watching
sarah palin recite her speech tonight at the RNC in st. paul was fairly excruciating, but i'm all in favor of "know thy enemy." so i watched. a bunch of really good speech-writers have clearly been awake for the last 6 days - which is when we first heard of this person, because mccain couldn't decide on a vp until 3 days prior to the convention... more comforting judgment skills there - writing this stunningly mobilizing, red meat-throwing, really
mean speech for her to recite. and palin is an incredibly charismatic and well-spoken mouthpiece for the efficient, vicious soundbytes that were contained in that speech... and i'm sure will be in many to come.
of course she's well spoken. i mean, she was ms. alaska after all. her voice is kind of annoying though. some kind of michigan/wisconsin accent but minus the cuteness and plus the smarminess.
in any case, the speech that was written for this former beauty queen to recite (and she gets an A!) was essentially a stream of patent lies and vicious insults. her tone during her recital was sarcastic, smarmy, snide, condescending, nasty. the words though, spouting out of the sweetly smiling mouth of a pretty, "spunky" woman with "moxie," seemed to lose their sarcasm and meanness as they flowed out over the audience of adoring delegates, who transformed them, somehow, into hope and joy, as they responded to this woman who they have been praying will be "the one." and tonight, she seemed to answer their prayers.
they want their obama too, after all. they don't want to miss
all the fun this year. and now they get to have a "historic" candidate too, just like the democrats. how proud they must feel!
the delegates weren't very excited before. bad year to be a republican. hurricane on the first day bringing back ghosts of katrina. bush, first sitting president not to attend the convention of his own party since 1972... most unpopular president in half a century. the republican delegates were lackluster. they had no focus. they were confused.
until this woman appeared, as if from heaven, and showed them the light.
oh and by the way, she wasn't being vicious, or mean, no, she was just being a strong woman, and how dare the damn democrats say she shouldn't be strong just because she's a woman? those dems, always fighting against feminism and women's rights... when
will they learn?
feminism, used against us by the patriarchal enemies. oh goddess, deliver us!
i think we know why mccain picked her now. she's exactly what they needed, someone to be the nasty republican attack dog while maintaining their grace and charm, without looking like cheney, or rove, or bush. she's damn good at it, that evil bitch.
the other factor is mccain's decision has got to be that poor down's syndrome baby. after palin's recital, when the family and then mccain come out to stand with her, she grabs that baby and hold him right next to her face, so he's in all the camera shots.
it's a perfect pity party... retarded baby and pow veteran who's lost all his teeth and can't raise his arms above his shoulders. if the dems pulled this, the republicans would be calling pity party.
it's disturbing to me the way she seems to throw her children into the ring without a care, using them as political tools. the republicans can threaten the media all they like but
palin released the statement about her daughter's pregnancy, and i fervently hope the media will not back down on this, now that they're actually doing their jobs.
the most oxymoronic, hypocritical moment of perhaps the entire convention (competing with her derogatory rant about how obama is the celebrity candidate - when that's exactly what
she has become) was when, amongst a stream of nasty insults to obama's character, morality and experience, palin sarcastically accused obama of being "afraid someone won't read them their rights," referring to the evil arab terrorists in guantanamo i guess.
the dirty arabs shouldn't have
rights, this much is clear. come on, they bombed, well, there was 911... remember? i know it's been 7 years but we can still manipulate it to our advantage - we're
really good at doing it!
so let me just reiterate the obvious here: the entire republican national convention has been centered for days around john mccain's heroism in surviving
torture in a vietnamese pow prison camp.
i completely agree that mccain is an amazing person for having survived that, and is to be honored and respected for his service, perhaps particularly for choosing not to be released before other prisoners who had been there longer, a display of great honor.
*as an aside, i'm not sure that's the kind of decision making process that we would want in a leader... someone who would just stay (and keep every single american with him) in a terrible situation, for honor and only honor, denying any other complexities of the situation in favor of the one track he is doggedly set on, not to be deterred. this kind of stubbornness (which the republicans like to couch as being a "maverick") is actually reminiscent of a certain president we know. change? doesn't sound like it.in any case, this whole week has been a grand ol' "mccain is a hero, he choose to be tortured for us, just like jeebus did" party. and the message about torture has been, pretty consistently, that it is generally a
bad thing.
but palin, and i couldn't believe the words were actually coming out of her mouth; it was the closest i've come to breaking the tv set - used as an
attack the fact that obama wants prisoners to be mirandized, offering this to her audience as proof that he is clearly the biggest pussy who has ever walked the face of the earth.
that she says this is bad enough. that the line gets a
standing ovation is far more disturbing. her statements leading up to that one got good applause, but the "read them their rights" line gets the crowd on their feet, hungry for blood.
"Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.
"Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.
"Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?'
(cheers and standing ovation)
why does
that get the biggest response? the only rational explanation i can think of is that torturing arab prisoners is somehow revenge for vietnam... how else could such an anti-torture convention cheer for the idea of people being held without being mirandized? i mean besides the fact that they only really care of
white people are being tortured.
does she, do they, think that no one should have fought for john mccain and his fellow pows to be treated according to international human rights law when they were staying at the hanoi hilton? or is it like, well, mccain had to go through it, so these bastards do too?
someone, somewhere in the party must realize this glaring hypocrisy. right?
watch the video/read the transcript of palin's recital
here. if you think you can stand it.
