This has to be the funniest thing I've read in days - a screamingly hilarious attempt to slam Sarah Palin for just about everything but eating hot dogs with ketchup instead of mustard.
"As I interviewed residents it began sounding as if living in Alaska controlled by the state Republican Party is like living in the old Soviet Union: See nothing that’s happening, say nothing offensive, and the political commissars leave you alone. But speak out and you get disappeared into a gulag north of the Arctic Circle for who-knows-how-long."
I swear it's like discussing politics with Lambchop.
HT Ann Althouse
Actually, one of the funniest things about this article - although funny in a macabre way - is that it comes from a "progressive" publication. These are the kinds of people who for years viewed the Soviet Union with fuzzy warm affection (and many still do). For them to be using the USSR as an analogy for repression and fear now, when it suits their purposes to do so, is stomach-turning to say the least.
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3 comments:
How do residents feel this way and still give her an 80% approval rating?
Regardless of whether she actually said the racial slurs, etc that the article accuses her of, her policies certainly indicate that she is an incredibly rightwing conservative...in itself scary to those of us who value social justice, social programs for those less fortunate, and feminism.
I find her personality (from the RNC) to be overconfident to the point of arrogant and sarcastic the point of rude...that combined with her politics makes me shudder to think she might be VP.
I'm not sure I agree that her policies are all that right-wing. I think we need to wait to see what she has to say in interviews and debates to really flesh out her positions on the issues at all. I don't think we know much more about what she'd do as VP than we knew about Obama 18 months ago. Then again, unlike Obama, she's running for VP, so it's really McCain's positions and plans that voters need to scrutinize much more so than Palin's.
To pick on a "right wing" issue she has made a statement on, I actually like the fact that she is personally pro-life. Whether that has any impact in the real political world remains to be seen. Republicans talk out against Roe v. Wade an awful lot but haven't done too much to stem the tide of abortions performed. Nor do I think they'd be ready to do what's right in the event they ever did get the lucky chance of getting rid of it - and by that I mean put their lives where their mouths are and personally take on the cause of the thousands of unwanted children that would result.
Having been given up for adoption by a college student who could have easily procured an abortion, I'm pro-life by default. And it's attractive to me that on that issue Sarah Palin practices what she preaches.
Otherwise, I think she is a feminist, in that she's a woman who has a career and a family at the same time and doesn't seem to think there's anything strange about that. That's where feminism started out, and to my mind where it does best. It's women like my mother in law who were one of six women in her B-school class in the 50's (and graduated 1st, mind you), who wanted to work and have children and be treated as equals. I don't see a ton of difference between her and Palin, to be honest. If feminists have to hold a certain set of political views to be counted, then you're taking away something from almost 1/2 of the women in the US; I don't think it should work that way.
As for her being sarcastic and overconfident, I did think there were times in her speech when she did step over "the line" but I'm not so certain I put that "line" there in my head because she's a woman or because I just don't like the attack part of politics. The VP candidate gets to be the attack dog on of the campaign; I think she'll enjoy that role. It's not something I enjoy, but I also don't want to discount the importance of it, or say that both parties don't engage in it. People loved to use the word "stident" when talking about Hillary Clinton; I have never really liked her, but I always thought that was unfair and wouldn't have been said if she was a man.
I'm very interested in seeing how this race plays out now that Palin is on the ticket. She definitely changes the dynamic of the race, and that makes the "silly season" just that much more interesting.
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