My Rant Against Sarah Palin

I'm, like, unhealthily obsessed with Sarah Palin right now.

I keep scanning feeds hoping to find breaking news along the lines of "Palin found to be doing something incredibly illegal; VP candidacy dropped."

There's something heartbreakingly, mindbreakingly wrong about the way in which she is being embraced by her party. Forget her family drama; forget the gun-toting and the abstinence-teaching; forget the fact that we saw Levi, last night, smacking a big wad of gum as he joined his new family on the Xcel Energy Center stage.

She's unqualified. She's so unqualified.

And we live in a country where her claim that she can be Vice President because she was a mayor and a hockey mom is embraced.

What's difficult is that it's a variation on the same narrative that Obama fans love to love about Obama: a person rising out of obscurity, against all odds, shattering barriers at every step.

So I can understand why Palin fans love the same story.

But she's so unqualified.

She admits she knows nothing about the world outside America and has, in fact, left the country only once in her life.

And sure, she's down-home, just like us, drives a minivan, doesn't stand on ceremony. Future son-in-law chewing gum on the national stage? No big deal, we're all friends here.

(Side rant: that one thing -- that stupid little wad of gum -- strikes fear into my heart. It speaks to a lack of attention to detail and nuance. No one; not Sarah, who, to be fair, probably didn't know about it beforehand, not Todd, not Bristol, not even the assistant stage manager standing in the wings with the family before they went onstage; no one told Levi to get rid of the gum.

Which means they didn't notice, which is bad, or they didn't care, which is worse.)

And she's so unqualified.

Even if she hadn't lied about her policies and past decisions, even if she hadn't exploited her daughter to cover her ass, even if she hadn't delivered a nasty speech insulting her opponent... even if she were kind and sophisticated and intelligent... she's completely unqualified.

She's never been part of the world; only part of America. And that is not what we need in a Vice President right now.

I Should Really Tell Consumerist.Com About This

So about a week ago I got a notice from the Illinois Tollway saying I had three unpaid toll violations.

They were kind enough to provide me with a blurry picture of something that might have been my car but might also have been anyone else's car, and the dates and times I illegally blazed through the tolls.

Thanks to my blogging, I had a pretty accurate record of where I was on each date in question. On one of the dates, I had in fact been visiting a friend in Chicago; but on the other two, I wasn't even in the same state.

So I called up the good people at the Illinois Tollway, since the bottom of the notice said that I had the right to request high-quality images of the violations in question.

My CSR told me that she would be happy to mail me the high-res images, but that it would cost $1 per image -- a fact which my notice conveniently left out.

And then she said something surprising. "Um... I think there must have been a mistake. I'm looking at these images right now, and they're of three different cars."

Really.

We finally agreed that one of the three cars was mine (she described it to me over the phone) and the other two were most certainly not. I also found out (because I didn't remember not paying a toll on that particular trip) that sometimes drivers who do pay tolls still get recorded as violations "if they don't stop their car long enough at the toll stand."

At that point there was no real way of proving whether I did or didn't pay a toll in Chicago on that particular day, so I paid the fine for the single incident and the other two, as they were clearly not my car, got dismissed.

But... seriously? Three different cars? And I had to pay to see the images that proved they weren't my car? And you can get charged a violation if you don't stop the car long enough as you throw your quarters and dimes down the chute? What kind of an operation is the Illinois Tollway running?

And how many people just pay up, without doing any fact-checking?

My Worst Nightmare?

Last night I dreamed that Sarah Palin became president....

and John McCain was in a permanent vegetative state, hooked up to eternal life support in Puerto Rico, having already changed the Constitution in several key places with an added amendment that no one could change the Constitution back as long as he was alive, which, thanks to modern technology, could be for thousands of years...

(The real question: Why Puerto Rico? My dream's explanation was that since McCain wasn't physically in the lower 48, he could therefore control the entire country "from afar.")

It's Not (Necessarily) About Class

One of the reasons the whole Bristol Palin thing made me so uncomfortable was because it brought up my latent fears of being "classist."

Because, as I noted in this post, it isn't actually the pregnancy that makes me cringe. Pregnancy is a biological imperative. It happens, and people choose to deal with it in different ways.

And, as Obama reminded us, his mother was only eighteen when he was born.

But there seems to be a difference between Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr., and Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston, and that's where my classist sensibilities spring up.

Or, as I said shamefacedly to a friend, "It's not about the pregnancy. It's because the whole family's... trashy."

Which means low-class, which means I am an evil elitist.

But my friend countered by saying it wasn't really about class. It was about the Palin family's deliberate presentation of the anti-intellectual spirit. It's about the Palin parents' choice to create a home where viewpoints were not explored and multiple perspectives were not considered. It's also about a family's choice to take pride in their ignorance -- not only of Alaska's proximity to Russia or what a Vice President does all day, but of all those trixty little things that used to be considered "manners" and which have something to do with not posting "I'm a f**king redneck" on one's MySpace page and not exploiting one's daughter to take the heat off of oneself.

Like the NYT says, tonight Sarah Palin is going to "take aim at the Washington elite."

Oh, but there she is... so I had better stop blogging and watch the speech.

Talking Points

Because we were talking about politics at work...

I realized that no, I don't exactly know what the Republicans' policies are, not beyond the vague talking points, nor do I really understand how they hope to implement them over the next four years.

And then I realized that it didn't matter.

The Republicans, as a group, could have the best ideas and policies in the world. The Republican Party could know how to make gold out of iron and then distribute the gold over magical rainbows to the entire world.

But it doesn't matter because they pick, as their figureheads, people who think that Iraq is next to Pakistan and Alaska is next to Russia.

And then: why do they do that????? Yes, I know that they want to represent their candidates as "ordinary," non-arugula-eating Americans. But isn't there a single Republican candidate out there -- isn't there even someone who comes across as "down-home" and "ordinary" who can also use persuasive, accurate rhetoric?

The whole thing makes me want to slam my head into a wall.

Everyone In America Should Watch Howards End Right About Now

This is the scene (actually, the passage of the book) that has been running through my mind since the Sarah/Bristol Palin story broke.

(If you don't want to watch the four minutes: Anthony Hopkins' character, early in his life, fathered a child with his [unmarried] mistress. Now Emma Thompson's character accuses him of being a hypocrite because he is condemning Helena Bonham Carter's character for being unmarried and pregnant.)

That's half of it.

But there's another half, too. The "I'm a f**king redneck" half. The sort of squalid glee with which the "see, Bristol couldn't have been pregnant... because she already was pregnant!" announcement was made.

Sigh.

In the Howards End world, characters hinge on honesty and intelligence (and connection -- but I'll leave Forster's epigraph for another discussion). Jacky Bast is not condemned because of her status as Henry Wilcox's mistress; she is condemned for her lack of intelligence and her choice to remain ignorant (and flaunt it, like our "f**king redneck" friend). Likewise: the scene in the clip above isn't about pregnancy or marriage, not really; it's about honesty.

And there seems to be a great lack of honesty -- and intelligence -- in this situation.

Buried Child: Political Quote Of The Day

From Mark Murray and Reuters:

The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

So... Palin says "See! I have proof that Trig isn't the secret lovechild of my teenage daughter, because seventeen-year-old Bristol was already pregnant when Trig was born! Nyah nyah, liberal bloggers!"

That is at least eleven levels of saddening.