Here's another one about Sarah Palin
Adrian Borg posted a comment with a link to this interesting article. The system was determined to treat it as spam, so I’ve posted it here. So, ok, The Guardian is more likely to root for the Democrats and against the Republicans, but it’s an amusing piece all the same.
Palin, with her meat loaf and rifles, reminds us that there are two hopelessly incompatible Americas
Linda Grant, The Guardian
Thursday September 4 2008A Photoshopped picture of Sarah Palin has been doing the rounds for the past few days; it shows her in a stars and stripes bikini toting a rifle – patriotism, hunting and cheesecake all combined in one image. Two minutes of Googling reveals that the rifle has been identified by gun nuts in Republican chatrooms as a Crossman pump pellet gun. Soft porn for rednecks. Expect to see it pinned to the wall in every gas station in Texas and tacked to the dashboard of every long-haul truck. But this cartoon-like depiction of her smothers what we need to understand about why Palin appeals to American voters and why American elections have been so deadlocked for the past decade, as if there were two Americas, doomed to lived on the same landmass under the same government, like hopelessly incompatible spouses.
A new novel, American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, published in the US this week, tells a fictionalised and thinly veiled story of Laura Bush, from small-town girl in the 1950s midwest to school librarian to Republican bride to President’s wife. What you learn from the novel is that, like it or not, the American heartland is not so much a political ideology but an actual place with people living in it. Small-town Americans have values and a lot of those values are good ones: neighbourliness, family life, a knowledge of the land and what grows in it. The other America they see on TV seems without ethics – crime, violence, drug addiction, pornography and prostitution – and they don’t want any part of it.
So clear is the divide between big-city and small-town America that one American friend said to me: “These whitebread Republicans are like children – someone has to tell them what to do and what to think, they’re incapable of independent ideas.”
The conviction by the left that the right is stupid is one of the defining and least attractive characteristics of contemporary politics. Assuming that anyone who disagrees with you is too dim to get your point is not itself a particularly brainy way to win others over to the essential correctness of your views. But it is true that to small-town Republicans the world is not a complicated place, because they have seen so little of it.
I asked a sophisticated and well-travelled Republican why he voted the way he did. He described growing up “dirt poor” in a small town in Northern California where joining the military was your sole ticket out; where the people in his family who depended on welfare stayed where they were and the ones who worked their fingers to the bone managed to make a better life for themselves. For him, joining the army led directly to an education. In fact, it led all the way to Princeton. But how, I asked him, baffled, could someone as intelligent as he is believe that George W Bush was anything but a cretin? Because, he explained, people in small towns don’t like or trust intellectuals, particularly ones who appear to be sneering at them for their supposed stupidity. They admire a plain-speaking man; it’s what they know and what they are used to.They always assumed Bush was a regular guy who could keep his thoughts concise.
So America is stuck. Two countries, mutually irreconcilable, who never meet each other and don’t want to, either. Who distrust each other at best, despise each other at worst. And who have absolutely no understanding of the other.Reading Sittenfeld’s thinly disguised account of Laura Bush and her upbringing, it was possible to see that the modest lives of her midwestern characters both had dignity and made sense. But I only have to meet them in a novel, which I can snap shut as soon as I’ve finished it. Were I an East Coast Democrat, which is the only kind of American I can ever imagine being, I would have no objection to small-town Republicans – to their church-going and their hunting rifles and their flag-decked porches and their meatloaf with gravy, and their lemon chiffon cake. I could admire their intimacy with the wide prairie and the vast sky.
The problem is that when they’re running the whole country, they want to take away abortion rights, drill for oil in Alaska (a Palin policy), ignore climate change, and start unwinnable wars. With the small-town Republican mindset in charge, the rest of America and the rest of the world is forced to live by small-town values, which aren’t much help when you’re trying to decide what, if anything, can be done about Iranian nuclear ambitions or more humbly, workplace date rape. Can America survive another photo-finish election which the Republicans win, or will it be out and out war between the red and the blue states? Perhaps only small-town America itself can prevent it, such as the dental nurse who asked how the mother of five kids, one with Down’s syndrome, could hold down a full-time job, one step from running the United States. Sarah Palin, bad mom. That might finish her.
This week Linda witnessed the end of the months-long Desperate Housewives drought when it at last returned to Channel 4 on Wednesday: “I survived in the meantime with the theme tune as my mobile-phone ringtone.” She finally saw, almost a year after everyone else, The Band’s Visit: “A film that quietly rejoices in the absurdity of human nature.”
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FKNK is organizing trips to the US. 20,000 tickets (+voting ballots) are already on sale. Sarah Palin might help them in their fight against halting the shooting of birds like storks and also mammals like the ballottra.
Small-town Sarah Palin is what McCain the ‘maverick’ needed to appease the evangelical islamophobes who are dead certain that Armageddon is just round the corner. Unfortunately, on the other side of the charade we find Obama the fake and Biden the snake.
There are four major issues which this bipartisan duopoly never debates:
1. a change in foreign policy (imperial pre-emptive wars)
2. the recurring deficits and the $10 trillion national debt
3. the privately owned Federal Reserve and the impending death of the dollar
4. civil liberties and the advent of the police state.
This charade is orchestrated by the great American media, which offers a staple of the blue pill, never the red. And those who take only the blue pill are oblivious to what is really going on within the matrix, hence such terms as “conspiracy nuts” or “kooks”. Just like the good old Soviet media, but much more entertaining and ‘pluralistic’.
Here is what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz2WegAaCCM
Guess what? Friday’s debate is off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/us/politics/25mccain.html?hp
The Guardian is nobody’s first choice to read a balanced view of what goes on in the USA. Read it for thrills only. Actually I like Palin. She may be a female redneck but she’s got that ‘come get a piece of me’ attitude which makes Americana so attractive. Once I saw a US general say this about some deployment in Iraq ‘If the job can be done, we’ll do it. If it can’t be done, it will just take a while longer’. It’s bullshit of course but this ‘can do’ attitude have put them far ahead of everyone else in the game.
Great to see so much support in this blog to the left-wing American candidate Barack Obama. Just find and view Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention to find out what being left in politics is all about. Incidentally, Hillary Clinton’s speech on the same occasion is also a wonderful expose of left-wing ideals.
Yes I am afraid that Obama and the Democrats might succumb to the dirty tricks which the right-wing, Conservative Republicans are up to. It seems that, the world over, when Conservatives sense defeat, they turn to the most vile personal attacks against their oppont, using the most disloyal means.
A few days ago Obama made a speech in which he said that the US Government presents economic statistcs in a way that they look better than they are. Obama used the expression that “one can put lipstick on a pig, but its still a pig”. Since Sarah Palin had described herself as a pitbull in lipstick a few days previously, the Republican manipulators seized on this Obama quote and put up a publicity spot in which they accused Obama he was denigrating his opponent. Such a lie. Yet with this lie the Reps stole the media limelight and Obama’s rates tumbled.
Doesn’t this remind us of the distortion of an innocent quote by the MLP deputy leader who talked of the “Nationalist DNA”, when he was obviously referring to the “political DNA”. But this quote was spun out of all context, Mangion being accused of being “racist”.
I do fear that the Democrats might succumb to such dirty tacticts by their opponents, who, as the political spectrum goes, share much of their DNA with our own Conservatives, who here prefer to be called Nationalists.
I just hope that the American voters are not as gullible as the Maltese ones.
[Daphne – Albert, in Malta the names of the parties are just names. They don’t represent their political ideology, or rather, not any more. The Labour Party demonstrates all the attributes of the Republicans – xenophobia, arch-conservatism, fear of change, fear of foreigners, racism (at least among its supporters). The Nationalist Party, on the other hand, is now more centre-left than centre-right: it’s opened up the Maltese economy, Maltese society, and pushed us into the EU, when support for the EU is associated with Europe’s left-wing parties and viewed with suspicion by the right-wing (too many foreigners). It’s thrown wide open the doors to education for everyone, provided health and welfare safety nets where only the absolute minimum existed before, and made it possible for even those from the most humble background to achieve a middle-class lifestyle within just a few years, when previously it took at least two generations. To be straight up with you, what I find most off-putting about Labour today is its backward-looking conservatism and fear of change/openness. In fact, an assessment of Ms Palin and what she stands for demonstrates quite clearly that she would appeal to Labour voters here far more than she would to Nationalists. Redneck values do. You are clearly one of those people who still imagines that the Labour Party is left-wing. It isn’t. It’s a xenophobic, conservative, right-wing party.]
The article is interesting but an over-simplification. Even I, with my limited knowledge of America, know that there are a lot more than two worlds there: the educated sophisticated East Coast Democrats and the provincial village Republicans. What about the black, Hispanic and Asian populations? They find no place in Grant’s analysis. The depressed areas of the big inner cities constitute yet another sub-culture.
It is probably a coincidence rather than a clever plan but I’ve noticed that, since McCain introduced Palin as his vp, most of the lampooning and criticism have been directed at her, leaving him relatively unexposed and unattacked. He’s the real candidate for President, not Palin and just because he’s 72 doesn’t mean he’s going to die any time soon. On one side there’s Obama who’s not getting much help from Bidens (he seems to be running alone) and who’s the target of fierce attacks and, on the other there’s McCain whose team-mate is deflecting a lot of flak away from him.It is a pity because, while on foreign policy I’m sure the two candidates are not so distant, on other issues like the environment and gun control Obama would seem to be what America needs.
Kev, it must be really depressing for you, seeing so much evil all around: snakes, Islamophobes, matrices, fakes, coloured pills . . . stuff like that. I hope you sleep wearing a tinfoil helmet – you don’t want ‘Them’ to take over your mind do you? Oh, and, by the way, you should empathise with the evangelicals expecting an Armageddon. Isn’t that what you’re expecting too?
[Daphne – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin-foil_hat%5D ]
I’d say that redneck values are nicely distributed between Labour and the PN. The latter have turned their confessional outfit into a rather more slick machine but it’s essentially all God-fearing, Church-going, cross-kissing conservativism at the top. Labour’s biggest ‘sin’ has been its obnoxious pandering to the basest instincts of the ‘grassroots’ while offering no concrete ideological relief from the God-fearing crowd. Enter Daphne’s pet hate and his ‘moderate and progressive’ technicolour goatee (who rose through the Labour ranks by obnoxiously pandering to the grassroots). An absolute nightmare – as well as a fun punching-bag – for all staunch but liberal-leaning Gonziphiles.
artiklu tal guardian ma jimpressjonani xejn ghax dejjem jigbed lejn naha wahda(liberali u xellugija)
Albert Farrugia
Sigmund Bonello
This blog entry is about the American elections but, of course, you two have to draw comparisons with Malta and talk about Joseph Muscat, as if he had anything in common with Obama (in your dreams). PS. Has Joseph taken to dyeing his goatee? Last time I saw it wasn’t multicoloured but you never know. Maybe he thinks it will make him look hip.
[Daphne – Joseph Muscat is Sarah Palin, not Barack Obama. Surely everyone can see that. How do you dye a goatee without getting the dye on your chin? Maybe it’s done by beauticians, the same way they do eyebrows.]
Let me repeat the issues, Antoine Vella:
1. a change in foreign policy (imperial pre-emptive wars)
2. the recurring deficits and the $10 trillion national debt
3. the privately owned Federal Reserve and the impending death of the dollar
4. civil liberties and the advent of the police state.
If you’re ridiculing these issues the tin-foil lies in your head.
Mariop: A can do attitude when you clearly can’t is a dangerous thing – for everyone else.
Kevin Ellul Bonici: You undermine your own arguments by taking yourself so seriously.
Matthew: They’re still bickering about that this morning. It’s Thursday in Asia, but still Wednesday in the USA, so let’s see what the new dawn brings.
Here, Antoine Vella, have a laugh at this – people wearing tin-foil hats for your amusement –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu9pB1SgQ6I
That goes for you too, Mario ‘can-do’ p. Try and get this into your heads: the US as you have known it is by far over.
[Daphne – Ho-hum.]
Kev, I saw the video – the editing is very good. Where did you get all those clips of the SMU at Tal-Barrani and Rabat? Are they souvenirs from your days at the Depot?
In the case of Malta it’s not unwritten future but unwritten past.
Corinne – ‘A can do attitude when you clearly can’t is a dangerous thing – for everyone else’. I suppose exactly the same words were said when Kennedy announced that they will land a man on the moon within the decade. It sounded like fiction…
@ Antoine Vella
1) Slow down buddy. DCG’s last few posts were about Redneck Culture in Malta and the US. A couple of interesting comparisons were made in which Daphne categorizes Labour as the local rednecks.
2) Muscat as Obama in MY dreams? HIS dreams perhaps, certainly not mine. For starters I’d vote for Obama.
@Kev,
Time to re-adjust the medication perhaps?
Mariop: I was talking about personal not national capability. Sarah Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience is fact not fiction.
“I suppose exactly the same words were said when Kennedy announced that they will land a man on the moon within the decade. It sounded like fiction…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tkB3raSbyo&feature=related
Yes it’s a fake, but it gave me the giggles.
I don’t know if this you tube video has been posted before, but if you haven’t seen it please do. It shows actor Matt Damon making some absolutely brilliant points about why the Republicans chose Palin and why it is so risky for the US and the whole world if she is elected.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6urw_PWHYk
What worries me about the Guardian article is how true the comment about “rednecks” not trusting intellectuals is. This is also undeoubtedly the case here in Malta, otherwise the MLP would not get even 20% of the national vote.
Corinne – I suppose you would know that Palin as VP has little say in foreign policy. Even if she were to become Ms President, there are enough checks and balances in the system. We need the likes of her to tell Ahmadinejad & Co. when to get off the bus before it’s too late.
Mario P: I also know that the US VP takes over when the president is unable to fulfil his role. That portfolio includes foreign policy.
Mario P: Let’s put it another way. Would it make sense for the mayor of, say, Sliema or Birzebbugia to decide US foreign policy?
Or Malta’s, for that matter?
Palin is not the wisest politician in town, but she is increasingly popular with the verage suburban and rural American mostly due to the hysterical attacks by the elite media (which is based in huge urban centres). They hold her with disdain (since she is coming from a small town) and mock her relentlessly. The Democrats have have circulated all these fake pictures (there are about 7 different ones doing the rounds at the moment) and have even hacked into her yahoo account. Elite journaliststs are very paternalistic with her and compete with each other by trying to ‘trap her’ y asking her difficult and convoluted questions which she would surely not answer.
All these attacks, whether justified or not, have made her really popular with the underdogs, people who suffer quietly at home or at work etc
Wow, just wow…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10hnDoQaOg0
Corinne, Clinton did not do badly – he came from a town of 102,000. Reagan was an actor ( and a so and so one at that). I mention these two presidents from opposing sides to show that background does not really have anything to do with proficiency in office. Some of our majors are graduating to Parliament now and I would not hold it against them. What’s your point exactly?
That competence matters and it’s much better to have it there from the start than to find out through experience that it really isn’t there at all. A prospective vice president of the USA who has never travelled is not a desirable thing.
I’m not particularly impressed by many of our parliamentarians either.