Every time I hear the voice of Sarah Palin, I am seized with the desire to run to the Sacramento for Obama office and immediately start placing phone calls. And it’s not just that godawful I-wish-I-were-midwestern accent (WTF).
I won’t go in to the fear and loathing I’ve felt over the past few years. But I’ve actually been heard to say (prior to the past couple of weeks), that I wouldn’t feel like dying inside if John McCain were elected. But now? Yeah, fear and loathing, part deux.
Do I want to see a woman in the White House in my lifetime? Hey, it wouldn’t suck, now, would it? But that one? I’d rather be skewered alive and roasted over the flames of Satan’s own barbecue. Seriously, I am not so enamored of “woman power” that I am stupid enough to vote for someone just because she’s female.
Subliminal message.
Let’s take stock: So far, as I understand it, Sarah Palin is opposed to pretty much everything I believe in. She opposes sex education and birth control. Frankly, it’s…uh…showing, dear. Look, I don’t care what your politics are, I simply cannot fathom a world where young women are denied the information they need about their bodies and their sexuality. I got basic sex ed in something like 6th grade, and you know what: the message was that our bodies are normal, here’s what they do, here are some of your options. It didn’t seem all that controversial to me at the time (I remember lots of giggling in the room), but good information is preferable to ignorance in any situation, I’d wager.
Next? Choice. Okay…here we go. I would put this statement forward: Just about no one is “pro” abortion. Think about that one for a minute. Did you ever stop and say to yourself “hey what a great idea”? (Okay, you ZPGers are excused from answering that one.) But really, the idea of women having that choice is, in fact, important to me. Whether it’s in theory or in practice. Nobody wants to have an abortion, but sometimes it is a critical life decision. To have a woman in office who is anti-choice (oh, pro-life, whatever), is to acknowledge that we want to send our young women back to the Dark Ages. Show me a world where women are educated, empowered, and make as much money as their male counterparts; I’ll show you a world where abortion rates drop dramatically.
On gun control, I disagree with Our Lady of Wasilla yet again. I was raised in a family of hunters. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. My family believed in gun safety, yet four people I know have taken their own lives–or others’–with guns. Not only that, I believe that while NRA members have the right to carry guns, criminals do not. Yet, how do you reconcile that? From a simply practical standpoint, the right of a citizen to carry an AK-47 does in fact make me raise my eyebrows a bit. The right of a hunter to possess a gun that can bring down a moose that she can then field-dress? Hey, I’m okay with that as long as she doesn’t try to make me help with the gutting.
On the book banning…well, do I need to say it? I will anyway. It is the first step of the despot, and the narrow-minded. Let us not contaminate our children’s minds with such filth, you say? My response is: hello, parental responsibility (don’t I sound all Republican). Seriously, the first thing the crackpot rulers do is throw out all the artists, thinkers, philosophers, and writers. It’s easy to control illiterate masses…
On the environment and energy…again Palin and I are polar (ha!) opposites. Look, we’ve had at minimum 30 years since our last “energy crisis” to figure out alternative solutions. Yet, we have done almost nil because of lack of political will and political pressure. We the people have been slackin’ a bit. That does not mean it’s time to panic and head for the nearest convenient oil source (which she overstated ridiculously, mind you). To turn back the long-fought, hard-won protections of our coasts and wildlife refuges is anathema.
My issue with Sarah Palin is not with her as a mother, a woman, or a person. But as a leader, she fills me with dread. She is a slap in the face of the women who came before us.
But, Sarah has done something I consider quite wonderful. She’s shown me that I have more in common in my soul with a black man who grew up poor and went to an Ivy League school, than I do with a white woman who shares my race, gender, culture, early education, hair color, eyewear preferences, and a whole lotta other demographics that are supposed to count.
Hmmm.
