, I find it sort of in the Spike Jones/Three Stooges/Jerry Lewis category, where the buffoonery (purposeful in the latter cases, a key distinction) is of such an intensity that it is tough to actually parse or recall what has been verbalized. And perhaps that was a successful gameplan in earlier times for the Gov, when recording devices were probably rarely present when she oped those rosy lips.


There can no longer be any doubt: Sarah Palin is absolutely, positively not qualified to be commander in chief, and she doesn't belong on the Republican ticket. I can't imagine her being ready for a 3 a.m. call on a national security emergency; I can't imagine her fielding one on an economic emergency, either – the possibility Paul Krugman convincingly framed Monday morning.

Her stunning ignorance about Israel, Iran and the Bush Doctrine in the Charlie Gibson interview almost three weeks ago was frightening, but the dim way she answered virtually every question Katie Couric asked last week was even more chilling. I singled out her delusional-sounding rant about "if Putin rears his head" over Alaska, but Jeffrey Goldberg pointed to something arguably more awful: her clueless answer to a Couric question about what happens when democracy doesn't yield results the U.S. likes, as in the case of Hamas in Gaza. Here's what she said:

"Yeah, well especially in that region, though, we have to protect those who do seek democracy and support those who seek protections for the people who live there. What we're seeing in the last couple of days here in New York is a president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who would come on our soil and express such disdain for one of our closest allies and friends, Israel ... and we're hearing the evil that he speaks and if hearing him doesn't allow Americans to commit more solidly to protecting the friends and allies that we need, especially there in the Mideast, then nothing will."

So we're going to protect Hamas? Don't tell our friends in Israel. Palin clearly had no idea what Couric was talking about. Ever since, she has continued to gaffe her way through the campaign: On Saturday she said she'd go after Osama bin Laden in Pakistan – even though that's against the McCain position, and McCain had to contradict her publicly. Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria says it best: All too often, when Palin opens her mouth, what comes out is "gibberish."

Rebecca Traister writes persuasively about a recent outbreak of misplaced Palin pity among liberals – the New York Times' Judith Warner, the Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, the New Republic's Christopher Orr have all expressed sympathy for the sinking VP nominee. I'm with Traister; I'm not feeling it. Palin "didn't blink" when McCain asked her to join the ticket, didn't think twice, because she's a supremely self-confident woman with a limited worldview, impressed with her own greatness and not terribly curious about anyone else. She reaps what she sows. I'm with conservative Kathleen Parker and Zakaria: I believe Palin would be a menace as commander in chief, and she's got to get off the GOP ticket.

I don't expect that to happen; McCain is too stubborn, and having been prevented by the Christian right from choosing a relative moderate like Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge, it's hard to imagine him bucking them now. McCain risked his entire reputation for integrity with his cynical choice of Palin, and he'll have to live with the consequences. One consequence is the loss of respect by many journalists who once admired him. As Zakaria puts it: "For John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true." But McCain's reputation isn't the worst casualty of the Palin choice; if he's elected, the consequences will be more dire for the rest of us.

UPDATE: I hadn't seen the latest Couric-Palin-McCain interview when I wrote this. What a disaster. Asked by Couric about the criticism from Republicans about whether she's "ready," a smily, lip-licking Palin cut her off: "Not only am I ready but I am willing and able," she exclaimed, and she went on to talk about her experience as Wasilla mayor and governor. She and McCain tag-teamed questions about her mistaken Pakistan answer, with McCain dismissing the whole situation, I think because she'd been at a pizza parlor? Really, it really made no sense. I don't even understand why McCain was there with her, like a cranky chaperone. It was just awful.

And don't trust a liberal on this one. On CNN Ed Rollins agreed: "It looks like a father taking care of the daughter…she had to go back there with Katie and prove to everybody she can handle it." Boy, Republicans have to be dreading the Thursday debate, huh?

Which brings me to this great post by Rebecca Traister, also at Salon, entitled "The Sarah Palin Pity Party." I have been known to be a bit of a softy, with heart commonly firmly on sleeve, but Traister nails my feelings. I will attempt to do some portion-control on your behalf, but strongly recommend you return to this buffet and indulge yourself. After all, we only get one VP debate!

Is this the week that Democrats and Republicans join hands -- to heap pity on poor Sarah Palin?

At the moment, all signs point to yes, as some strange bedfellows reveal that they have been feeling sorry for the vice-presidential candidate ever since she stopped speaking without the help of a teleprompter. Conservative women like Kathleen Parker and Kathryn Jean Lopez are shuddering with sympathy as they realize that the candidate who thrilled them, just weeks ago, is not in shape for the big game. They're not alone. The New Republic's Christopher Orr feels that Palin has been misused by the team that tapped her. In the New York Times, Judith Warner feels for Sarah, too! And over at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates empathizes with intelligence and nuance, making clear that he's not expressing pity. Salon's own Glenn Greenwald watched the Katie Couric interview and "actually felt sorry for Sarah Palin." Even Amy Poehler, impersonating Katie Couric on last week's "Saturday Night Live," makes the joke that Palin's cornered-animal ineptitude makes her "increasingly adorable."

I guess I'm one cold dame, because while Palin provokes many unpleasant emotions in me, I just can't seem to summon pity, affection or remorse.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just like all of the rest of you, part of the bipartisan jumble of viewers that keeps one hand poised above the mute button and the other over my eyes during Palin's disastrous interviews. Like everyone else, I can barely take the waves of embarrassment that come with watching someone do something so badly. Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem, Sofia Coppola acting in "The Godfather: Part III," Sarah Palin talking about Russia -- they all create the same level of eyeball-squinching discomfort.

My approach? Carefully overlook when the interviews are scheduled to be broadcast and read about the outcome later. Will not be able to justify that approach with debate, however.

But just because I'm human, just because I can feel, just because I did say this weekend that I "almost feel sorry for her" doesn't mean, when I consider the situation rationally, that I do. Yes, as a feminist, it sucks -- hard -- to watch a woman, no matter how much I hate her politics, unable to answer questions about her running mate during a television interview. And perhaps it's because this experience pains me so much that I feel not sympathy but biting anger. At her, at John McCain, at the misogynistic political mash that has been made of what was otherwise a groundbreaking year for women in presidential politics.

In her "Poor Sarah" column, Warner writes of the wave of "self-recognition and sympathy [that] washed over" her when she saw a photo of Palin talking to Henry Kissinger. Palin -- as "a woman fully aware that she was out of her league, scared out of her wits, hanging on for dear life" -- apparently reminded Warner of herself. Wow. Putting aside the massively depressing implication that Warner recognizes this attitude because she believes it to be somehow written into the female condition, let's consider that there are any number of women who could have been John McCain's running mate -- from Olympia Snowe to Christine Todd Whitman to Kay Bailey Hutchison to Elizabeth Dole to Condoleezza Rice -- who would not have provoked this reaction. Democrats might well have been repulsed and infuriated by these women's policy positions. But we would not have been sitting around worrying about how scared they looked.

In her piece, Warner diagnoses Palin with a case of "Impostor Syndrome," positing that admirers who watched her sitting across from world leaders at the U.N. last week were recognizing that "she can't possibly do it all -- the kids, the special-needs baby, the big job, the big conversations with foreign leaders. And neither could they." Seriously? Do we have to drag out a list of women who miraculously have found a way to manage to balance many of these factors -- Hillary Clinton? Nancy Pelosi? Michelle Bachelet? -- and could still explain the Bush Doctrine without breaking into hives? This is not breaking my heart. It is breaking my spirit.

Exactly.

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So here it is, finally. And as unpleasant as it may be to watch the humiliation of a woman who waltzed into a spotlight too strong to withstand, I flat out refuse to be manipulated into another stage of gendered regress -- back to the pre-Pelosi, pre-Hillary days when girls couldn't stand the heat and so were shooed back to the kitchen.

Sarah Palin is no wilting flower. She is a politician who took the national stage and sneered at the work of community activists. She boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge.

When you stage a train wreck of this magnitude -- trying to pass one underqualified chick off as another highly qualified chick with the lame hope that no one will notice -- well, then, I don't feel bad for you.

When you treat women as your toys, as gullible and insensate pawns in your Big Fat Presidential Bid -- or in Palin's case, in your Big Fat Chance to Be the First Woman Vice President Thanks to All the Cracks Hillary Put in the Ceiling -- I don't feel bad for you.

When you don't take your own career and reputation seriously enough to pause before striding onto a national stage and lying about your record of opposing a Bridge to Nowhere or using your special-needs child to garner the support of Americans in need of healthcare reform you don't support, I don't feel bad for you.

When you don't have enough regard for your country or its politics to cram effectively for the test -- a test that helps determine whether or not you get to run that country and participate in its politics -- I don't feel bad for you.

When your project is reliant on gaining the support of women whose reproductive rights you would limit, whose access to birth control and sex education you would curtail, whose healthcare options you would decrease, whose civil liberties you would take away and whose children and husbands and brothers (and sisters and daughters and friends) you would send to war in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and wherever else you saw fit without actually understanding international relations, I don't feel bad for you.

I don't want to be played by the girl-strings anymore. Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness. It's a disservice to minority populations of every stripe whose place in the political spectrum has been unfairly spotlighted as mere tokenism; it is a disservice to women throughout this country who have gone from watching a woman who -- love her or hate her -- was able to show us what female leadership could look like to squirming in front of their televisions as they watch the woman sent to replace her struggle to string a complete sentence together.

In fact, the only people I feel sorry for are Americans who invested in a hopeful, progressive vision of female leadership, but who are now stuck watching, verbatim, a "Saturday Night Live" skit.

Palin is tough as nails. She will bite the head off a moose and move on. So, no, I don't feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for women who have to live with what she and her running mate have wrought.