PhotoShop wins again.
So, that picture of Sarah Palin in a bikini and carrying a gun? Yeah, not so much.
Don’t get me wrong. Much as I despise Sarah Palin’s positions on most issues and insane as I think the McCain campaign is for selecting her as a VP candidate without bothering to vet her at all (I stand by my assertion that the main reason for the selection and timing was to draw attention from Obama’s amazing speech at the Democrat convension), this kind of thing — a PhotoShopped image which gets captions like, “Meet America’s First Trailer Trash VP” — is really just beneath us. Beneath us as Democrats, beneath us as liberals, beneath us as Americans. It’s absolutely appalling that any woman who rises in politics or any other endeavor which brings her into the spotlight is simply assumed to have posed in skimpy clothing at some point in her past, or even completely nude. Palin never has, and to suggest, even via PhotoShop, that she has is pandering to the worst elements of our culture.
I also should mention that I am thoroughly unimpressed with the revelation that Palin was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party. Unless there is substantial reason to believe that she still believes in their cause and supports their goals, it’s completely irrelevant. After all, I was once a Libertarian; now I consider libertarianism just as flawed as Communism. People change their politics. So what.
And as for her teenage daughter’s pregnancy: Well, yeah, Palin’s remarks display a remarkable amount of hypocrisy, but for God’s sake leave the kid out of it. Again, it’s just beneath us.
You are probably above the vileness of the seeming typical — what to call these people? I suspect you are, and I’ll take your word for it. But you, sir, are in a small minority. Those who claim to promote liberal values, liberal to my mind being the values of America’s founders and those of, among others, John Stewart Mill, are showing themselves in what passes as mainstream media today, e.g. the Washington Post, as mentally ill, as people possessed by nothing more than hysterical hatred of life itself. Shameful and disgusting are the minds on display across America in light of Sarah Palin.
But, as you appear to be among the minority of men reasonable, I expect that when time allows you will reassess your current position and come to admit that America is not the Obama vision so many have attached themselves to for no reason other than one of self-indulgence in fantasy and narcissism.
Yes, I too am not pleased by the behaviour of the seeming typical “liberal.”
I am, though, happy to see that there is at least one who is not sickeningly insane. I do hope to find others, though it’s a lot of work to find even one and probably not worth the effort to look for more, given the time it takes.