It might seem as if I have it in for Sarah Palin. I do. She’s severely under-qualified for the position they’re placed her in. As a woman, I’m insulted that they obviously thought they could put any woman who looked good in a skirt in this position to capture the female vote. I don’t agree with the few policies she’s voiced — for example, anti-abortion, even in the case of rape — and I certainly don’t want to see another Evangelical “Christian” anywhere near the White House.
And doesn’t having an unmarried, pregnant teenage daughter say anything about her failings as a mother? (I know it says a lot about abstinence only sex education, as I pointed out here.)
Yet I’ve personally said very few things against her in this blog. Why?
Because I don’t have to. Everyone else is doing it for me. All I have to do is link to the articles, jokes, and videos I find on the Web.
And I’m not even looking for them! They come to me from my friends — including folks who live in Alaska — via e-mail and Twitter. They come to me from as far away as the U.K., Portugal, and New Zealand!
I just sit back and follow the links I get. If I find something I think is worth sharing, I pass it along.
So I have no need to bash Sarah Palin. I’ll let the rest of the world do it for me.
In surfing around the Web this evening, I stumbled upon a comment from Tom Wright on a Talking Points Memo reader post regarding tomorrow night’s vice presidential debate:
Beware, Palin’s infuriating verbal squirming may cause Biden’s head to explode.
People making the mistake of trying to understand her unparseable constructions suffer greatly. Only by matching her smile and blank cheerfulness can one withstand the sucking black hole of unreason that is Palin attempting to communicate with words.
He was referring, of course, to all interviews done so far — yes, all three of them — in which Palin has proven again and again that she is completely clueless.
Leonardo DiCaprio, will i. am, Tobey Maguire, and Forest Whitaker have created public service announcements to encourage American youth to register to vote. The non-partisan PSAs, produced by DiCaprios Appian Way, were created to engage and inspire young people to register and vote and participate in the upcoming election. Celebrities appearing in the PSAs include: Amy Adams, will.i.am, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Halle Berry, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Connolly, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Kiedis, Ashton Kutcher, Adam Levine, Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Ethan Suplee, Kyra Sedgwick, Michelle Trachtenberg, Usher, and Forest Whitaker.
Once again, my friend Tom delivered a good chuckle to my in box. This particular one has been floating around the Web for some time, but it’s best as written here:
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President.
The old rancher said, “Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle.”
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.
The old rancher said, “When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a post turtle.”
The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face, so he continued to explain.
“You know she didn’t get up there by herself, she doesn’t belong up there, she doesn’t know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with.”
The other day, I got an e-mail message from a cousin of mine back east. The title of the e-mail was “Why Women Should Vote.” It was one of those typical “forward this” e-mails that tries to fire people up about one thing or another. It included the usual bold and UPPERCASE text and images. (I guess folks think that pictures can help make their case.)
I need to say here that my cousin did not write this e-mail. She just forwarded it. She often forwards messages about topics of interest to women.
I get a few of these forwarded e-mail messages each day. I agree with and enjoy reading about half of them. Some of them don’t even get read — I just delete them. And some of them — like this one — get under my skin and prompt me to respond and blog about it. Regular readers may recall “The Star Spangled Banner, In Spanish?”
The message was a combination history lesson and call for action. It began with the sentence, “This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.” I knew I was in for it when I saw a series of sepia-tinted photos of suffragettes on the march. I fully admit that I didn’t read the whole thing.
Instead, I thought about the idea that women should need a special reason to vote. And frankly, it made me angry. I wrote a response:
Women should vote for the same reason men should vote: it’s our RESPONSIBILITY as part of a democratic society. It has nothing to do with women’s rights or anything else that’s specific to women. We vote to have our say. Anyone who is eligible to vote and doesn’t is an IDIOT, plain and simple. They’re giving up their right to have a say in the future of our country.
Use it or lose it — that can apply to the democratic process, too.
And don’t you think this “battle of the sexes” nonsense has gone on too long? If we we acted like PEOPLE rather than WOMEN we’d be treated like people. That’s how I’ve always worked in male-dominated fields — finance, computers, and now aviation — and I’ve never had any problems.
Thanks for including me in your distribution lists, but you really don’t need to. I get an awful lot of e-mail and really don’t have time to wade through it all. I guarantee that I already THINK about things like this far more than most of the people in this country — people who care more about American Idol and Paris Hilton than how their congressman voted or what the votes were about. I don’t need e-mails that spell everything out for me with pictures, clip art, historical trivia, or angry words directed against one group or another.
Don’t be offended, please.
I didn’t get a response and honestly don’t expect to. There are far too many women who are quick to make us into some sort of special case. While I hope she understands my point, I don’t think this e-mail will change her point of view.
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The message was a combination history lesson and call for action. It began with the sentence, “This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.” I knew I was in for it when I saw a series of sepia-tinted photos of suffragettes on the march. I fully admit that I didn’t read the whole thing. 
On October 12, 2008 at 2:34 pm, 
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