I have to get this off my chest: Aside from the fact that I’m not a conservative Republican, I don’t have an issue with her daughter’s pregnancy. That’s none of my business, and as someone who believe in pro-choice, her daughter is old enough to decide what she wants to do. I also can truly appreciate Palin’s status as the mother of a special needs child, and I don’t see how that should be brought up as an issue as to whether or not her children should in any way affect her ability to be a candidate. I agree with Obama: family should be off-limits in this campaign.
But obviously, that’s not how Palin views it. She put her family on display tonight, and made the whole family values issue a big, fat cog in the Republican campaign machine by introducing herself as “just a simple hockey mom.” But even that isn’t my issue here. This is my issue: Palin fired the cook at the governor’s mansion, as in when she moved into the governor’s mansion, she fired the cook. That’s my issue. Now it might sound as if I’m nitpicking when there are a whole bunch of really big issues to discuss, but bear with me. Firing the cook is just one example of how Palin, a non-feminist (because conservatives do not consider themselves to be feminists (because they do not know the true meaning of the word)), operates, making it appear that any other woman who does not operate in a comparable method, is a whiner, or just plain loser. She is the wife/mother who can do it all without any help, and she seems to see asking for help as a weakness. So how much sympathy is she going to have for the rest of us? I think this is a point worth pondering as the Vice President sits over Congress, which is where we will be fighting over key legislature on family rights bills in the coming term.
More examples of super mom on steroids (just a figure of speech, not an accusation): Palin went back to work three days after the birth of baby Trig and nurses Trig during meetings. How nice. She gave a keynote speech when she was eight months pregnant; her water broke, and she flew home; most airlines won’t even let you get on a plane when you are eight months pregnant, let alone if your water has broken, but not super mom. How many of the working mothers out there, myself included, had the opportunity to nurse their newborns or infants during staff meetings? And I’m sorry to mention this delicate matter, especially since she’s now being described as “full of fire,” but, which will come first if she’s nursing her baby during a session of Congress and, god forbid, has to suddenly fill in for the president, especially since she doesn’t believe in nannies.
I know, I’m being cynical again. But talk about being a wee bit cynical. Palin is no pussycat. Repeatedly, she whomped on Obama as being just a “community organizer” with no real experience in her version of a political acceptance speech. I’m just wondering what the reaction would have been if a male candidate had spent the first 10 minutes of his speech pontificating on his stellar experience as a dad and not a politician. And, of course, Palin impaled the media, but I find it curiously ironic that the McCain organizers asked for everyone to back off the Palin family, but she was so willing to put her family, especially 17-year-old Bristol and her boyfriend front and center at the convention for all of America to see. “Do as I say but not as I do”?
But as usual, I digress . . . She fired the cook, has no help with the kids other than the older kids, gets the kids to hockey, PTA, ballet, church, etc., etc., etc. In other words. She can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, every forget “her guy” is her man. May I gag now? I have dust bunnies on my cobwebs. We’ve already discussed my penchant for clutter and my continually growing personal library. I love my children more than life, but I have occasionally used my family as babysitters, and when I was working full-time, all of them at one time or another stayed with one or the other of their grandmothers during the day. It was the main reason I moved back to the area: so that my children could know their grandparents, and Filipinos believe in extended family participating in the care of the babies.
My family life is definitely not perfect. My daughter did not get pregnant at 17, but she was not an angel. I think that few of us could withstand microscopic scrutiny of our families. That is not the point. What I wanted to hear was what was never said: her political ideaology. What does she believe? Not just that she believes that John McCain is right for the job, not that she believes that he is an honorable man, not that she doesn’t believe that Obama is qualified—what does Sarah Palin believe this country needs in order to become unified, to progress, to end this war, to solve its educational woes, to end its dependence on fossil fuels, to take care of the largest deficit in history? I didn’t hear any of that. But I know the names of her children, and that she cooks in the governor’s mansion.
Too much information, not enough substance, and definitely nothing to give me hope for a better tomorrow.
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 