Saturday, August 30, 2008
Is it possible
in this day & age that a mother of certain conservative religious beliefs, with a certain kind of reputation to protect, would choose a devious course of action over a more open & honest one should something potentially scandalous (in her moral order) occur in her family? Is that unimaginable? Of course not. It happens all the time. Just as powerful men lie about their extramarital affairs all the time. Even if he's running for president. Even if he is president.
We've seen enough tawdry What were they thinking? behavior at the highest levels of government to know that it exists, & that it can be very strange behavior, & to know that persons are sometimes brought quickly & in unforeseen ways into public spotlights they never expected to have illuminating their personal lives.
That's why Gov. Sarah Palin has to be vetted for rumors that are unpleasant to hear, for statements she might have made that, at the time, the Lower 48 had no reason to hear. Alaska is a distant & exotic place to us down here. Alaskans enjoy their political & cultural isolation, from us & from each other; they're proud of it. They like to remind us how different they are up there, independent & self-reliant, even peculiar. So they shouldn't come down here & expect us not to be skeptical when they say; Here's our beauty queen soccer mom governor for ya, folks. She's just like you. Indeed, perhaps she is, in ways she'd rather we didn't learn.
We used to have a governor here in New Jersey, elected with 56% of the vote, whose closest staffers made certain we knew - unofficially of course - about every Guys Night Out he had at the local Badda Bing Club with his pals. He was Catholic. He had the kind of working class background Democrats worship. He could campaign with ease through a lunch crowd at a Jersey diner. He divorced. He remarried. His first wife moved far, far away with their daughter & never commented on their relationship. He entertained ambitions of national office - like Vice President Jim McGreevey. Had he stayed in office without major scandal he would've been on the long list for VP this year, & spoken at the convention, & probably offered a cabinet post in an Obama administration. We're a small state sandwiched between two huge media markets. Yet, this very smart politician's secret didn't come out until he did something inexplicably stupid.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
We've seen enough tawdry What were they thinking? behavior at the highest levels of government to know that it exists, & that it can be very strange behavior, & to know that persons are sometimes brought quickly & in unforeseen ways into public spotlights they never expected to have illuminating their personal lives.
That's why Gov. Sarah Palin has to be vetted for rumors that are unpleasant to hear, for statements she might have made that, at the time, the Lower 48 had no reason to hear. Alaska is a distant & exotic place to us down here. Alaskans enjoy their political & cultural isolation, from us & from each other; they're proud of it. They like to remind us how different they are up there, independent & self-reliant, even peculiar. So they shouldn't come down here & expect us not to be skeptical when they say; Here's our beauty queen soccer mom governor for ya, folks. She's just like you. Indeed, perhaps she is, in ways she'd rather we didn't learn.
We used to have a governor here in New Jersey, elected with 56% of the vote, whose closest staffers made certain we knew - unofficially of course - about every Guys Night Out he had at the local Badda Bing Club with his pals. He was Catholic. He had the kind of working class background Democrats worship. He could campaign with ease through a lunch crowd at a Jersey diner. He divorced. He remarried. His first wife moved far, far away with their daughter & never commented on their relationship. He entertained ambitions of national office - like Vice President Jim McGreevey. Had he stayed in office without major scandal he would've been on the long list for VP this year, & spoken at the convention, & probably offered a cabinet post in an Obama administration. We're a small state sandwiched between two huge media markets. Yet, this very smart politician's secret didn't come out until he did something inexplicably stupid.
Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election
