The ratings are up for "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Oh, that's so sad for the people who exulted last week when the ratings were down. I skipped last week myself, but I watched this week's show. It was pretty cool seeing the Palins hauling in fish nets, slicing salmon into strips, tying the strips with string, and hanging them up in a smokehouse, with Todd's Eskimo grandmother demonstrating how to set up the fire to get the smoke just right.
I was touched by Sarah's interaction with Trig and with another boy with Down Syndrome (a member of her extended family). It made me cry and it made me think about this post by Andrew Sullivan criticizing Sarah Palin for combining motherhood and a career in national politics:
Anyone one who genuinely cared about the privacy of her kids would have either said no [to the vice presidential nomination] or been extremely careful to release the information as soberly as possible....
[S]he parades a special needs infant in front of the press, dangles him half-naked in front of book tour crowds, uses him constantly as a rhetorical campaign prop, and cites him at almost every speech to appeal to pro-life voters....
What Palin has done with her young children is unprecedented. Think of how Obama strictly protects his daughters, and how George W. Bush did the same.
Think of how the press — including you — regards those daughters as off-limits but goes after Palin's daughters.
What Palin has done is use her children, having failed to actually rear them. She is still doing it on her reality show. That she has gone so far as to use and thereby abuse a child with Down Syndrome whose interests are clearly in seclusion, careful nurturing and care, and constant parental attention, tells you a huge amount.
Seclusion? Is that right, tucking those kids away from the rest of the society? Why not be out and proud?
Quite aside from the (deliberate?) misspelling — "altar" for "alter" — and the repetition of the "myth" — which I'm putting in quotes only because it's their word — the newspaper purports to know why a man (and a woman and 2 little girls) go to church.
Let me give you a quiz. (The first response below is the one The Daily News ascribed to the President and his family.)
ADDED: I'm glad at least a couple people admit to the afterlife insurance motivation. But here's the thing: What if doing religion as afterlife insurance is the one thing that pisses God off?
I thought we weren't going to talk about the President's children. Or is it okay to gush inanely like this, serenely confident that the rule against talking about the President's children will stop everyone but the truly contemptible from saying that you've gushed inanely?
From an inane interview with ABC with consumer reporter Elizabeth Leamy, who makes a lame effort to convey the impression that she's going to enlighten viewers about the new financial reform law. Leamy exclaims that Americans don't know what's in the law, as if she's about to extract that information from the President. Spoiler: She's not.
Laughing, she hefts the 2,000 pages and shakes them at the President, and he laughs too and jokes "Don't hurt yourself." She laughs more. Ha ha. Isn't funny?! She recites a seemingly memorized question that ends with "Persuade me that this law matters to ordinary Americans," and then she lets the President gets away with simply asserting the purpose of the law: consumers will have lots of new "security and protection." But what's in the 2,000 pages that gives "security and protection"? Obama doesn't have to say.
Leamy cites some examples of "unintended consequences," and Obama looks a little uncomfortable but quickly plugs in a sound bite about how consumers are going to get "more information." Why is that an answer? There will be unintended consequences, but somewhere, in writing, you will get told about them? And that's it for the subject of what's in the law, as the interview moves on to whether Obama will appoint Elizabeth Warren — Leamy calls her "Elizabeth Warden" — to head the new agency.
At this point, less than 3 minutes into a 6 1/2 minute segment — did ABC edit out some more substantive material? — Leamy slips into the subject of what it all means for Obama and his family.
"What are you and the First Lady teaching your daughters about money?" That has nothing to do with the 2,000 page law that we've learned nothing about. We're into the touchy-feely, news-for-women part of the morning show. For the first time in the interview, Obama compliments Leamy on her question: "You know, it's a great question." Ha. Translation: Oh, good, we're through the hard part of the interview. Obama says that the girls get an allowance and "may be able to earn some of their own money babysitting." How could that possibly happen? How many Secret Service agents would have to come along? Anyway, Leamy is reduced to giggling and raising her hand in a silly, girly "pick me!" gesture as if Malia or Sasha would babysit her kids.
Leamy asks about Obama's own retirement fund. "Can you feel the pain?" Oh, lord, does she think she's interviewing Bill Clinton and that Obama would emote "I feel your pain"? I imagine he's thinking: You know, that's a stupid question. Do you have any idea what a fountain of wealth I am? If I ever ran short, I could hire a ghostwriter and do another autobiography or 2.
But he has to be nice and he has to take the political opportunity. He rambles through an answer that includes the quote I put in the post title. Yes, we laughed when he said that, but, seriously, what was he supposed to say? It's Leamy's fault for not asking serious questions about how the new law would work and for indulging herself and disrespecting her viewers with mushy family stuff about the Obamas.
I know you can take 1,000 photos and pick out the 2 with the most negativity, but still.... these are the photos in the article, and... well, I'll leave it to you to imagine the dialogue.
By contrast, look how sweet he is out with his daughter:
And here is the haloed Michelle clasping hands with a true goddess, Nadia Comaneci:
I hope this means Michelle and Barack will lay off lecturing us about what foods we ought to eat. Or will the next photo op be in the setting of the White House vegetable garden?
What are we to think of all this burger eating? Those little girls are slim, certainly not obese, but what are other little girls supposed to think? They want cheeseburgers and malts too. What's the secret? Maybe the hamburgers are cut in quarters and each girl gets a 200-calorie little sandwich along with a a 100-calorie portion of the malt. Really, how do you do it? (Certainly not by throwing up!) The little girls of America need some health-care info from the family that has undertaken to oversee our health.
Now, one more thing. Why was the female component of the Obama family deployed yesterday? The linked NYT blog says "Someone in the White House obviously had a hankering for an Obama burger." Now, I'm going to throw up. This is political. Here's a clue:
"The Palins have no intention of providing a ratings boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show. Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman," PalinPAC spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said Wednesday.
So Letterman is a child abuser for making a tasteless joke?
Sullivan seems to miss that Stapleton just made a child-rape joke. It's a joke! Well, it's a joke is not an apt excuse — is it? — when the joke is supposed to work based on a shared belief about the butt of it.
Stapleton's joke depends on seeing Letterman as someone who's enthused about the rape of children — or at least the children of politicians we don't like. By the same token, Letterman's joke worked to the extent that the audience shares the belief that Palin's daughter is a big slut.
Neither joke is any damned good. Letterman is a creep for making a girl the butt of his joke, and Stapleton is an idiot for trying to show that she can joke too and cranking out another dose of child-rape humor.
But the surrealism and narcissism of the Wasilla nutcase is what stands out:
"First, remember in the campaign, Barack Obama said, 'Family's off limits. You don't talk about my family.' "And the candidate who must be obeyed, everybody adhered to that and they did leave his family alone. They haven't done that on the other side of the ticket and it has continued to this day so that's a political double standard."
So brandishing a special needs infant as a campaign prop was putting your family off-limits? Pushing your own daughter into the klieglights to divert attention from your own fantastic lies is family-protective? Pushing Bristol Palin into an absurd abstinence campaign to gin up support from the Christianist right is looking after your kids? Palin reaps what she sows. And she clings to any whisp of victimhood like the attention-starved celebreality star she really is.
Now, this is absurd. Nearly all politicians display their families. Do they brandish them? Brandish means to shake or wave (as a weapon) menacingly/to exhibit in an ostentatious or aggressive manner. Occasionally, one reads of some criminal swinging a baby around like a cudgel, but with politicians, the displaying of the family is non-aggressive and without any weapon connotations. Obama displayed and continues to display Sasha and Malia in the conventional political way, and I'm sure Sullivan would be steamed if anyone mocked them or said anything sexual about them.
Bristol Palin's abstinence effort seems pretty silly to me too, but there's no reason to view that as opening her up to all sorts of vicious mockery. She found herself in an awfully uncomfortable spot. It's embarrassing enough for a teenager to become pregnant by accident, but to endure this in the crossfire of a political campaign had to be excruciating. But she put up with it somehow, didn't take the out of abortion, kept smiling, and tried to turn herself into a good lesson for others. How is this sowing something that she deserves to reap?
Or — oh — it's Palin who reaps what she sows. Is the girl not a person worthy of any regard? What did the girl do? "Family's off limits. You don't talk about my family." Obama said that. It was intended to bind his harshest opponents to a standard of behavior. Sullivan offers absolutely no reason why the same principle does not protect Palin's family.
And why should the governor of a state be called an "attention-starved celebreality star"? Is it because you don't respect her as a politician? You might call everyone with the nerve to run for President/Vice President an attention-starved celebreality star, but the fact is you don't. Apparently, it's because she's got kids who do things that you think we can sit back and view as objects of idle amusement. If anyone is to be a politician — in your nasty little world — their kids better toe the line and stay perfectly prim and healthy and smart (or hide).
