The Snarky Liberal

Now, maybe that’s not entirely fair. She was, after all, the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska from 1996 to 2002. But let this serve as an illustration of how idiotic it is to compare Palin’s level of experience with Obama’s. Palin served as “executive” for a population of less than 6,000 people, little even by small-town standards. Obama’s state senate constituency, by contrast, was made up of at least 45,000 people–and those are just the ones who voted for him.

Let’s look at where they each were in January 2007. Palin was the newly elected governer of a state inhabited by 683,000 souls. Obama had already logged two years in the U.S. senate representing a state of about 12.8 million. Okay, since each state has two senators, let’s call that a constituency of 6.4 million. It’s still nearly ten times larger than the entire state of Alaska. Ten times larger!

The internet didn’t know who Sarah Palin was in 2001. And except for those 5,469 parka-clad Wasilla residents, neither did the nation. Thankfully, the country is finally starting to see through the McCain campaign’s attempts to turn Palin’s molehill of a resume into a mountain of experience.

Be sure to tune in to the VP debate Thursday night. Watching Palin squirm while trying to defend her inch-deep experience will be uncomfortable but definitely worth it.

The McCain campaign is desperate to paint Sarah Palin as a lifelong political reformer. As it turns out, Palin was indeed a proponent of change as the newly elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska and first-time political office holder. According to Time, Palin inquired into the process for banning books in the public library, shocking the town librarian. Then she threatened to fire the librarian for failing to give the mayor her “full support.”

Apparently Palin really does have a record of reform. When it comes to evangelical Christian issues, she’s an enthusiastic proponent of sweeping change. Like a true reformer, she encourages schools not to be “afraid of information” with respect to teaching creationism (but conveniently changes her tune when it comes to sex ed and books containing “offensive” material). 

For the last time, people: religion and public services, especially education, do not mix. Nothing inspires more anger in my rabidly liberal heart than a refusal to keep the two separate, a refusal that ends up manifesting itself in so many insidious ways.

Then again, maybe I have no reason to be worried about Palin’s religious extremism, since the McCain campaign is pulling her strings. They won’t even let her write her own acceptance speech, so maybe her polarizing views won’t make it past the Republican censorial squad. One can only hope.

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The Alaskan Independence Party: Polar Bears First

Sarah Palin may or may not have been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, the state’s third largest political party, in the 1990s. At the very least she attended the party’s convention in 2000, around the time her husband was registered as a member. The AIP’s main objective is to allow Alaska the opportunity to secede from the nation and become an independent country.

I guess when McCain specified he wanted a VP who would put “country first,” he should have been more specific about which.

Speaking via satellite from Washington, Bush told a crowd of smiling beige faces tonight that John McCain is a pretty neat dude. And to think, it was just eight years ago that Bush’s attack dogs used “push polling” to insinuate to South Carolinian primary voters that McCain fathered an illegitimate black child (McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter happens to have dark skin). McCain went on to lose South Carolina and ultimately the nomination. I guess time heals all wounds, eh?

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Sarah Palin, Noted Fauxminist

There’s a whole lot of whatnot and hullabaloo flying around about Sarah Palin. She’s a supermom. She managed a meteoric rise to power while raising five kids, snowmobiling the tundra and terrorizing the local moose population. She went back to work three days after giving birth. She’s got awesome optical accessories.

In the rush to enumerate her accomplishments, women are losing sight of the fact that Sarah Palin is not a feminist. She is a token woman, a ploy to simultaneously appease disgruntled Hillary supporters and the reluctant religious right. John McCain needed some feminist street cred; Sarah Palin was the solution.

Women, especially liberal women, who support Palin solely on the basis of shared genitalia are undermining feminist causes and playing right into McCain’s hands. I’m talking to you, PUMAs.

Feminists believe in equal pay for equal work. Feminists believe in a woman’s right to control her own body and make her own reproductive choices (Feminists for Life is a contradiction in terms). In a Palin America, a woman who is raped and impregnated would be forced to carry that rapist’s fetus to term. In a Palin America, teenage girls (and boys) remain blissfully ignorant when it comes to contraception.

Not to mention, liberal ladies, that Palin’s platform of issues is textbook scary conservative. Pro gun. Pro death penalty. Pro creationism in schools. Anti gay marriage. Anti environment. (Seriously, who still believes global warming isn’t our species’ fault?) Pro oil drilling. Pro gunning down wolves with helicopters. She attends a pentecostal church (although she now conveniently labels herself as “non-denominational”). She supported the bridge to nowhere back when it was politically convenient. Oh, and she doesn’t concern herself with things like the war in Iraq–not with so many square miles of tundra to govern.

Sarah Palin’s candidacy is a false milestone. It undermines the feminist movement to support a candidate who touts feminism while advocating the rollback of much of what the movement has achieved in the last 50 years. It’s a shame that her personal life is making news, because it distracts from what we should be talking about: Palin’s faux feminist beliefs and sheer inadequacy for the job.

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