Why, Camille? Why?

Due to enhanced vagal tone, I sometimes require readings of contrarian literature to bring up my resting heart rate to a comfortable 180 BPM.  Camille Paglia provided me with a much-needed cardiac stimulus package when she, ridiculously, chose to protest the treatment of poor lil Sarah Palin.

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

What, exactly, is the relationship between two people who served together ‘on a Chicago board’?  It is, at best, a tenuous relationship.  People who serve together on boards are often no more than polite strangers.  Without any more pertinent information, I’m going to have to guess that what you’ve included here are references to the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, neither of which are left-wing, and in fact, Annenberg himself was a conservative Republican.  He was also quite generous.  The Woods Fund was founded by a family from Lincoln, NE.  How radical could they be?

The past activities of Ayers and Dohrn have been thoroughly studied and are matters of public record.  Ayers and Dohrn are fascinating cases to ponder, but were of no impact in this election.  If there was any possibility that the relationship between Ayers and Obama was cozy, or if there was even an infinitesimal chance that Ayers and Obama were close, the Republicans and the McCain campaign would have run wild with hysterical innuendo.  The fact that Hillary never played up the Obama-Ayers relationship is yet more evidence that there is only a vague association between the two.

Now, Camille, you get really silly, and your frantic, feminist apologia falls flat.  Sarah Palin was subjected to unfortunately little criticism for her radical anti-choice views.  She was subject to a reasonable amount of scrutiny by the mainstream media on questions about whether she is a reformer and a maverick, as advertised, or whether she is a corrupt small-time governor, as a bit of cursory investigative journalism revealed her to be.  Aside from her extreme anti-choice position, she also holds fanatical, and frankly frightening religious views.

As the Republican Party has become the de facto home of the fanatically clenched sphincters of the christian ultra-right, it isn’t really surprising that John McCain set out to pleasure them with the choice of an ignorant small-town mayor.  What is surprising is that the ignorant small-town mayor John McCain chose had absolutely no knowledge and was unable to answer the most simple questions posed by the softball interviewers Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.  Her performance in every interview was atrocious, even with Sean Hannity, who is nothing but an unapologetic cheerleader for the riotous right.

Camille Paglia has the temerity to support Sarah Palin merely because they both, ostensibly, have vaginas.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows.

How dare Palin not embrace reading a fucking newspaper?  How tacky that she speaks in jumbled sentences, the syntax of which is so fractured that a transcript of her spoken words is completely unreadable!  How risible that a pretentious gasconader like Camille Paglia rushes to the defense of the University of Idaho, alma mater of not only Sarah Palin, but also Deep Throat, and Larry Craig.  Since all three graduated from the same university, I should think the media would take an interest in their relationship, especially between Larry Craig and Deep Throat.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

LIberal Democrats didn’t participate in the sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy.  Liberal Democrats were, and are, quite understandably, anti-Palin.  She is the poster child for the radical right-wing of the Republican Party.  I don’t recall an orgy (and I recall every orgy I’ve participated in and/or watched), but I do recall a feeding frenzy, and that came from the Republicans themselves as soon as a bit of Palin’s consecrated blood hit the water.

I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns — that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

Holy shit.  Remind me not to ask you to recommend employees to help me put in flooring.  You clearly have an uncanny ability to misjudge the intelligence of people.  Since you see so much in the eyes, I’ll send you a picture of my eyes, and from that you can determine if I have a powerful or weak clarity of consciousness.  For extra credit, please estimate my IQ.  I don’t know what it is, but if you guess much under 70, I’ll accuse you of engaging in a sadomasochistic, anti-Hot Free Press orgy.  And, I’ll be pretty excited about that.

Yeah, so, I don’t see the ’smart’ at all.  I’m a stupid one, wrapped in the fuzzy-mummy gauze of my own worn-out partisan dogma.  Or, perhaps you’re the stupid one, wrapped in the freshly-laundered linen of the Republican Party’s cynical ploy to appeal to women, for whom the GOP offers only outdated partisan dogma.

Sarah Palin is George W. Bush, but snottier and less-informed.  I didn’t think that was even possible.

Palin uses language with the jumps, breaks, and rippling momentum of a 12 year old bassoonist tuning up for the Christmas concert.

Maybe she’s speaking in tongues?

I stand by what I’m saying now, that Palin, as a radically anti-choice, backstabbing, corrupt, anti-science wingnut and young earth creationist will, if she becomes the face of the Republican Party, keep the Democratic Party in power for a generation.

For that, the world will owe her a debt of gratitude.

And, I’ll throw in a free blessing to scare away witches, and maybe add, this one time only, a supernatural pipeline.

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee — what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry’s nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama’s pick and who was on everyone’s short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin’s. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.

Sarah Palin is unprepared to be vice-president.  You wrote that she was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee.  She’s already been the nominee, and she’s more than proven that she was completely unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee.

There’s experience, and there’s knowledge.  Obama has limited experience.  John Edwards has limited experience.  What they do have, however, is knowledge.  They also have the ability to learn and to communicate, both vital in politics.

Kathleen Sibelius would have been a terrible choice.  Obama picked exactly the kind of running mate he needed, an experienced and knowledgeable Washington insider.  He was already leading in the presidential race, and all the signs pointed toward 2008 being a Democratic year.  As a believer in all manner of signs and wonders, one would think Sarah Palin would have realized this just wasn’t her year.  It would have been ludicrous for Obama to think outside the box.  Furthermore, Senator Biden will be vital as a liaison to the House and Senate.  Joe Biden is the consummate schmoozer.

The choice of Kathleen Sibelius would have been a vicious slap in the face to Hillary supporters, many of whom finally came to their senses and supported president-elect Obama.  Choosing a woman who wasn’t Hillary would have kept the wound open well past this election.

Don’t try to wiggle away from Palin’s clear and complete lack of knowledge.  Her lack of knowledge about the ‘federal bureaucracy’ and ‘international affairs’ is legendary and growing.  I also like the way you replaced the correct word, which is ‘government’, with the very negative-sounding ‘federal bureaucracy’.  That’s a sleight of hand switcheroo often employed by Charles Krauthammer.

Sarah Palin is startlingly ignorant about the US government and world affairs.  I’m fond of the sound of that sentence.  Read it out loud.  It’s declarative, unlike those meandering, passive sentence fragments Palin utters.  It’s also true.

The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan — nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching. No, Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is.

The Senate would be a disastrous career path for the ill-informed Alaskan.  I can only imagine the discomfort of her fellow Senators when she’s unable to answer the most basic questions and unable to offer even rudimentary suggestions in those droning committee meetings.

She should remain Governor Sarah of Alaska, and when she loses the next election, she can go back to Wasilla and shoot wolves from airplanes and rejoice in all the federal money Alaska absorbs…even though government is the problem.  Well, unless it’s Alaska getting all that federal welfare and gettin’ all socialismed and whatnot.

Yeah, slowly they’ll turn, step by step, inch by inch, and the mainstream media will realize they shouldn’t criticize an ignorant political hack because she’s a girl.

And, Camille Paglia has a crush on her.

I know; I passed the note.

Tags: Alaska, Ayers, Biden, Camille Paglia, democrat, Dohrn, George W. Bush, masochism, McCain, Obama, orgy, republican, sadism, sadomasochism, Sarah Palin