Wednesday was quite a
night at the Republican National Convention, as the vice-presidential nominee
finally made her appearance. After three days of sequestered practice, Sarah
Palin, governor of Alaska and goddess of the right wing, pounced up to the
podium and started throwing punches at Barack Obama. That’s
their Sarah — she can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let
Todd forget he’s a man — ’cause she’s
a woman, W-O-M-A-N!
The base of the party,
the Christian conservatives went wild. The convention hall ate up her
vitriolic comments with spoons. Since then, the media has been lauding the
governor for her masterful acceptance speech. Clearly, she is capable and
zesty when it comes to using the teleprompter. One thing was evident
throughout the entire speech, however. Mrs. Palin, a self-described pitbull
in lipstick, was on a mission from God and her Presidential candidate John
McCain, to resurrect America’s
Culture Wars.
”
BAM!!” Take that, Barack Obama and
all you uppity community organizers who don’t
know jack about how to be hardworking real Americans like those of us
who live in small towns raising our huge families of home-schooled kids that
are taken to churches to learn Christian values. “POW!!”
To all you left wing, East Coast media pundits who think your Ivy League
Education makes you so high and mighty — You got it all wrong about John
McCain and you’ll get it wrong again.
“BANG!”
To you secular humanist environmentalists who look down your un-American noses
at us God-fearing, gun-owning patriots who support our troops and love our
country. Shame on you for not waving more flags and hunting more animals!
Dang, by the time this
chick was finished, I didn’t know if
I had just been lectured by the president of the Harper Valley P.T.A. or had
witnessed Caribou Barbie Super Girl! avenging God and Country!
One thing was certain,
however, Saracuda had been sent by John McCain and the Republicans on high to
pour some hot gas on those smoldering Republican fires: abortion, gun
politics, separation of church and state, privacy, homosexuality, and
censorship. Knowing the disaster that the U.S. has become in the last eight
years of Republican governance, and what a loser it would be to bring up
something as reality based as facts, it was time to come around to what really
works — that good, old GOP tried and
true: divide and conquer.
Pitting believers
against non-believers, small-towners against urbanites, pro-choicers against
pro-lifers, and liberals against conservatives could guarantee another eight
years of Republican rule. Sarah Palin was Karl Rove in pearls. Newt Gingrich
was spotted in the crowd wearing a sick grin of satisfaction on his face.
Obviously, the names of
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney never came up. And nary a word was ever
mentioned of the economy they decimated, the treasury they plundered, the
10-trillion-dollar national debt they ran up, and the war profiteering and
complete privatization of America’s
military they conducted by using contractors such as Blackwater and
Halliburton.
There was no mention of
all the lives lost in the illegal and perpetual war in Iraq. When it came to
talking about war, what we heard from Sarah Palin was that her oldest son,
Track, was getting ready to go to Iraq — on
September 11th, no less — with
the clear implication that it was so noble because the war in Iraq still had
something to do with actual events that happened on September 11, 2001.
With an oozing contempt
and obvious delight in trashing Obama, Mrs. Palin forgot to mention our surging
unemployment rate, crumbling infrastructure and declining public schools, and
the 10 million children without health care. The subject of skyrocketing
inflation on food and fuel also conveniently slipped her mind.
After listening for a
half hour to the sarcastic, shrieking, sanctimony of a woman who is stubbornly
resolved to splitting this broken and fragile country even further than The
Decider, all I could say was, “Sarah
Palin is one crazy, dangerous —–.” In the immortal words of Babs Bush, it rhymes with rich.
