Veepy Dearest

One more thing, and then I’m done with Palin, or at least until the next revelation (which’ll could be anything; her husband runs guns for Alaskan secessionists or was Jimmy Jeff’s date at Bohemian Grove – anything). Whatever it is it’s bound to be grubby.

Although Trooper/Sprog/TreasonGate has been great entertainment given the candidate’s expressed religious and political views, the family situation is hardly uncommon. 17 year old daughters do get pregnant (usually by complete dorks and ne’er-do-wells), and especially so when they’ve been kept ignorant of how not to because of a misguided attempt to keep them ‘pure’. It happens. My own sister was a grandmother in her early forties too, a situation which gave me many enjoyable hours of sisterly schadenfreude. Hi Granny!

This time it happened to someone running for veep. Other than the momentary amusement and the justified outrage at continuing Republican hypocrisy, after the first flush of pleasurable derision it’s really no-one’s business, though it does make McCain’s advance vetting look worse than useless.

McCain insists that his VP pick was throroughly investigated and that he knew of Palin minor’s pregnancy before he announced the nomination. He appears to think that makes it all OK.

To me if McCain knew of Palin minor’s pregnancy beforehand, but nominated anyway, that actually makes it much, much worse.

It means Sarah Palin, the woman being projected as future MILF to the nation, simultaneously portrayed as a babe-librarian or a gun-toting survival chick, but primarily marketed by her party as a glossy conglomerate of Ma Walton and Raphael’s Madonna, is a terrible mother. One of the worst.

I know from terrible mothers; I am one. Without going into private family history I can assure readers there’s little you can tell me about awful parenting decisions. That said, I’m apalled.

All of this means that Palin knew very well her daughter was pregnant when she accepted the nomination – and unless she’s been hiding under a rock for the past century she’d have certainly also known that the media, ever hungry for prurient detail, would dive on the story like they would a line of free coke. Even Alaska gets the internet.

She must have known that they’d pry into her child’s private life and even into her pants – how could she not? – yet she accepted the nomination with alacrity. Knowing it would be bound to hurt one of her children, she did it anyway. That’s cold.

Worse still, she and her husband also went on to publicly take any and all decision-making capability regarding herself and her child entirely out of their daughter’s hands.

Not only is Palin making her daughter’s decisions re the pregnancy for her (ie that she will get married and be happy happy happy and photogenic ever after, seemingly regardless of her feelings or that of the putative father) her one criterion for making those decisions appears to be what would advance her political career.

I don’t know about any other parents following this story, but I don’t know one no matter how self-interested, who would so deliberately ruin their child’s future for their own personal advancement.

Parents make some tremendously ill-judged decisions and yes, children suffer because some parents are overly ambitious. But it’s usually a passive kind of harm, not delberate; being elsewhere at important moments, not paying enough attention, fobbing them off with money instead of time, letting them do something dodgy because it was easier than arguing and you’re just so damned tired… but it takes some hardnosed ruthlessness to sacrifice your child’s future to your own interests, publicly, and be so proud of it too.

I certainly don’t condemn Palin because she has five children and I don’t see why someone who does should not be vice-president – neither do I question someone’s ability to do the job because one of those children is disabled and needs extra care. Leaving aside Cheney’s activist vice-presidency it’s not that much of a job and besides, that’s what nannies, schools and nurses are for.

But I absolutely and unequivocally condemn someone who would drag her child through the tabloid mire, deliberately and with malice aforethought. She’s building her own glittering political future on her own child’s ruined hopes.

Nevertheless the right seem in thrall – but then they are well practiced at cognitive dissonance The GOP faithful at the Convention certainly have no problem with it whatsoever. Hypocrisy barely registers. But if McCain and his party think to have secured the undecided, independent woman voter with this transparent ploy then they are very much deluded.

I can’t be the only mother who’s looked at this situation and thought “Jeez, what a complete bitch.”

Attack Of The Thwarted Entitled

The Democratic convention is playing beautifully well in the overseas media: Michelle Obama played a blinder, as is her wont (shame she’s not standing for something) and Hillary Clinton made opening speech of Campaign 2012 last night, to a sea of Obama/Unity placards.

Every Hillary supporting woman delegate interviewed by the BBC afterwards – most of them black, if I remember rightly, though I stand to be corrected without the video to hand; there may have been one white one – harped on, interminably on-message, on the theme of party unity. All was love and light and happy happy happy, with barely a dissenting voice to be heard.

Convention organisers and message managers in Denver can pat themselves on the back that they’ve managed to keep conflict so discreetly under wraps (so far; there are a couple of days to go still).

But what will really count is what happens in November (always supposing the election’s not completely Diebolded). Former pro-Hillary, now pro-Obama delegates can spout unity to the cameras in Denver as much as they like, but when it comes to X’s on ballots they’ll go with their gut instinct and their gut instinct as racist as hell. For ‘inexperienced’, read ‘black’:

Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Lisa Sisinni: Why I, a Clinton supporter, will vote for John McCain

Obama is inexperienced, fluffy and arrogant. I can’t back that.

Even though they managed by dint of much screeching and waving of rattles to have the Democrats put a wise old greyhair, a Hillary proxy, in charge of the hotheaded young black man, Hillary’s fans in the entitlement generation still aren’t satisfied and are threatening to throw their toys out of the playpen entirely, all the apparent convention unity notwithstanding – they’re not just abstaining, or passively supporting an independent, but actively campaigning against Obama and their own former party and in favour of McCain.

CNN:

66 percent of Clinton supporters — registered Democrats who want Clinton as the nominee — are now backing Obama. That’s down from 75 percent in the end of June. Twenty-seven percent of them now say they’ll support McCain, up from 16 percent in late June.

And nowhere was that statistic more prevalent than at the RNC-sponsored happy hour for Hillary.

Clinton supporters-turned-McCain converts at the event were not just angry at Obama’s campaign; they’re furious with the Democratic Party’s nomination process this year.

“The DNC really pushed [Barack Obama] on us. Now they’ve left us with two choices: somebody who has no substance or a Republican,” said Jessi Cleaver, 35, of New York. “And these are terrible choices, and they worked hard to select this candidate. … We’re watching the DNC pick this candidate for us.”

Aww, diddums. Did they really think Hillary, wife of a president, mother of a future president, was the spontaneous choice of the toiling masses?

But why are these supposed feminists being so destructive? Do they think they have to burn down the political village to save the feminism, or something?

It’s as plain as a pikestaff to the average outside observer why they are doing this – it’s the colour thing, stupid. They’re racists, for all their feminist posturing, and their gut instinct says ‘don’t vote for the black guy’. Yes, they want change – but they want change for them and women just like them, change only on their terms – all others need not apply. Understandably many progressives find this political dog-in-the-mangerism utterly infuriating

I’m not American myself, so I’ll pass over to an American, Tim Wise of Lip Magazine, who puts it much more pithily than I ever could:

Your Whiteness is Showing:
An Open Letter to Certain White Women
Who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack Obama in November

[…]

Your threats are not about standing up for women. They are only about standing up for the feelings of white women, and more to the point, the aspirations of one white woman. So don’t kid yourself. If you wanted to make a statement about the importance of supporting a woman, you wouldn’t need to vote for John McCain, or stay home, thereby producing the same likely result–a defeat for Obama. You could always have said you were going to go out and vote for Cynthia McKinney. After all, she is a woman, running with the Green Party, and she’s progressive, and she’s a feminist. But that isn’t your threat is it? No. You’re not threatening to vote for the woman, or even the feminist woman. Rather, you are threatening to vote for the white man, and to reject not only the black man who you feel stole Clinton’s birthright, but even the black woman in the race. And I wonder why? Could it be…?

[…]

See, black folks would have sucked it up, like they’ve had to do forever, and voted for Clinton had it come down to that. Indeed, they were on board the Hillary train early on, convinced that Obama had no chance to win and hoping for change, any change, from the reactionary agenda that has been so prevalent for so long in this culture. They would have supported the white woman–hell, for many black folks, before Obama showed his mettle they were downright excited to do so–but you won’t support the black man. And yet you have the audacity to insist that it is you who are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, and the one before whom Party leaders should bow down, and whose feet must be kissed?

Your whiteness is showing.

Well, quite. Get over it already.

The irony is the question of race really is a surface issue for domestic consumption only: Obama’s politics are in essence the same as Hillary’s, at least in foreign policy – the Democratic platform calls for more neoliberalism, more expansionism, just as much overseas meddling as ever. This is is no way good for women worldwide.

The important choice here isn’t between race or gender at all. The world’s in one of the most politically precarious, nuclear-fuelled international situations in recent history. Identity politics be damned – it’s now a choice between having a president with a modicum of common sense or a psychologically unstable, hair-trigger-tempered nutjob with his finger on the big red button. Choose the wrong one, we could all be blown to kingdom come.

You’d think even entitled white American women would get that.

(Hattip to Donna)

Yeah, And Why Don’t All Blokes Shave Their Buttcracks? Slobs.

Would you take grooming advice from a man who can't be arsed to shave his chin let alone his butt?

One the more asinine posts I’ve ever read on HuffPo (and there’ve been quite a few) is this from expat Brit, former VH1 Wardrobe Assistant, social climber, PR man and media wannabe Tony Alcindor (see above), chastising women for their unkemptness.

He thinks women should be hypergroomed and hyperconscious of appearance all the time; any woman who’s not is a filthy, lazy slattern. Most Unlike our own dear Queen of the expat arch-social climbers, Arianna herself (and all the shiny Hollywood pals of hers Alcindor would love to be introduced to as a result of being invited to blog at HuffPo.). All are shined, waxed botoxed and coiffed to a pitch beyond even a dog’s ability to hear, much like Tony himself.

I have to quote a bit to give the true flavour of just how asinine it is:

One of my all time favorite pastimes is people-watching, and ever since I moved to New York I couldn’t be happier. It’s like being part of a giant fashion show and the sidewalk is the runway. Every street, every block, every neighborhood has another real life model strutting her stuff in this great metropolis.

Then I started to look a little closer…

To my dismay, not all was what it seemed. Not all of you were paying attention! Not all were taking the time to pull it together! When I looked a little closer, things were good from afar, but far from good. My rose-colored glasses are cracked and some of you are skipping whole steps — things you forgot to do. You think no one notices or you simply couldn’t be bothered.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, LADIES!

[…]

Undergarments: A HUGE DETAIL. Stained bras, panties, slips, cami’s, stockings with holes, things with broken elastic and anything held together with a safety pin must be thrown away – immediately! Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Once it is discovered (by accident or by circumstance) you’ll thank me for the lack of embarrassment you won’t have to suffer through. Didn’t your mom always say make sure you had on clean undies in case you got into an accident? So PLEASE make sure all of your underpinnings FIT CORRECTLY! Most women are wearing the wrong size bra. If you have back fat, you may not be fat! You just might have on the wrong bra. Lastly, SPANX under everything! This is the equivalent of liposuction without the surgery.

Yeah, right. If I went out in the street right now and made every man in it drop their pants (and who hasn’t sometimes wanted to do that), I suspect not one would be found unafflicted by crotch rot, saggy elastic, pee stained Y-front or a well-aged collection of superimposed skidmarks.

I know this. I do laundry.

Alcindor goes on to damn all of us who can’t afford the upkeep of even a basic style, let alone a monthly colour and cut or a weekly salon blowdry (those who don’t go to the hairdresser at all don’t even register on his radar):

Hair: This is a very sensitive subject so I’ll make it short and sweet. Whatever your hairstyle, make sure it is maintained — we’re talking color and cut. You know those crazy commercials where people are swinging their hair and loving it — it could be you. It’s no joke. I have a few beautiful friends in LA with that kind of hair. They didn’t always have that hair, but a great hairdresser is worth a million bucks!

“I have a few beautiful friends in LA”. Get you, Mr Big Shot. No, of course they didn’t always have that hair – not until they moved to somewhere you can buy it by the yard.

All it takes is money, and hey, haven’t we all got plenty?

I thought of posting an incandescently eloquent response to this arrant nonsense at the HuffPo, pointing out the socio-politico-economic context of the constant ‘beauty’ busywork that’s expressly designed and promoted by commerce to keep women too paranoid or neurotic to actually protest their subjugation to pointless routines and expenditure. Then I thought nah, fuck it.

Alcindor’s foray into blogging is another attention seeking stunt from a career attention seeker, so this is the first and last attention he’ll get from me. Not that it will or even should bother him any, up there in the rarefied air of minor celebrity HuffPo bloggerdom. I’m sure he has many more important people to toady up to and PR junkets to attend to notice some NL blogger calling him a wanker.

But dammit, he pissed me off. And I bet he has skidmarks and hair on his back too.

Onwards And Upwards

What a wanker.

TV journalist Martin Bashir has apologised for making what he called a “tasteless” comment about Asian women.

Speaking at the Asian American Journalists Association annual banquet in Chicago, he said: “I’m happy to be in the midst of so many Asian babes.

“In fact, I’m happy that the podium covers me from the waist down.”