’08/12 Election

Palin is a distraction

'08/12 Election, Democratic (in)action, US politics, Wingnuts
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John Scalzi gets a bit annoyed at the handwringing in liberal circles after Sarah Palin’s convention speech:

No, seriously: What the fuck is wrong with you? The GOP picks a woman VP 24 years after you do, for the same goddamn reason you did (a contentless call to shore up a shrinking base), and you act like you’ve never seen this movie before? I just don’t know what to say to you about that. Also: squirting yourself messy over a vice presidential candidate. Good fucking gravy, how off the fucking script can you possibly get. For God’s sake, she’s scandal-plagued Atwater spawn from a state with the population of Fort Worth, Texas, whose job it will be to work the lights of the Naval Observatory for four years. She’s a walking, taking advertisement for how easily placated religious conservatives are at this moment in history. She doesn’t walk on water, unless it’s frozen and the moose she’s hunting has wandered out on it. So will you please focus.

What’s more, she’s a distraction. What is Bush doing now everybody is captivated by the Palin McSame show?

Frog-Boiling Their Way To Victory

'08/12 Election, Activism, Democratic (in)action, Manufacturing consent, Media, US politics
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Arrgh, the Palin, it just goes on and on. Just when you think there couldn’t be anything worse…

The latest? Charging rape victims for the rape testing kits used in investigating the crime.

RNC operatives are adamant they thoroughly and comprehensively vetted this candidate and that they know all the skeletons in her closet. If that’s true (though Republicans and McCain aren’t known for their veracity) it leads one to the inescapable conclusion that revelations already known to the McCain press team are being deliberately drip-fed to the blogosphere to keep them distracted and to wear the public capacity for shock down. It’s war by attrition. Each new story lowers the bar; a pregnant teen daughter? Ho hum. So last week. Lies? Stale news. Racism? So what? Eventually they’ll expose Palin as a kitten-torturing suicide bomber and by that point the media response will be a shrug and articles on Obama’s kids’ hair.

Whilst I love all this stuff and I share emptywheel of Firedoglake’s outrage at the latest story –

Count me in among those who think that this is easily the single most disgusting thing I have seen since the 1600 Crew allowed Abu Gonzales to run the Justice Department. The village idiot of Wasilla could run up debts in excess of $20 million dollars during her tenure, but providing law enforcement (a government service) on a pay-as-you-go basis under the guise of “protect and serve” for women who have been raped hits a new low even among republicans who are law-enforcement junkies willing to toss a DFH in jail for a bad haircut.

What I actually want to know right now is what fresh hell Bush, Cheney and the rump of the neocons are wreaking while the media old and new are otherwise occupied salivating over the latest Palin outrage.

I’m also wondering what on earth the Democrats and Obama’s advisers are up to. Call this a campaign? It’s all very well putting out high-minded response videos but currently the Republicans are controlling the horizontal and the vertical.

“If Team Obama don’t pull their collective fingers out they’re going to lose this thing”, think some Democrats:

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Colour Me Shocked – Yet Hardly Surprised

'08/12 Election, bigotry, Election Skullduggery, Merkins..., Race, Wingnuts, Women
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If what’s being reported is true, Sarah Palin is apparently a vicious racist as well as the class cow. But then, did I really ever think she’d be anything else?

From the LA Progressive [Via The Poor Man] comes this heartwarming story of everyday gubernatorial bigotry:

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Read whole thing

Well, there it is, racism in the raw out and on the table. Wherever do the campaigns go from here?

UPDATE:

An Alaskan anti-Palinist casts doubt on the allegations.

Read both and make your own mind up.

Thanks For That. I Think.

'08/12 Election, Fashion in Action!, US politics
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I will grudgingly admit that Sarah ‘Get your zygotes out for the lads’ Palin has done at least one good service for women – she’s made women in glasses publicly sexy, albeit in a weirdly fetishistic, libertarianism-gone-mad sort of a way. “All the better to look down my gunsights at you, my sweet…”

Clothes and accessories are of course political signifiers in a media age and in an election year no candidate’s clothing is chosen without consideration of what it says to the viewers. To wit: ABC News while Hillary was still a contender, with “A Look Back At Hillary’s Year In Pantsuits.” Now that the nation’s eyes are on Palin, it’s all “Are Palin’s Glasses the New Pantsuit?”

Those of us who are a bit nerdy or who are lucky enough to live with a geek already know about glasses being incredibly sexy, thanks very much. But this plain glass in frames thing (which Palin didn’t start btw, it was those bloody engineer-cap wearing, soul-patched hipster wannabes that litter up the place) is pissing me off. I didn’t used to mind being described as geeky. Girl geekdom was an online bulwark against the superficial consumerist tat that passes for women’s print media.

Now I loathe it.The trend mill has already ground up, consumed and discarded most of our stuff (here’s looking at you, Boing Boing) – now the fashionistas want to steal the last advantage of the geek girl over the highlighted, Ugg-booted, orange skinned airhead?

Bastards.

But thankfully fashion is fickle and hipness temporary; this too shall pass. The craze isn’t going to last long. The ‘Sexy Sarah Palin’. and ‘Geek Girl’ joke outfits are already in the stores for Hallow’e’en

Sexy Sarah Palin Outfit

Hah! Instant death to hipness. And the upside of glasses reverting to squaredom so fast is that the craze for Palin herself is likely to burn itself out with equal speed, now that the media have actually started fact-checking her lying ass.

Meanwhile we, the actually ocularly challenged women of the world, will continue to look over our sexy glasses at you while you speculate about what naughty ideas we’re having with that misty, faraway look in our eyes.*

[*”Potatoes or pasta?”, since you asked. But you go on with your fantasy if it gets you through the day.]

Just A Thought…

'08/12 Election, Activism, US politics
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If the GOP is so devoid of campaign material it’s resorted to pushing the ‘uppity’ button – why aren’t the Dems retaliating while they’re so weak?

Where’s today’s response? Do Obama campaign strategists think by doing nothing they’re letting the Palin/McCain campaign dig their own political graves?

If the Dems are short of a competing narrative, there’s a whole ‘McCain as Manchurian Candidate’ meme they could be pushing.