LJWorld.com / VP Palin? Be careful what you wish for

Archive for Friday, September 5, 2008

By Ellen Goodman

September 5, 2008

Boston — You gotta love this campaign. No sooner does the curtain come crashing down on one climactic moment than up it goes on another. The Democrats choose NoDrama Obama and the channel switches to Soap Opera McCain. You want change? I'll show you change: Introducing Sarah Palin, a running mate as unfamiliar as the tundra.

Talk about rolling the dice. The idea was to connect to the Hillary supporters. These women, dismayed by the idea that the experienced female was passed over for a fresh male face, were supposed to be won over by a patently inexperienced female fresh face. Never mind that this feisty working mom leans - no, falls - right on social issues. You go, Clara Thomas. Oops, I mean you go girl.

The Straight Talk Express twisted itself into a pretzel trying to defend her qualifications to be commander in chief. More to the point, the mother of five had a personal story meant to capture the imagination of the American people, whose minds were beginning to wander ominously to such non-entertaining narratives as the Iraq War and the economy.

Not that I don't find the Sarah Palin story engaging. Mom to mayor to governor to veep nominee? There's one woman who didn't have trouble raising her hand in class. There's one woman who didn't think she had to be twice as good as a man to run. Be careful what you wish for.

I shifted into high dudgeon over the Sexism in the Media, Part II, the blogcreeps and cablescum sneering at her beauty queen bio and her working mom credentials. Then along came the news that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol was pregnant. Immediately, the "family values" folks who have fashioned a political wedge out of moral judgments began insisting that anyone who remarked on this baby bump was an insensitive invader of privacy.

What did James Dobson of Focus on the Family say? This teen pregnancy showed that "she and her family are human." Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council praised Bristol for "choosing life in the midst of a difficult situation." A spokeswoman for the Campaign for Family Values called the Palins "an American family out there living out their values."

Meanwhile Obama himself, the son of an 18-year-old mother, said strongly that "People's families are off limits and people's children are especially off limits." Well, OK. But let's not forget that it's the right wing that made social issues into a political issue. The right wing decided that pregnancy was not a matter of private decision-making but a harsh and unrelenting political battle.

Sarah Palin had her youngest child after a prenatal test showed he had Down syndrome. But she doesn't believe that other women should be allowed to make their own choice. The Palin's daughter got the "news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned." But her mother opposes sex education programs that go beyond abstinence only.

McCain, an unrelenting opponent of abortion, was once asked whether the government should provide contraception and replied, "You've stumped me." The Republican platform is not similarly stumped with its implacable opposition to every abortion and it's renewed "call for replacing 'family planning' programs for teens with increased funding for abstinence education, which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and expected standard of behavior."

Pregnancy is indeed private. Decisions are to be discussed and determined in a family. But the Republican Party would put decisions about pregnancy in the hands of the government and replace sex information with disinformation. No, you don't have to pass judgment on a 17-year-old to pass judgment on these unrelenting policymakers.

As for the candidate as mother, is it beyond the pale to wonder whether Sarah Palin and her husband should have thought first of shielding their pregnant daughter from a media lens that they know will focus on the baby bump and a marriage that will take place during a national campaign? Has the candidate who mocked Obama for his celebrity status, comparing him to Paris Hilton, created the newest Jamie Lynn Spears?

I remember way back when the late Elizabeth Janeway, a doyenne of the women's movement, imagined the first woman president. She would be a vice president picked for "balance" and elevated by fate to the Oval Office. More to the point, Janeway fantasized archly and knowingly, she would be a conservative Republican who believes in the status quo.

Sarah Palin? So far, she looks like a Bridge to Nowhere.

- Ellen Goodman is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.

Discussion

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5 September 2008
at 3:45 a.m.

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TheSychophant (Anonymous) says…

I do not condemn Sarah Palin for:

1) Becoming pregnant at a late age, and not aborting a known Downs Syndrome fetus. That is her right as an American.

2) Continuing her job as Governor, and/or Running for Vice President. Her children appear to have been adequately cared for since infancy. Like many working Americans woman, she has successfully relied upon the help of a spouse, older children, friends, neighbors, other family members, and sitters. Nothing wrong or usual about that.

3) Raising her children with a religious philosophy that condemns abortion, anything but abstinence only sex education, an abhorrence to birth control, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. That is her Constitutional Right as an American.

4) That her 17 year old child is unmarried, pregnant, and intends to give birth and raise the child. It happens to over a million teenage American girls each and every year, and while not the best of all possible worlds, it is the usual and understandable result of human sexual instinct.

However, and because we live in the great Constitutional Democracy known as American, I do condemn her for attempting to force her personal religious beliefs, and her narrowly construed philosophy regarding sex education, birth control, marriage, abortion, et al. upon the rest of us. While personal religious beliefs and family life should be “off limits” in the American political arena, when one specifically chooses those things as a “plank” of a political campaign, and wears them on a sleeve, the proverbial “barn door” has been irreversibly opened, and is subject to fair comment. .

Yes, Sarah, like the majority of Americans women, you are the proud mother of a typical, and beautiful family. Everything else about your family is irrelevant, immaterial, and off limits… but nonetheless frightening in that, if you were king, all American's would be legally obligated to “Be like Sarah.”

No thanks. Go away, and leave the rest of us be. We have Constitutional rights, too.
5 September 2008
at 8:49 a.m.

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Confrontation (Anonymous) says…

Great post, TheSychophant.
5 September 2008
at 10:54 a.m.

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beobachter (Anonymous) says…

Kevin, questions.
What is an “unattrative liberal owman”?
Who is “Horseface Goodman'?
What forum poster has a mail order bride?
What forum poster has been known to drive by homes of his critics?
Might try refuting article instead of apparent personal attacks on writer. At least she has the skills to make a living with writing? Can you say the same? Didn't think so.
5 September 2008
at 10:57 a.m.

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Easy_Does_It (Anonymous) says…

“Sarah Palin had her youngest child after a prenatal test showed he had Down syndrome. But she doesn't believe that other women should be allowed to make their own choice.” - What is the choice? If you have a child that is not perfect you have the choice to kill it? Other choices might be, if they need braces, have freckles, or will just not be as cute as you want. For example in China if that baby is not going to be a boy, you might as well trash it.

You speak of Kings, what about those who want to decide who lives and who dies, in particular if it will be not exactly what you had planned for?
5 September 2008
at 12:32 p.m.

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invictus (Anonymous) says…

Palin is my queen. I swear allegiance to her.
5 September 2008
at 5:18 p.m.

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dandelion (Anonymous) says…

Well invictus, we can tell from your past posts that you aren't for representative government and hate our constitution. A monarchy by divine right or a religious dictatorship is what you righties have always wanted. Then we would be forced into a holy war. Ready to be drafted. You'd suddenly become a pacifist if your a@@ was on the line. Why don't buy and island and have your own little pentacostal dictatorship, and take Palin with you. It's funny that you so called morally superior righties are having wet dreams about her, a married woman. Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e-s?
5 September 2008
at 5:59 p.m.

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BABBOY (Anonymous) says…

Yawn. This is going to get flipping old real flipping fast.

I will comment that she has got the hot for teacher thing going on.

Can you just see McCain talking to her. So Sarah, you want to be president, some day, isn't that cute!!!

If McCain does get elected, pray he lives out his full term.

Who would have thought McCain (a military man) would sell out the country to get PUMA votes to nominate this moron.

The only good thing I thing about this lady is that she probably looks pretty good naked. Other then that huge positive, she is identical to George Bush.

I am thinking of that old Van Halen song right about now……..
5 September 2008
at 7:36 p.m.

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JHOK32 (Anonymous) says…

Let's see…..Big Oil + Alaska oil = more record high big oil profits! Simple math. Better get ready to dig even deeper at the gas pumps!
5 September 2008
at 7:55 p.m.

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coltrane (Anonymous) says…

here here
great post syncho #1 !
5 September 2008
at 8:17 p.m.

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snap_pop_no_crackle (Anonymous) says…

Of course the major oil lobbyist in a high position in the O'dude's campaign is pure of heart. Isn't he?