no cain in the wee hours
First, I have some good friends that are Republicans, and many feel as I do. To those who do not, I mean no offence, but am made very angry by what I am seeing in the news. Is this the world I want for my little girl. In truth, my anger borders on fear.
I am wondering how the Palin camp, a group that had no problem with buttons reading “the hottest VP from the coolest state” and “Hoosiers for the hot chick,” is so ready to cry misogyny when fair and, in my opinion, fairly soft criticism is offered. Was Gibson really being a liberal tool when asking Palin how specifically the economy should be fixed? Was he wrong to ask her about the Bush doctrine, the plan that currently dominates our foreign policy? And if Tina Fey was belittling Palin based on gender, what of SNL’s portrayal of Senator Clinton in the same skit? Can you belittle one while ennobling the other and still call foul gender play? Palin is vapid and inept, and we’ve had enough stupidity the last eight years. My daughter is older than her passport. This incompetent moose hunter would be a very likely heart attack away from the White House.
I also wonder how the GOP, the “family values” party, can stomach a presidential candidate who, after his first wife was disfigured in an accident, cheated on her repeatedly and finally started courting his current wife while his first wife was recovering. His own children wouldn’t speak to him for several years. Is it a coincidence that this new wife was not only more attractive, but also the heiress to a fortune and powerful political connections made through beer distribution? To McCain’s credit, he did wait more than a few months after the ink on the divorce papers dried before wedding Cindy, and then waited a little before cashing in on his new family connections to run for office.
And speaking of family values, is it just a little surprising that Palin, pontificating on abstinence-only education, now has a 17 year-old daughter made pregnant by an 18 year old (do they have statutory rape in Alaska)? Now these kids are going to get married, and that makes it all good? I hope this boy knows what he is getting himself into, because, judging from the “trooper-gate” scandal, it seems to be difficult, if not dangerous, to disentangle oneself from the Palin clan. For a party that has had Dr. Dobson advising women that to be a good mother they must stay at home with their children, it comes as a stunner that many are now behind a woman raising five children, one of them afflicted with Down’s syndrome, and still claiming that she can do the job. Is it sexist to think that she cannot because she is a woman? It is, unless the woman happens to be running as a “hockey-mom” in a party that adheres to Dobson’s line of thinking.
Family values? Maybe this means “no gay marriage.” Because, when I think of a candidate that truly demonstrates family values, I think of Senator Obama. Faithful to his wife, fiercely protective of his children, trying to pass that infamous sex-education bill that would not, despite what the McCain commercial states, force kindergarteners to know the ‘ins and outs’ of sexual intercourse, but would instead help them be more capable of talking to their parents and teachers if they had been molested. I think of Joe Biden, who did not trade his wife in after an accident. Instead, he lost her and his daughter in a hospital and spent the next two decades riding a train home every night to raise his boys. To me those are “family values.” Sending our outstanding men and women in uniform to war only if the cause is just, instead of deploying our children to die on foreign soil for a cheaper price at the pump and an illusion of military security, those are family values. Allowing people who love each other, gender regardless, to marry and raise children, those are family values. And making sure that every person in America has healthcare, that no mom or dad has to lose sleep at night because they have no idea where the hell the money is going to come from to make sure little Suzie can get the glasses she needs to read, and making sure that she has the books in her school she needs to succeed, those are family values.
We can do better. We must do better. My little girl deserves better, and so do we.