William Jacobson is insane. I don’t hate Sarah Palin. I don’t have a problem with her son, Trig. I don’t see anything even remotely wrong with having a baby with Down Syndrome. I don’t think it’s appalling that she took her baby around with her on the campaign trail. I think what Andrew Sullivan said about Sarah and Trig during the campaign was beneath contempt. But I still really, really dislike Sarah Palin and everything she stands for.
The biggest problem I have with Palin is her difficulty with the truth. She lies constantly. Some lies are self-serving, like saying she said ‘thanks, but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere.’ Some lies are malicious, like saying candidate Obama ‘pals around with terrorists.’ But they all debase the truth and our political discourse.
My second problem with Palin is that she is completely, willfully ignorant. I can’t think of anything other than moose-dressing that she might be considered well-informed about, and that includes the job requirements and responsibilities of being the governor of Alaska. I don’t dislike stupid people, but the willfully stupid drive me up a wall.
My third problem is her lack of self-awareness. If she were actually genuinely patriotic she would know that the last thing this country needs is to be led by someone with her obvious limitations.
My fourth problem is that she is a mean and vindictive person who used the accouterments of power to punish her enemies, including her former brother-in-law.
My fifth problem is that she is a Republican of the worst type: socially conservative, economically oligarchic, and environmentally disastrous.
I could go on…I have a few pet peeves as well. But the fact that her winking, hair-flipping, and ‘you-betchas’ grate on me rather than make me see starbursts is not critically important.
The last thing I hold against Sarah Palin is that she has a baby named Trig.
I DO think taking her children around the country (these kids weren’t missing school?) and using them as props was not a sign of good parenting. And exposing a baby with problems that might make him more vulernable to illnesses was irresponsible.
Even if I have my doubts about her parenting skills, I don’t dislike her for them. I basically understand that she needed to introduce herself, and her family was a part of that. They kids had adequate care, in my opinion, and the rest is not really my business.
For starters–How many days of school did they miss last fall?
Next, she didn’t mind sacrificing her teen age daughter’s privacy to advance her own political agenda. I do dislike her for this kind of hypocritical over-the-top ambition. You have no idea, nor do I, what impact it has had and will have on her children.
And finally, when you make a career out of judging others’ personal lives and thwarting legislation that “offends” your own brand of religion, you’d better be prepared to answer for your own personal life. We should respect her privacy when she, in a position of power, denies privacy to others? This is a Republican talking point.
Here’s my bottom line. In Palin’s place, making the decision to have a child with Down’s Syndrome probably would have also led to making the decision she made on Friday. I would have not have attempted to be a governor and a mother to an infant with Down’s, let alone run for vice-president. I think it is too much to handle all at once. But, that is her decision, not mine. Maybe she could have handled it. Maybe she thought she could and it turned out she couldn’t. But, I don’t judge her on that, and I certainly don’t dislike her for it. Women are constantly judged and held back when family intersects with career. I don’t need to add to the problem.
As for her not wanting to be judged when she is so willing to judge others, I do dislike her for that. But Trig is the least of it.
And, when Sarah Palin said “the world needs more ‘Trigs’, not fewer” I concluded that she is downright demented. The world certainly does not need more babies with Down syndrome. Where is this ambitious, insensitive, mean spirited, mendacious woman coming from? And, what is one to think of a political party so bankrupt in moral integrity that they would put her next to a presidential candidate not only in his seventies but also inflicted with cancer of the skin, a known killer. Granted McCain’s condition is under medical control; I wonder, though, if he could ever qualify for private health insurance.
I agree with all your arguments here, BooMan. Once again, fine job.
Yeah, Don, I didn’t get that at all. The world needs healthy babies. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she was conceding that she couldn’t handle being a parent of a Downs baby and being the governor.
But her announcement was bizarre. It was like a bunch of stump speech cliches thrown together with some basketball strategy and liberals hate Trig.
As far as righties concerned about lefties’ always picking on poor Sarah, I’m just waiting until the cameras go off and she can become the answer to a trivia question.
Right, but why was there praise for HAVING Trig? Are down syndrome babies regularly aborted? That would surprise me. What is so remarkable about having and tending a special needs child? Millions of Americans do it every day.
Yes, they are regularly aborted. The abortion rate for fetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome is 91-93% according to a 2002 survey. I’d be surprised if the numbers were much different for any other detectable severe fetal abnormality. That’s a big part of why we have prenatal screening and legal abortion.
It gets praise from the anti-abortion crowd because, well, they’re insane.
There is praise because caring for a Down’s can be more work, sometimes for the rest of your life. And yes, it takes a special type of person to knowingly take that on, after finding out they will not have the ‘perfect’ baby.
Just because millions do it does not make it unpraise worthy. It just means there are millions worthy of praise.
nalbar
Exactly, so why the fuck single Sarah Palin out about it?
She singled herself out for praise. That’s either a tell about her personality disorder, or it’s an admission that her personal life is too much of a burden to be governor too.
Yikes.
I don’t particularly like ‘The world certainly does not need more babies with Down’s Syndrome’.
‘Need’ has nothing to do with it.
You REALLY have to be careful with this path. A Down’s does not ‘need’ to live, but then none of us do.
You will never find happier human beings than the vast majority of Down’s. Frankly there is a touch of ignorance in your statement, and in some of the responses. Maybe if 90% were not aborted, people would be more familiar with them. I promise you, many of the remaining 10% have brought joy to their respective families with their happiness and unconditional love.
My uncle was a Down’s, in a time that they were call ‘mongoloids’. The only regret my grandparents had was when my grandmother got to old to care for him, and put him in a home. He died soon after, at 47 years old. It broke her heart.
I never saw Vernon angry, I never saw him sad.
nalbar
“the world needs more ‘Trigs’, not fewer”
That was a weird and even shocking statement. The goal should be to prevent birth defects, not promote them. The world does not “need” more babies with severe birth defects who may never be able to live on their own and who are likely to have serious health problems all their lives.
I don’t fault Sarah Palin or anyone else for choosing to carry her pregnancy to term after discovering they are a baby with Down syndrome as long as they are willing to make the preparations and personal sacrifices necessary to properly care for that person and guard his health and well-being for the rest of his life. People with Down syndrome have lifelong, often very serious, health challenges. Even very high-functioning people with Down syndrome need someone in their lives who will protect them from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous, unethical people. And they had better understand that “the rest of his life” could continue after his parents are dead and gone.
Sarah Palin was not prepared to make even small sacrifices on behalf of Trig. Instead, she risked his life and health both before and after he was born. If she has finally corrected her priorities, then good for her. Somehow I doubt very seriously that is the case. It almost never is with narcissists.
Give it up about ‘Trig’.
You’re a guy, BooMan, and so, maybe you’re reticent in saying this.
I’m a woman and I’ll say it without hesitation:
She pimps those kids better than Tyrone does his best $10 HO.
Has from the very beginning.
As a woman, I’ve known Sarah Palin’s all my life..I have the knife wounds in my back from the encounters. That’s why women doubted her from the beginning, and the more we got to know her, the higher her negatives became with women. There’s a reason for that.
You can’t tell me that she was qualified to become Vice -President. Wallowing in her ignorance is her worst crime.
as Fareed Zakaria said,
it’s not that she doesn’t know the answers to the questions; she doesn’t even know which questions to ask.
Man! Look at the harm McCain managed to do without getting elected! He thrust both Palin and The Not Plumber onto the national stage, he left and left them with us. They wouldn’t have the kind of voices they have if he hadn’t given them the microphone. Now they won’t go away.
McCain doesn’t have a horse named Pestilence, does he?
Thank whatever powers that he didn’t get elected. Can only imagine what other brilliant ideas he would have stuck us with.
I despise Palin, not the little boy. But I loathe the way she has pimped not only Trig, but the pregnancy of her daughter Bristol and Bristol’s relationship with the young man who impregnated her. There are just some things that should remain with the family. I knew that mess wasn’t going to last long, but with the GOP spin machine, one would have thought it would have been happy ever after.
I also despise her undercover racism and her Svengarlic husband with the connections to the Christian, racist right wing and the Alaska secessionist party.
I can’t forget what happened during the campaign, and she started all the racist codewords all over again. Saying Obama with a stealth terrorist. The haterate literally runneth over. Bad enough, Bill and Hill stirred it up against Obama, with the PUMAs going into overdrive. I had visions of seeing Obama shot somewhere for days.
She’s resigning? Fine. She wasn’t gonna be anything else after the debacle last fall. I always thought she was going to accept a commentator position at Faux News. But I doubt whether she and Murdoch will always see eye to eye.
Palin absolutely had the covert racist chatter down during the campaign.
What I found fascinating was how her resignation speech was a string of non-sequiturs, just shorthand hot button words that, taken together, actually didn’t say anything.
And speaking of the Alaska Independence Party (I think that’s the name of the secessionists), have you noticed how many Republicans talk about secession these days? The Governor of Texas was talking about it a while back, and someone else in the South.
I can’t say I ever gave much of a shit about Palin’s family one way or another, beyond noticing that they were trailer trash. That didn’t make any difference to me insofar as it was Sarah Palin that was running, not her relatives. I seem to recall that Carter and Clinton both had some embarrassing relatives, too. Who cares?
My problem with Sarah Palin wasn’t that she had trailer trash relatives; it was that she is trailer trash herself. That she was apparently the queen of her particular trailer park made it all the worse. Having lived in the South most of my life, I know the type all too well: every clutch of shiftless low-lifes always has one or two preening, empty-headed fools who devote their lives to being the biggest fish in their stagnant little pond. That they are successful at it is why their significant others, and not they themselves, are busy working the night shift at Wal-Mart.
Maybe Wasilla will someday be big enough for its own Wal-Mart. Until then, I expect we’ll have to endure more pathetic pleas for attention from their leading clown.
Her inability to talk policy was my problem with her. It was so bad that I wound up turning the sound off and wallowed in the shallow end of the pool with jokes about her looks.
Late but screw it. the only reason that that woman was put on the gooper ticket was because the ass holes that run the gop party saw that they were going to lose in November and she might just pull off the upset because they believed that the uS wasn’t ready to elect a “N….r!” Simple!!!!!!!! The gop could care less about asnything but what the power of the presidency afforded them and they were petrified of what the Dems would discover once they got into power.
Just look at the venom and hatred that they are continuing to spew at Obama. Just look at the fact that they are even willing to wish openly for a bin laden attack on the US! they are willing to anything, and I mean anything and they will stoop to anything to discredit the dems.
And tragically, given the spineless performance of a large number of Democratic representatives, the are in the process of achieving their goal!
There’s an interesting take on what the Republican Party has become at TPM.