Since Palin’s from Alaska, I thought it appropriate to post this link from an Anchorage newspaper. This ought to get plenty of circulation in the next couple of months. Even if, as the article indicates, Palin’s questions regarding the censorship of library materials was “rhetorical†it nevertheless is informative that the question would even occur to her.
Compare the toned-down “rhetoric†of Palin’s approach to the more forthright and visceral approach of another grand lady of the Right, Phyllis Schafly, here prescribing a cure for campus mass murder.
So far, Palin’s main success at censorship seems to have been imposed on her future son-in-law, Levi Johnson, whose MySpace page was rendered “Private†after the convention. Among other things the young man asserted there was his disdain for marriage and his love of profanity. In all likelihood, he wasn’t about to marry Bristol, who apparently has benefited from the Abstinence Only education the Republicans have been pushing and, if Mrs. Palin is anything to go by, will continue to push in a McCain presidency.
My point here is very simple. The title of the post is for those remaining Hillary diehards who may still be considering a vote for McCain out of protest over Obama’s winning the Democratic nomination. Ask yourselves if, just to have a woman in the White House, you would vote for Phyllis Schlafly. Because that’s about what a vote for McCain would amount to, especially now. McCain is 72, cancer-prone. Even if he doesn’t die in office, there may be times when he is incapacitated, which would leave the estimable Mrs. Palin in charge.
Her comment about the difference between pit bulls and hockey moms is telling. I know, I know, it was humor. Wasn’t it? I know a lot of women who like being compared to a dog. It was the lipstick punchline that held the main clue, which is to say that Mrs. Palin, in default mode, thinks of women about the same way Phyllis Schlafly does. Those who find themselves in special situations where they can have careers is fine, for those women, but a concerted effort to alter the social landscape to accept the idea that women are more than a facade with a family is unacceptable.
Palin has already egregiously misrepresented her record. This won’t matter to her base, which lives and dies on the proper spin, but each and every instance ought to be held to the same scrutiny Obama has been and is about to receive.
