Yum! Sorry, this one is too juicy to miss. I have to apologize again for writing about an issue that has nothing to do with
Israel or the
Middle East. Anyone who is really not interested in the U.S. presidential campaign (there are such people, I am told) can turn the page or delete the message and hopefully tolerate my eccentricity.
Ladies and Gentlemen! In the left corner, in the white trunks, we have the candidate representing the "audacity of hope" who believes that that "we are the change that we want." A brilliant and caring intellectual who has come to save the working class of America and champion the underdog, preaching the modern day Sermon on the Mount. Suffer the little children to come unto me. The first shall be last and the last shall be first and Barack Obama shall lead them. And we have his supporters, a mass of young, tolerant, intellectual, high minded, progressive and starry-eyed idealists. The camp of the angels and the supporters of Lazarus is before us.
In the right corner, ladies and gentlemen, too old and battered to come out in public in boxing trunks, we have a George Bush clone only older and balding. And we have his supporters, rich folks representing stodgy business as usual and masses of duped low brow cave dwellers who take out their frustration by support for gun control and religion, supported by reactionary, self righteous, hypocritical moralizers. Behold the camp of Dives. When he died he had a home in hell, right?
So what does the camp of the angels and the intellectuals go and do? What high minded humanitarian program do they present? They spread a salacious and entirely false rumor that Bristol, the daughter of McCain's vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, is the real mother of Palin's fifth son, who suffers from Down's syndrome. A story that has all the ingredients of a National Enquirer scandal. The stuff of back fence gossips. This "BabyGate" fabrication, directed at a hapless 17 year old who is not running for anything. was spread in the noble cause of "Audacity of hope." It turned up in the most "progressive" and "humanitarian" journals. The ones who pride themselves on intellectualism and deep analysis. It was backed up with all the usual "proof" that sleazy operators provide for rumors about 9-11, Obama being a Muslim (and a Communist) and the like.
The purpose of the rumor was probably to force the McCain campaign to come out with the real and less than convenient truth, that 17 year old Bristol is really pregnant now.
The lofty intellectuals and putative friends of the common man are having a field day. Debates are raging among the champions of the proletariat, about whether to call the Palins "poor white trash," "Alaska rednecks," (not PC) or "trailer trash" (non-racial and therefore more PC).
Oh what glee this has caused in the camp of the enlightened progressives! What an outpouring of sophisticated analysis from the intellectual luminaries of our time! And they have a political alibi for their mudslinging too. It goes like this: If only the Palins had been Democrats, Bristol would have gotten an abortion, because everyone knows that teen mothers should get an abortion, right? That proves those right-wing folks are wrong headed hypocrites! A genuine political issue, not to mention a great wad of juicy gossip. Perfect! Except that Stanley Ann Dunham married Obama Sr. at age 18, in February of 1961 and dropped out of her first semester at university. Baby Barak was born in August. Even if some of us are not brilliant interlleckchoolz, we can all count to 9, can't we? I have two fingers left over in this case. Obama's mom should have gotten an abortion, too, right? But when "the right" people do it, it is "bohemian" and "unconventional." When the wrong folks do it, will that's just what you would expect from that sort of po' white trash, trailer-dwelling, beer swilling, pickup truck driving, gun toting people, wouldn't you?
The rarefied atmosphere of abstract ideological discourse is about like a South Park episode showing juveniles having a locker room talk fest over someone's sister who got knocked up. This is the change that they want to bring about - a lot of big superior smirks, and a crowd of folks in glass houses throwing rocks. Not since Hester Prynne and her letter "A" has America witnessed such an outpouring of true progressive sentiment and tolerance. Bristol Palin has already been put in the stocks and shamed on a scale that New England Puritans could only never have imagined, though she didn't even commit adultery. That's what "babygate" is really about. The change they want, the America of the future, looks a lot like Puritan New England after all.
The twenty-first century Cotton Matherite progressives may have fallen into a trap. They forgot that there was a reason why Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel about the adulteress and her embarrassing little consequence, and all the nineteenth century novels about illegitimate unfortunates, were so popular. In moments of reflection almost anyone with a drop of humanity is going to sympathize with poor Bristol, Anyone with sense will also remember that Bristol Palin is not running for any office.
Don't get me wrong. Just because Bristol Palin is having a baby and is not married yet, does not mean anyone should ignore her mother's support for arch-conservative gentleman's anti-Semite Buchanan, her insistence on legislating her anti-abortion morality to force it on others, her support for teaching creationism in the public schools, or her total ignorance and inexperience in foreign affairs. And there's the rub. The "intellectual" gossips and lynch mob members who are insisting that this campaign must be about poor Bristol Palin are making people do precisely that: forget the issues and rally 'round the beleaguered Palin family, beset by salacious "idealists" of the kind who watch through their telescopes as the girl in the window across the courtyard undresses, and hare-brained hypocritical pseudo-intellectuals, who keep the National Enquirer hidden under the bed and put The Nation on the coffee table.
Ami Isseroff
Original content is Copyright by the author 2008. Posted at ZioNation-Zionism and Israel Web Log, http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000597.html where your intelligent and constructive comments are welcome. Disributed by ZNN list. Subscribe by sending a message to ZNN-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Please forward by e-mail with this notice, cite this article and link to it. Other uses by permission only.
Replies: 6 Comments
When taxpayers pay for air flights and fancy hotel rooms for Bristol Palin's fiancee at the RNC, then it is worth noting that YOU are paying for Palin's daughters' teen pregnancy. But, Palin herself went and cut funding for Pregnant Teens Safe Houses. See this and other ethics violations: "Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home; Taxpayers Also Funded Family's Travel" at Washington Post Sep 9, 2008. "Palin Slashes Funding for Teen Moms" Sep 2, 2008.
Republican Alternative, Tuesday, September 9th
What she's against and what she can get legislated are two very different things. I'm against McCain-Feingold, but it's law and there's nothing I can do about it. She's against abortion but it's legal precedent now, according to the chief justice, and very likely can never be undone. Restricted, yes, and a federal law already has done that. No need for Palin's input. As for abstinence, it works for some, particularly religious believers. For the secular, not so much, maybe. But that's a school board thing, not a vice president thing. So much of the progressive agenda that always seems to be threatened if the pol is not a dyed-in-the-wool Dem is just nonsense.
dick stanley, Wednesday, September 3rd
Perhaps your missing a bigger issue: She's against teaching birth control or sex education. She probably subscribes to "abstinence now"... Such nonesense makes for teen parents and very young grandparents.
Frank Ponder, Wednesday, September 3rd
Excellant insight and brave support, except for the Buchanan nonsense, which is a lie. Lots of lies out there about her. The American Left, and its ally the Mainstream Media, are absolutely terrified of her. They know she will win and there ain't diddly they can do about it.
dick stanley, Wednesday, September 3rd
Some reasons I don't just stick to Israel issues:
1- Israel is not the only country on earth and I am part of the human race.
2- A particularly obnoxious and salacious article appeared at a large Web site run by a Jewish "progressive."
3- I have a daughter who is 2 years older than Bristol. "There but for the grace of providence."
4- I hope that when I am an octogenarian I will still have it in me to come to the aid of a fair damsel in distress - or anyone else in distress. That is part of who I am.
Ami Isseroff, Tuesday, September 2nd
Why don't you just stick to Israeli issues?
Mort Reichek, Tuesday, September 2nd
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