Reasonable People To Sarah Palin: *Slap*

I’d be anxious for the response from any McCain supporters regarding this. Sarah Palin claims, outrageously, that Obama represents a socialist state, ignoring the last eight years and the downright socialist behavior of our current administration. Of course, what else can we expect? These people have radically different standards for themselves than they do for anybody else.

Palin Clears Herself

Were any of your worried about how Sarah Palin would come out of the Troopergate investigation? Well, fear not - Sarah Palin isn’t guilty.

How can I, an average American citizen in West Virginia, know such a thing? Because I read news story, in which Sarah Palin decided to clear herself of wrongdoing.

Maybe that last sentence took your breath away. I’ll write it again. Sarah Palin Has Cleared Herself Of Any Wrongdoing. Good thing too, so we won’t have to worry actual report from investigators.

But seriously, can you imagine the hyperventilating of rightwingers if Barack Obama decided to clear himself of wrongdoing in precisely the same situation? Can anybody? Is it possible? I can only assume that the report coming out will be in some way damning to Palin, although honestly, nothing really slows her never-ending stream of unimaginable bullshit.

Willie Horton and Sarah Palin in Douthat’s World

Ross Douthat wants us to understand that the Willie Horton and White Hands advertisements, which he helpfully included in his post on negative advertising, were actually about something: crime and jobs, respectively. He pleads with us to understand that those sorts of advertisements weren’t racist, but rather, criticisms of social issues at the time, and the reason they ended up appealing so much is because the issues they addressed were on the minds of the voters.

In the end, he concludes that McCain’s “Bill Ayers knows Barack Obama!” line of attack is doomed for failure, because nobody cares. But that’s not my focus here. Rather, it is a throwaway line during his defense of the White Hands advertisement:

The economy is tanking, and the Democrats want companies to hire underqualified minorities, instead of hiring you.

I don’t know why this needs to be explained for the thousandth time, but nobody who embraces affirmative action is doing so because they want underqualified minority candidates to be chosen instead of qualified white applicants. Rather, the point is that if everything else is equal, the minority candidate should be chosen. Disagree with affirmative action if you want - there are plenty of reasonable reasons to do so - but for Christ’s sake, stop misrepresenting the position of those that believe in it.

And incidentally, you can’t endorse both advertisements without implicitly going along with the racial issues contained within. It wasn’t by accident that Willie Horton was black; nor was it incidental that the frustrated hands were white. Both candidates very clearly wanted certain (white) Americans to understand that they were on their side. American blacks, as far as both advertisements were concerned, were coming to kill them and take their jobs, but not necessarily in that order. It is absurd to pretend that because issues (crime and the economy) were part of the equation that the rest of it doesn’t matter.

To put that another way, if you saw a person in blackface giving a very reasonable discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it wouldn’t change the fact that the blackface was racist. It isn’t at all complicated to say that both George Bush (senior) and Jesse Helms could have easily scored their political points without bringing race into the equation; Ross Douthat apparently believes the racial elements were absolutely necessary. He claims to represent a new kind of conservatism, but every single time he’s given the opportunity to, he punts.

(For instance, for all of his love of both the Horton and Hands advertisements, he is genuinely believed that any attack on Sarah Palin was the result of unmitigated sexism of the worst kind. Suggesting that Michael Dukakis wanted Willie Horton to attack his victims, or that Richard Gant wanted whites out of work to be replaced by unqualified blacks? Well that’s just good politics. You’ll excuse me if I have a hard time taking the man seriously.)

Palin’s Hypocrisy

There are probably a thousand more stories like this, but Sarah Palin reportedly demanded her opponent’s marriage certificate when running for the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. A big deal? Maybe not, except that she demands total privacy for her own life - she refuses to provide any evidence that she is her last child’s mother. Rumors circulated that the child belonged, in fact, to Palin’s daughter. Predictably, Republicans went apeshit, claiming that any demand for evidence was absurd. But only when the demand deals with their own candidates.

When it deals with opponents, the rules are completely different. What in the hell sort of outrageous double standard is this? When will these people play by the rules they have for everybody else?

(Sullivan’s pounding the ground on this.)

Palin Goes For Wright, Ayers, Lunacy

Sarah Palin - a member of a church that believes in friggin witchcraft - has decided that she’s going to dredge up not only the spurious connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers, but also, Obama’s ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright. You remember him: he said “God damn America” a bunch of times. Which is absolutely obscene, especially compared with her own church, which welcomes speakers who praise terrorism against Jews as punishment for their belief.

Once again, the rules for Sarah Palin and, apparently, everybody else are completely different. She gets to say, do, claim, smear, and act in any fashion she sees fit, and yet her critics are required to wear mittens and not harm the delicate flower. A pox on her house.

(Incidentally, this is all Republicans have left, and they’re going to throw the kitchen sink at Obama. They have no proposals, no ideas, no thoughts, no approaches, no techniques, nothing but swimming through the gutter in an attempt to grab Obama’s coattails. It’s shameful.)