Oh god I'm sick of that hockey mom Sarah Palin, and sicker still of writing about her, but I can't get over my outrage that John McCain would treat this election as if it is just a game. He isn't serious about anything - not about helping people falling on hard times or caring for military families or providing care for wounded soldiers or education for returning veterans. He doesn't give a crap about the environment or the economy or the security of this country.
His campaign is a joke, replete with ads about Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears, and lies about Barack Obama. He accuses Obama of being not ready to lead, but having suffered several bouts with a deadly form of cancer, he chooses a former beauty queen and airhead as his vice president. Well, she is a brunette, younger version of Cindy so I guess he felt comfortable with her. And if he dies while in office, and turns things over to this woman, what does he care? He'll be gone.
He treats this campaign as if it is a poker game, or worse, a joke, but he is playing with all of our lives and he'd better be rejected by a lanslide of disgusted Americans in November or we are in deep deep trouble.
His pick of Sarah Palin is a disaster, perhaps not for his campaign if he can use her to woo enough uneducated moronic voters to think he's a real maverick and a feminist, but for the country. His wife actually said this morning, echoing the party's talking points, that the hockey mom is a foreign policy expert because Alaska is next to Russia. Are they serious? Of course not. They're playing with us, and playing us, and if we fall for it we are as insane as McCain is.
Now back to the former beauty queen. There are lots of stories floating around on the internet accusing Palin of not being the mother of the four month old baby she claims, and hiding the truth that it is really her daughter's child. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that this may be true, but it may also be one of those ugly internet rumors like the one about Barack Obama being Muslim, and since I am disgusted by that rumor and the damage it has done, I certainly wouldn't want to participate in one that could be just as damaging - especially to Palin's daughter. On the other hand, if this really is a story, then the media will investigate it sooner or later.
The real story, the one that mothers everywhere ought to look at, is why the mother of a four month old Down syndrome baby, and four older children, would take on this responsibility. First, there will be two months of intensive campaigning in the lower forty eight when her family lives in Alaska. Will she bring them everywhere with her or will she send them back to Alaska in the care of someone else so they can start school? If she sends them back, she will not be there for much of two months. If she hauls them around with her, how good is that for them? How healthy is that for this poor infant? The older children will have to be home (hotel) schooled and since she won't have time, they must find a tutor.
Then if, god forbid, she is elected, their relationship with their mother will change profoundly. Unless she reverts to the kind of vice president who only inquires daily about the health of the president, she will be at meetings all day, going to Congress, having daily briefings, traveling to foreign countries, and as McCainites have asserted, "learning at the feet of the master." How does that give her any time to be a mom? This isn't your typical working mom situation. This isn't the job of governor of a sparsely populated state. This is the second most powerful job in the United States.
I thought fundamentalist Christians believed women should raise their own children. I thought they believed in family values. So she decides to give birth to her disabled child, for which she must be praised, but then abandons him and his siblings for the next four to eight years. That isn't practicing family values. That's being selfish and irresponsible.
As for the timing of this child's birth, Palin went back to work three days after he was born. And now, four months later, are we to believe she has no postpartum effects, no hormones a little off kilter, no maternal instincts that make her want to stay with her child and protect him. What about bonding, attachment, the importance of the early years? (This, in addition to the fact that she never "showed," and flew from Texas to Alaska after her water broke so she could give birth in a small rural hospital, is part of the reason the rumors of her not really being the baby's mother got started.)
Now, I have heard some television female commentators (including the idiotic Cokie Roberts) say women will be mad if people criticize the Princess of the Tundra for wanting to be vice president when she has a four month old child, because no one would say that about a man. Jeez what a crock!
First, a woman is not a man, no matter what some fake feminists say. Real feminists know that men and women are not the same biologically. Second, men don't give birth. They don't breast feed and while they bond, they bond differently. It is still the mother who has the biological attachment to the young infant. Third, feminists have called for paid or unpaid maternal leave for decades and they generally would like to see it extend to six months. Feminists know the demands of mothering. They aren't just all about being a high powered career person.
I am the mother of four and I would never have been ready to take on such a monumental job when one of my children was four months old, nor would my maternal instincts have allowed me to. I couldn't live with myself for what I would consider neglect of my child. And I am a long time feminist, so my feelings in this regard do not come from some religious nonsense or some medieval view of womanhood. They come from a sense of responsibility to my children, and a concern for their best interests.
Feminists have always wanted full equality and many interpreted that to mean women wanted to be men. But that is silly. Feminists realize they must make choices. They can have children and careers, but sometimes not all at once, and sometimes not the exact career path they want, or as many children as they would like, unless they are able to provide full time nanny care for their children, which most can't. Having five children, four of them under the age of 18, and one only four months old, does not work well with also trying to be vice president of the United States. Both of the jobs are likely to be done poorly.
Frankly, with my three college degrees, my library of thousands of history and political science and current affairs books, all of which I have read, and my lifelong curiosity about and interest in politics and foreign affairs, I think I would make a much better vice presidential candidate than Ms. Moose Burger, but I would never take the job unless I had first spent some time in Washington. This woman seems completely uninterested in foreign policy in a time of war and knows nothing about the economy other than how to recite a few conservative talking points. What kind of dunce is she to think she can do this?
And how much contempt must Insane McCain have for the American people that he would choose someone, charming though she may be, this ignorant and unqualified? John McCain said in one of this books that he didn't run for president because he wanted to promote specific policies, but that rather he simply had the amibition to be president. And now, at the age of 72, in less than stellar health, he chooses someone who knows nothing about the job he has offered her. They're a couple of know-nothings. Furthermore, I believe this shows that John McCain is not a patriot. He may have been at one time, but with this reckless and cynical choice, he has shown total disregard, if not hatred, for this country and its people.
He says Obama would rather lose a war than lose an election? McCain would rather destroy the country than lose an election.
And apparently Sarah Palin would farm out her children to win an election and feed her inflated ego. That isn't my image of a feminist, a good mother, or a responsible Vice President of the United States.
And finally, if she can't be trusted to put the needs of her own children first, how can we expect her to be concerned about our children?
