I watched Palins interview and I thought she answered the bridge to nowhere and pork barrel spending like a seasoned politician..........that did not make me happy. I was glad to hear the answers she gave concerning the state trooper issue and the book banning issue.
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Friends of Mooseslayer have a fit Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Such fury! Such rage! All I did was poke some goodnatured fun at the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, referring to her as Little Miss Mooseslayer, and — Santa Maria! — you would think I had slandered St. Peter himself. They came at me with e-mails telephone calls and letters. They called me names I cannot repeat in a family newspaper. They told me that my “days are numbered,” or at least one of them did. They quoted Holy Scripture to me. They were especially furious that I had seemed to mock the Mooseslayer’s “faith,” which I here put in quotes because it has become a buzzword. I thought that unfair since John McCain seems to have chosen her precisely because of her faith, or religion. He was having trouble firing up the rightwing evangelicals, and that’s how he solved the problem. He picked one of them as his running mate and he made himself clear by picking one who had no other visible qualifications. Anyway, now I am doing some soul-searching. I’m asking myself, where did I go wrong? Was it in quoting Sarah Palin saying how cool it was, gettin’ saved? Or in quoting her about how God wanted a gas pipeline built? Or in quoting her, again, about how the war in Iraq is a “task from God?” That wouldn’t seem fair. After all, those were her words, not mine. Maybe I went wrong in quoting the pastor who was standing next to her at a church event talking about the hundreds of thousands of people he expects to pour into Alaska during the Biblical “last days.” I’ll grant that one. Those weren’t her words, she was just standing there. Or maybe I was wrong to cite her church’s Statement of Faith, which holds that non-believers, presumably including the Dalai Lama and Sen. Joe Lieberman, will suffer eternal damnation. Faith people never like it when I point out exactly what their faith entails. In any event, what gets me is the hotness of the anger, and it’s directed not just at me, it’s directed at the “elites,” which is a word that keeps recurring in these attacks. There seems to be a smoldering resentment abroad in the land against people who are somehow higher up than the rest of us, or think they are. It began with Nixon, as far as I can recall, though George Wallace was point man for a while, and now it has burst forth with a fury over Little Miss Mooseslayer, the idea being that she is “ordinary,” as one of her defenders angrily put it to me, and she is being attacked by these repugnant “elites,” including me, though how I got to be a member of any elite is a mystery to me. But there it is: Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, million-dollar media kings, qualify as ordinary, while me, laboring away at a little newspaper in upstate New York for modest wages, I’m a member of some elite. Why? Not because I’m rich, not because I have a Ph.D. from Harvard, not because anyone in power pays the least attention to me, but because I’m smart-alecky enough to make fun of religious pretense, that’s all. Ordinary people believe in God, dadburnit, and lousy elitists look down their noses at them. It comes into the open with the anointment of Miss Mooseslayer, the least qualified candidate for national offi ce in my lifetime. Anyone who pokes fun at her or questions her qualifications to lead the nation is an elitist, just by definition. It’s weird — or revealing — how angry her defenders get. They don’t just say, oh, give her a chance, or maybe she’ll learn on the job, or she seems like a decent sort. They defend her with an absolute passion. They compare her favorably with the very author of the Declaration of Independence, in one case. I expect to hear that she surpasses Julius Caesar and maybe even the mighty Moses before this is fi nished. There is something bitterly defiant about it: She’s ours! She’s not like you damned elites. I will say this for Sarah Palin, if it makes anyone feel any better. I watched her interview on ABC, and I thought she did OK. For one thing, she sounded more mature than she did on her church video, where she sounded like a Teeny-Bopper for Jesus. She had obviously been coached to within an inch of her life, so she could even be handy with the name of the president of Iran, but at least she was able to absorb the coaching. And much of what she had to say was merely Republican boilerplate, but at least she was able to maintain her aplomb in the face of condescending questioning. It was clear she’s not dumb, even if she believes dumb things. She’s just ordinary, as her fiercest supporters insist. I think of her being vice president, or possibly president, and I still say — saints be praised — I will not lack for column material again.
Re Carl Strock’s Sept. 9 column, “Here comes Little Miss Mooseslayer”: Mr. Strock shames the Gazette with his vicious, bigoted attack on Sarah Palin. To characterize the term-limited exmayor and current governor of Alaska as “Little Miss Mooseslayer” attempts to belittle with sexist language a person whose achievements far exceeds his. His sense of urban male elitism (shared with most Democrats and a certain community organizer) blend with sexism when he calls the governor “a bright-eyed cheerleader for Jesus.” Strock’s attempt to mock the governor’s pronunciation of Iraq further demonstrates his inflated sense of cultural superiority. That Mr. Strock holds up Thomas Jefferson — slaveholder, bigot, liar, rapist and hypocrite — as an example of the high standards for the office of president would be comical if Mr. Strock were not serious. Perhaps Mr. Strock would like to devote a column to Mr. Jefferson’s secret attacks on George Washington while serving in Washington’s Cabinet. Is this the standard of integrity Mr. Strock expects of a vice president? Certainly it appears Mr. Strock cannot tolerate a woman who speaks her mind, hunts, supports the Second Amendment, and who supports Christian values. SUSAN AND ART HENNINGSON Rotterdam
I am disappointed in America’s white women voters. Are they defecting to the McCain camp because he chose a “woman” vice president for his ticket? What happened to all the white women voters (not to exclude anyone else) for Hillary? The Republican Party does not stand for anything these “Hillary” voters stood for. Are these women so intent on getting a woman in the White House that they would desert their party and vote Republican? CAROL A. MCARDLE Amsterdam
Last night I had a dream. What follows is the text of that dream: Dear Santa, I really want a woman for vice president. A woman who believes in banning books at my public library. Someone who tells other women they have absolutely no choice and the federal government should be able to control what they do with their bodies. I want someone who would want to teach Creationism in our public schools and devalue evolution as a wild theory. Someone who can read a Teleprompter like a champ. Oh gosh, Santa, make her look good in glasses, too! And it would be great if she were under 50, so the kids could relate to her. Um, could you also make her have a lot of kids, maybe named after trees like “Willow” and common nouns like “Track?” Oh, and could she hunt grizzly bears too? And what the heck, could she abuse her executive powers by demanding a state trooper be fired because he is the ex-husband of her sister? Finally, how about if she never traveled outside the United States and didn’t even have a passport until last year? Oh, Santa, I know it’s a lot to ask for, but I think I’ve been a good boy this year? Signed, John McCain, Republican candidate for president. Oh, if it were only a dream — instead of a real nightmare. MICHAEL WINN Saratoga Springs
John McCain’s campaign has said that Sarah Palin will not do interviews unless the press guarantees that she will be treated deferentially. Are you kidding me? This is a nominee for the office of vice president of the United States, and she wants to be treated with kid gloves. This is the woman who will be a heartbeat away from becoming president of our country — which is a very real possibility given that her running mate is a 72-year-old man with a dicey medical history. If elected, will Ms. Palin demand that the leaders of Middle Eastern countries talk nice to her, and if not, she will refuse speak to them? Not that this is that far off from the Bush foreign policy — and look how well that has served us. What the Republicans don’t even realize is that treating Ms. Palin this way is sexist. She should be strong enough and courageous enough to sit down with any interviewer and let this country hear her thoughts — not words written by George Bush’s speechwriters, but her ideas. I think the Republicans realize that allowing Ms. Palin to be asked about her Pentecostal beliefs and foreign policy intellect will be disastrous for them, so it is better to let the convention bump linger for as long as possible. As a woman, I am offended that Ms. Palin refuses to step up and be treated like every other vice presidential nominee has, both currently and in the past. She deserves no special treatment — not when she is asking to be a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world. DIANE CLARKE Niskayuna
Charles Krauthammer Palin’s celebrity status topping even Obama’s Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
The Democrats are in a panic. In a presidential race that is impossible to lose, they are behind. Obama devotees are frantically giving advice. Tom Friedman tells him to “start slamming down some phones.” Camille Paglia suggests, “be boring!” Meanwhile, a posse of Democratic lawyers, mainstream reporters, lefty bloggers and various other Obamaphiles are scouring the vast tundra of Alaska for something, anything, to bring down Sarah Palin: her daughter’s pregnancy, her ex-brother-in-law problem, her $60 per diem, and now her religion. (CNN reports — news flash! — that she apparently has never spoken in tongues.) Not since Henry II asked if no one would rid him of his turbulent priest, have so many so urgently volunteered for duty. But Palin is not just a problem for Obama. She is also a symptom of what ails him. Before Palin, Obama was the ultimate celebrity candidate. For no presidential nominee in living memory had the gap between adulation and achievement been so great. Which is why McCain’s Paris Hilton ads struck such a nerve. Obama’s meteoric rise was based not on issues — there was not a dime’s worth of difference between him and Hillary on issues — but on narrative, on eloquence, on charisma. The unease at the Denver convention, the feeling of buyer’s remorse, was the Democrats’ realization that the arc of Obama’s celebrity had peaked — and had now entered a period of its steepest decline. That Palin could so instantly steal the celebrity spotlight is a reflection of that decline. It was inevitable. Obama had managed to stay aloft for four full years. But no one can levitate forever. Five speeches map Obama’s trajectory. Obama burst into celebrityhood with his brilliant and moving 2004 Democratic convention speech (Ð1). It turned an obscure state senator into a national figure and legitimate presidential candidate. His next and highest moment (Ð2) was the night of his Iowa caucus victory when he gave an equally stirring speech of the highest tones that dazzled a national audience just tuning in. The problem is that Obama began believing in his own magical powers — the chants, the swoons, the “we are the ones” self-infatuation. Like Ronald Reagan, he was leading a movement, but one entirely driven by personality. Reagan’s revolution was rooted in concrete political ideas (supply-side economics, welfare-state deregulation, national strength) that transcended one man. For Obama’s movement, the man is the transcendence. Which gave the Obama campaign a cult-like tinge. With every primary and every repetition of the high-flown, selfreferential rhetoric, the campaign’s insubstantiality became clear. By the time it was repeated yet again on the night of the last primary, the tropes were tired and flat. To top himself, Obama had to reach. Hence his triumphal declaration that history would note that night, his victory, his ascension, as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Clang. But Obama heard only the cheers of the invited crowd. Not yet seeing how the pseudo-messianism was wearing thin, he did Berlin, and finally jumped the shark. That grandiloquent proclamation of universalist puffery popped the bubble. The grandiosity had become bizarre. From there it was but a short step to Paris Hilton. Finally, the Obama people understood. Which is why the next data point is so different. Obama’s Denver acceptance speech was deliberately pedestrian, State-of-the-Union-ish, programmatic and only briefly (that lovely coda recalling the March on Washington) lyrical. The problem, however, was that Obama had announced the Invesco Field setting for the speech during the pre-Berlin flush of hubris. They were stuck with the Greek columns, the circus atmosphere, the rock star fireworks farewell — as opposed to the warmer, traditional, balloon-filled conventionhall hug-a-thon. The incongruity between text and context was apparent. Obama was trying to make himself ordinary — and serious — but could hardly remember how. One star fades, another is born. The very next morning McCain picks Sarah Palin and a new celebrity is launched. And in the celebrity game, novelty is trump. With her narrative, her persona, her charisma carrying the McCain campaign to places it has never been and by all logic has no right to be, she’s pulling an Obama. But her job is easier. She only has to remain airborne for seven more weeks. Obama maintained altitude for an astonishing four years. In politics, as in all games, however, it’s the finish that counts.
I really don't know if Gov. Sarah Palin is qualified for the vice presidency or for that matter the presidency itself. I don't know enough about her yet to make that judgement.
What I do know is that the American people seem to be taken back by her. They "like" her, if you will. It seems that they like her for being a hockey mom. For comparing herself to a pitbull. For her religious faith. For her motherhood. For her ability to "dress a moose". For her snow mobiling ability. They "like her" and can "relate" to her. She appears "real".
Now although these are certainly not qualifications to be elected to the 2nd most highest position in this country, this just demonstrates how our seasoned politicians lack the ability to relate to "the people". While she is obviously not a seasoned politician, like those in Washington, she posesses an attribute lacking in our political system.
Hopefully Gov.Palin can learn something from our seasoned politicians and they can learn something from her.
The letter by the man in Saratoga is correct indeed and I agree with him that this will sink McCain especially when people find out how ridiculous the names of the kids are, If she were a true Catholic she would use names like John and Peter and Steven and that like saints names but instead she mocks god and goes and uses names like Wilton and Trigger and Bristle. Why did MCain pick this here joke. I want to know ho we can get her off the ballot on NY since I saw the interview and she did even know Bushes policy on war. What a disgrace
The letter by the man in Saratoga is correct indeed and I agree with him that this will sink McCain especially when people find out how ridiculous the names of the kids are, If she were a true Catholic she would use names like John and Peter and Steven and that like saints names but instead she mocks god and goes and uses names like Wilton and Trigger and Bristle. Why did MCain pick this here joke. I want to know ho we can get her off the ballot on NY since I saw the interview and she did even know Bushes policy on war. What a disgrace
And by the way....Sarah Palin is not a Catholic let alone a 'true Catholic'. Now there ya have a real informed voter!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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