Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The South has Risen Again


This time it’s Alaska.

Forget comparisons to Harriet Miers or Dan Quayle. Having been governor in one of our two biggest states, and with her connections to evangelicals and oil companies, Sarah Palin is really just another George W. Bush.

. . . with a few contradictions. Community organizing, something which Bush might have supported as Faith Based Initiatives, is now out. We’re not having any more of that grassroots foolishness. And teenage pregnancy is in. It makes for a beautiful family, as McCain said. Forget whatever message this may send to other teenage girls and boys (“Bristol did it and the Republican presidential nominee (perhaps president someday) is cool with it . . .so maybe I can do it too”). Forget what kind of marriage an 18 year old boy and 17 year old girl will actually have, under pressure from the U.S. government to look all nice and white and religious. We’re all sinners. What’s important is that they get married.

Still, many have asked, if experience is really so important as McCain has said it is, then why did he choose someone who would Palin comparison?

I think the GOP remained undecided between several VP candidate possibilities until the last minute, at which point they said "Aw hell, let’s go with the cute one who’s all about religion, guns, and oil." As Svetx says, while McCain is for the Republicans who have turned against Bush and want to change to different Republicans, Palin's purpose is to appeal to the ones who do want to keep Bush's likeness in the White House.

And in the last-minute rush to make their decision, I think McCain's people accidentally overlooked that underage sex/teenage pregnancy aspect of Palin's family. It’s like their showing the image of the Walter Reed Middle School when they meant to be showing Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Someone was rushing to put things together and they didn't pay close enough attention.

Regardless of that, I fear it will work. Bush got elected for a second time. People just aren't inquisitive enough to doubt his abilities, and I think the same goes for Palin. If any of us want to inquire, Palin and company will just accuse us of being elite. How dare we question the war? According to them, America has the inherent quality of being victorious; therefore we are victorious in this war. We are just supposed to believe.

Republicans are so undiscerning they don't even know when they've started to look like a liberal. They talk about Palin's good looks, but clearly this one-time beauty queen has now acquired the geek-chick look of Tina Fey, one of the leaders in Satan's army of late-night liberal humorists -- but with Pentecostal hair. They adopt the song Barracuda written and performed by one-time purveyors of sexualized imagery on MTV. And two of her children share names with prime-time practitioners of pagan witchcraft.

It used to be that only liberals gave their children names from nature or paganism, eschewing the more Judeo-Christian Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Mary, etc. I know some fantastic people named River, Lake, Zephyr, and Lorien, the last stemming from the forest in Lord of the Rings. And then there's me of course, Elrond.

But such names, bestowed upon liberals, are like Birkenstocks or hybrid cars. We wear them well, and we usually don't take ourselves too seriously. But here comes Palin talking about how her oldest, "Track," is going into The Army. And we're like, wow, that's cool, he's theoretically going to defend our country and, also, more politicians need children in the military. But at the same time, we're like . . . Track? This was something Rangers did in Dungeons and Dragons. The Army has Rangers. Is he going to be an Army Ranger?

Seriously, did they find this name floating in a bowl of alphabet soup? Or could he be named in honor of a series of moose hoofprints in the mud -- or, the act of following such prints? I guess he was conceived on a hunting trip. That's a safe bet. That trip earned them not only a dead head for the living room wall but also a new living mouth to feed.

Then came Bristol after, I presume, Bristol Bay. Why not Prudhoe? I'm from Virginia. I could have been Chesapeake. I once had some rich newlywed neighbors who named their dog Cayman.

Then Willow. Born in 1998, after Buffy had been on TV for a year, she might have been named after Buffy's witch-friend. Is it okay now, Fox News, to be a fan of this show that celebrates paganism?

Piper? She, too, was born after her sorcerous namesake had appeared on TV. Piping is what you do when you're hot, and piping up is good . . . except, in this family, when it's to protest dumb policy. In the face of that, just smile and hold that newborn prominently.

With Palin's incurious approach to energy policy, wouldn't children's names like Clear, Drill, and Pump have been more appropriate?

"All their names are retarded," Housemate D said to me the other day. "Yeah," I said, "Except for the retard. He's named for a branch of mathematics." Was he conceived during a romantic analysis of a simple harmonic oscillation? A derivation of Euler's equation? Maybe Palin liked it since "Euler" is pronounced "oiler." And young Trig could grow up to be a politician like his mother and sign and co-sign new bills. It's the circle of life.

Do you suppose Palin took trigonometry? If one has taken trigonometry, then how can one name one's child Trig? What about Calc? Certainly not Algebra, that's a word based in Arabic.

Or is it short for Trigger? That which you pull when you're bringing down a moose or self-determinism to a distant country. Or the Lone Ranger's horse.

Never mind. This is not a time for inquisitiveness. On the heels of Cowboy Diplomacy comes Taxidermy Policy -- kill first, then contemplate your subject after it's been mounted on your wall. It's like naming housing developments after the thing that used to be there -- "Deer Hollow" for instance. Or putting the American Indians on reservations and naming professional sports teams after them. And of course, democracy can't be given to a nation without a good rousing shock and awe campaign to demonstrate who's the boss.

Watch out for brown paneled walls to adorn the vice presidential suite too.

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