Palin’s Vett T-shirt contest

I thought it was about time to hit a lighter note in all of this, dead serious as the issues may be.  So here is a round up of the top ten Anti-Palin T-Shirts. Vote for your favorites in the comments section, or nominate others and I will post them here.

N.B. I have purposely avoided T-Shirts that are outright sexist or have no merit other than to be sexually demeaning.  That said, I have allowed a couple “Bush” T-shirts because they obviously relate to our current President.  Any double entendre is added by the reader.

Palin Panderbear: Cute, cuddly, and winks! Says 10 GOP approved phrases

Jesus was a Community organizer/Pontius Pilate was a Governor

Mooselini

Somewhere in Alaska, a village is missing its idiot

Palin-drone

Palin Doctrine: Don’t Blink / Don’t Think

Sarah Palin: Just another Bush we can’t trust.

Sarah Palin: Just a Bush with Lipstick

Nothin but Lipschtick

My mommy is too smart to vote for Sarah!

The winner so far:  

 

Palin Panderbear: Cute, cuddly, and winks!  Says 10 GOP approved phrases:

•  “You Betcha!”
• “Liberal Media”
• “Tax and Spend”
• “Joe Sixpack”
• “Shakin’ and fixin’”
• “I know a Supreme court case!”
• “I’m a hockey-mom”
• “I’ll have to get back ta ya.”
• “Maverick” 
• “I can see Russia from my house”

 

Wink, wink, (wink, wink, wink,) nudge, nudge…do you get it yet? This is a joke.

Okay, I’m going to say it:  “I told you so!”

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that Sarah Palin had winked at Charlie Gibson during her now infamous “answer” to the Bush Doctrine question. Cornered and desperate she retreated to a comfort zone:  the Um-I-don’t-know-the-answer-but-gosh-darnit-aren’t-I-cute defense.  And then last Thursday during the debate, it was even worse:  Check this out:

What was that?  Five or six times she winked at the “American People” while pasting together her mental Cliff Notes on Health Care, Tax Reform, and Foreign Policy?  I said it three weeks ago and I’ll say it again:  “We all know women like this.  The fake-it-until-you-can-make-it type.  The ex-prom and almost-beauty queens who recite ‘world view?’…er, I mean ‘World Peace?’ to every question. The popular girls who learned to handle men and controversy with a smile, a giggle, a glance, a wink.”

She and the McCain campaign are the first to cry “sexism,” but they are all using her sex appeal to flirt with answers and seduce voters. From the beginning, they cried ‘foul’ when reporters talked about Palin’s children or motherhood, and in the same breath the campaign extols her Vice Presidential qualifications as “hockey mom” or “mother of 5”. 

Last Thursday she was handed her hat by Joe Biden.  Palin meandered through a question invoking her “soccer-mom” (notice the slight spin with the stereotype to gain the largest sympathy) charicteristics.  When Biden had the chance to answer the question he nearly broke down in tears, recalling his late wife and the two boys that he raised through a tragic and almost fatal accident.  Like Hillary’s moment of tears in the Primaries that evoked so much discussion of sexism, Biden’s moment called us back to the reality of modern parenting:  Men are parents, too.  And if we truly want to move past sexism, we stop trying to bank on sexual stereotypes when it’s convenient and ignore them otherwise.

‘Also’ spake Sarahthustra

From a reader and friend, commenting on Palin’s performance in the debate:  (too good not to post here, but you can also see it in comments related to Palin in Comparison: Part II)

1) those shoes were totally inappropriate also
2) it’s pronounced nU-clE-Ar also
3) stop saying “also” also
4) just because you dont completely f-[edited] something up doesnt mean you did a good job also
5) joe biden is presidential material, you are a hockey mom also
6) last night was a job interview and you made it clear you are NOT QUALIFIED for the position also
7) for a hockey mom she’s a quick study, but that doesnt make her a critical thinker also
acting like a [edited for content] does not make you smarter than the person next to you also
9) straight talk means ACTUALLY answering the question someone asks you, not answering the question you wish someone asked you also
10) Your disgusting WINKING at the camera did nothing to advance human rights, american politics, break any social or cultural barriers; and proved yourself once again as a cocky and arrogant ignoramus in the face of difficult issues you don’t fully understand.

Amen, Sistah!

Palin’ in Comparison: Part II

12:08 EST  Post debate. 

Not the bloodbath I had hoped for, but as the pundits dissect the debate, something more awful (but admittedly less entertaining) is dawning on me:  Apparently he litmus test for Palin as a potential VP is that she didn’t screw up too badly…again.  What has happened to our standards?

 Are we seriously talking about a supposedly legitimate female VP candidate as if she were a little girl who finally remembered the steps in her tap dance?

 Tonight, Geraldine Ferraro speaking to Brian Williams after the debate, mentioned that she was glad that her granddaughter could watch this debate and see a woman “hold her own.”

 Hold her own, Geraldine? Granted I was too young to even know about voting when you were on the historic democratic ticket (two decades before the Republicans got around to it, I might add) but I remember that you were supposed to be “setting a stage”, “crashing a ceiling”, “establishing a new standard” so that in my future, women weren’t just a surprise quantity if they could “hold their own” against any man.  Rather, in that future (today, supposedly) women could be expected to be able to regularly surpass our male counterparts with no surprise or shock, but rather with regularity and admiration.

 You are hardly the vanguard of feminism anymore, but you did work for a woman who is, and who is one of the finest women ever to serve in politics, no matter what you think of her politics — Hillary went toe-to-toe with Joe Biden and many others dozens of times and didn’t just “hold her own” but used her intellect and experience to wipe the floor with their remains.

 In contrast, why do you… how could any woman …uphold Sarah Palin as a role model for women when she set the bar so low that all she had to do was remove the dunce cap and smile to exceed expectations?  Is that all the farther we’ve come since your historic run?  Is that how far expectations of women have fallen since Hillary left the race? 

Golda Meir didn’t just smile and memorize lines; she attended synagogue in Stalinist Russia and led Israel through war and massacre when none would aid.  Margaret Thatcher didn’t just not screw up against Brezhnev and Andropov; she dominated and defied them and helped bring about the end of the Soviet Union.  Benezir Bhutto didn’t just hold her own against her deterrents in Pakistan, she sacrificed her life for the future of her country.  In no way can Palin even begin to compare favorably with such women. Palin pales in comparison to such laudable models, and even lipstick doesn’t disguise that fact.

 

Mock, Mock. Who’s there?

As part of her exclusive interview with Katie Couric on CBS, Palin spewed with a lot of fluff about Foreign Policy, the Economy, and McCain, displaying such a shallow knowledge of the facts that I thought I was watching a Freshman Poli Sci (That’s short for Political Science, Sarah) 101 presentation.

My favorite was when Couric asked her about why being neighbors to Russia gave her Foreign Policy experience and Palin’s answer, was essentially:

1. Because we share a border with Russia
2. Because it does
3. Because neighboring foreign countries are neighboring and foreign
4. Because it [Russia] is right over our border
5. Because they [Russia] are right there
6. Because they [Russia] are right next to our state

Great!  Thank you for clarifying.  No wonder we mock you, dear.

I can hear Kissinger smacking his forehead and muttering “Oy Vey!” from here.

 – – – – – – –

Read from the Excerpted transcript here, or go to cbsnews.com to watch the video.  I inserted the numbers to correspond to the list above.

Couric

: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?Sarah Palin: That (1) Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a comment like that was kinda made to … I don’t know, you know … reporters.

Couric: Mocked?

Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.

Couric: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.

Palin: Well, (2) it certainly does, because our, our (3) next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there… 

Couric: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

Palin: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. (4) It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, (5) because they are right there, (6) they are right next to our state.

 

 

Naughty Monkey

Is there a male equivalent of the red, patent leather F@#K Me Pumps that Sarah Palin wore to her debut?

If there were, maybe a national discussion of them would seem non-sexist.  But there isn’t, and every woman knows it.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked them, too, those 3 ½ inch heel, peep-toe, Naughty Monkey shoes (I kid you not, that’s the brand — The shoe name is ‘Double Dare’). 

I’ll swear on my orange snake-skin, Nine West Olavera, Gucci knock-offs that they were enviably stylish, but I NEVER would have worn them to an interview, particularly with a skirt… not unless I was hoping to flirt my way in the door and F@#K  my way to the top. 

“C’mon America, you know you want to hire me.  Go on, you Naughty little Monkeys.  I Double Dare you.”

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Quick as a Wink

The first time I watched the Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson, I laughed, I hooted, I wretched, and then I wept for our country. The second time I watched it, I cringed anew. The third time –I know, but c’mon searching her in You-Tube is fun, not to mention revelatory—the third time I just wanted to listen to The Bush Doctrine blunder again.

The uncertain eyes, the constantly shaking fist, the over use of “Charlie,” the…WTF!?!….did she just?….No!!!….Rewind.  Play…OMG!  STOP THE PRESSES!  Sarah Palin WINKED at Charlie Gibson.  Did anyone else see that?

Take a look for yourself (It’s about 42 seconds into this excerpt from Talking Points Memo):

This, THIS is why there is still sexism in this campaign. Not because the Democrats are being sexist, but because the McCain/Palin/Bush campaign keeps using Palin’s gender. Think about it:  The lipstick jokes, the Hockey-Mom comments, the “Shucks, I’m trying to look as frumpy as possible” demurring…

I know. It’s only a wink.  She moistened an eyeball, nothing more.  Probably a nervous tick.

But, no.  Just minutes before in this interview she was making a BFD about how she is not the type to even blink when considering whether she’s qualified to deal with terrorists, or the thought of having to run the most powerful nation on earth.  Nope.  Her blind ambition provides enough moisturizing miasmia so that her eyelids don’t have to bother.

But give her a question for which she was unrehearsed and she retreats into a comfort zone of distracting the petitioner with flirty gestures and non answers.

We all know women like this.  The fake-it-until-you-can-make-it type.  The ex-prom and almost-beauty queens who recite “world view?”…er,. I mean “World Peace?” to every question. The popular girls who learned to handle men and controversy with a smile, a giggle, a glance, a wink.

This isn’t high school anymore, Sarah.  You can’t retake exams, lie your way out of detention, or seduce votes for Student Council. Our nation is in serious crisis and you’re seriously unqualified to help lead it.