oneplanetmikey

Last Thursday night I had a bunch of friends over to watch Obama’s convention speech. It wasn’t great, but we all thought, “at least we’ll see a return to sanity in America — and about time.”
And of course, a black man as potential president is historic and fantastic. Merry drinking all round.

Next morning I got up (late) and stumbled to the computer in my boxer shorts, coffee in hand. I went to the New York Times and saw a picture of a bespectacled woman pouting at the camera. “What a classic bitch,” I thought, before reading the headline: McCAIN CHOOSES RUNNING MATE.”

My mouthful of coffee spewed out on the desk in classic sitcom style.

Make no mistake. Palin is not McCain’s choice. She represents the theocratic branch of the party, also known as the “base.” McCain was persuaded to choose her for political reasons, and so far the bosses who made this decision seem to have been correct. A woman – actually an accomplished woman in her sphere of Alaska (not a real state) – this woman, whom nobody had heard of ONE WEEK AGO now has a 60% approval rating from the electorate. WOW, just WOW.

The Republicans could actually win this election. I mean for real.

Put aside the fact that she has never expressed an interest in international affairs or in major issues in domestic policy.

She’s a babe! Wears a skirt ‘n’ everything!

She’s a breeder! She actually likes sex, properly understood as a means to perpetuate the species. Her daughter Bristol gets it! You have to pity her “boyfriend,” Levi Johnston, otherwise known as the high school hockey jock and “sex on skates,” who expresses on his website an ambition to “kick ass” and says “nope” to wanting kids; the poor guy got a first class ticket to Minneapolis and a star turn in front of 40 million so long as he obeyed the strict instruction to hold Bristol’s hand for five hours and marry her if McCain wins.

To say nothing of the “Special Needs” Downs Syndrome child the whole family passed around like a football in front of tens of millions.

More: is the Downs Syndrome baby really Sarah’s? Why did Sarah look thin and normal for almost all of the pregnancy while Bristol took “five to eight months” off school? What about this bizarre 8 hour trip from Texas to remote Alaska after Palin’s waters had broken? And why can’t we see the medical records?

As the Australian Liberal Party put it in 1990, “There are questions which just have to be answered.”

Yet for republicans, and for the Americans who will vote for them, none of this matters. They create their own reality: Palin is a great mother and reformist politician; she is MORE experienced than Obama and Biden; she is a true feminist; and so forth.

They Swiftboated John Kerry in 2004. In 2008 they are upping the ante. Plenty of dirt has already come out about Palin — she’s corrupt, anti-semitic, hypocritical, and above all simply does not have the intellectual chops for the job of Veep, let alone President. But so what?

The republican party is now essentially a religious party. John McCain is a good man, not a great man, not a tragic hero, but an essentially decent guy — truly. To see him dependent on Palin and the bosses is a tragic thing.

Worse yet, the whole strategy might work. If so, this country is screwed beyond repair. But if Obama wins — what a contrast!

This place is amazing in its extremes of best and worst.