Monday, September 29, 2008

Out Of Her League



I happened to catch Kathleen Parker today on my radio. Sadly, I had to release her.

If you don't know Parker's writings count yourself lucky. Her most recent books is called something like Save The Males and whenever she writes about anything that has to do with women she expresses her deep and abiding misogyny. She's not an uncommon type of a wingnut woman but in the general mold of many of them. Ann Coulter suggesting that women shouldn't have the vote is an extreme example of the type of writing these women do.

All this is important to know to see why I wasn't exactly surprised when Parker decided to tell Sarah Palin to get the hell back to Alaska. But this is really very silly:

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted

Pulling for Palin? Perhaps if it was a rope around Palin's neck, but not otherwise. Because our Kathleen really has a big psychological problem with women and that problem is called misogyny.

Parker is not the only misogynistic voice raised against Palin. Andrew Sullivan is another pundit who never saw much value in women (remember his testosterone-makes-men-better article?). But now Andy has gone all feminist in his attacks against Palin.

So is Palin "out of her league" as Parker points out? Of course she is if the league is defined carefully to only include people who are very experienced and very educated and very intelligent, the kinds of people some of us would like to see leading countries.

On the other hand, let's take a look at - oh, say - George Walker Bush. What was his level of expertise when he ran for the president of the United States? There was a rumor at the time that when asked a question about the Taliban Georgie thought it was the name of a rock band, and though I can't verify that story I can certainly verify (as can all of you) that George Bush is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer and that many of his utterances are pure word salad. Yes, we point that out on the liberal side of the political aisle but I have not noticed conservative pundits suggesting that Bush should have withdrawn his candidacy because he was stupid and ignorant and uninterested in learning anything whatsoever.

See? We didn't even have to go back to Dan Quayle to find another Republican candidate who had very little experience and who made a lot of very stupid comments. It looks like Sarah Palin is in the same league as the president we have right now, doesn't it?

What is one to conclude about all this? My conclusion would be not to vote for McCain-Palin. I don't want another ignorant president. We can all see what the current one has done to this country. But let's not pretend that this country has never had stoopid run the country before.