Sick of the election? Had enough? Sick of the blogosphere’s obsession with it?
Neo-neocon to the rescue, with something else to make you sick—a jello-mold recipe for the ages: strawberry pretzel jello.
Yes, I repeat:
STRAWBERRY PRETZEL JELL-O Continue reading →
Lindsay Graham did well to remind us of how wrong Obama was on the surge, how close some of the Congressional votes were, and how right John McCain was. But Graham is incorrect when he says that Obama has never acknowledged that the surge was a success. He did, but far too late to have done any good, after he fought against it and then denied it for so long.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Palin’s husband is very hunky. And Alaska is even more photogenic than the Palin family, which is saying a lot. Continue reading →
Implicit in the repetitive and inane “but someone else wrote her speech for her!” observations about Palin’s performance last night is the idea that once she departs from a prepared text she’ll be a bumbler. After all, we’ve got the example of that great orator Barack Obama himself, hemming and hawing and making myriad errors when he has to think on his feet.
What’s more, Palin will be facing that silver-haired and supposedly silver-tongued debater Joseph Biden.
But so far, underestimating Palin hasn’t seemed to help the Democrats much. Continue reading →
Last Sunday I called Palin an “Obama for the Right.” At the time, I was referring to her similar lack of national-level political experience, as well as the accusations that she’d been nominated for her femaleness and he for his blackness.
But now that I’ve heard her address the crowd at the convention, I see that, like Obama, she has a tremendous gift for delivering a speech. As I’ve written here, I’m not one for admiring political oratory. Except for Churchill, it pretty much leaves me cold. But I can recognize a good (no, not Churchillian) speaker when I see one. Both Obama and Palin fit that bill.
Their styles, however, are diametrically opposed. Continue reading →
I’ve noticed that Sarah Palin brings out certain words and phrases in people reacting to her.
Within a few days of her nomination, the word electrifying” kept appearing in articles about her effect on the Republican Party.
After her speech last night, I kept hearing she was “a natural.” And this not just from commentators on the Right, but even those on the liberal side.
One of the favorite memes of detractors last night—or subtle, would-be detractors—was that “someone wrote her speech for her.” Continue reading →
I spent some time last night on certain blogs of the Left such as Firedoglake and TalkLeft, reading reactions to the Palin speech in the comments sections—much of it seemingly from women. The gist of it was:
(1) Sarah’s mean, just like some girls they knew in high school.
(2) Sarah’s a hick.
(3) Sarah made an error when she dissed the MSM, because the press is now going to respond by being mean right back to her.
(4) Sarah’s to be feared.
Reaction number four shows a certain amount of smarts, I think.
Reaction number one shows a remarkable ability to tune out how much of the Democratic National Convention featured “meanness”—towards Republicans, that is. Guess that doesn’t count (or maybe “mean” isn’t “mean” unless it’s delivered by a beautiful woman on the other side—read “bitch.”)
But reaction number three is simply bizarre—had they not noticed before that the press hasn’t exactly been kind to Sarah up till now?
Delivering her address with poise, flair, intelligence, wit, and charm, Palin showed herself to be a formidable presence and a gritty fighter—with a radiant smile. Most amazing of all, she seemed to be enjoying herself hugely.
I imagine Obama and Biden aren’t feeling quite as condescendingly confident tonight as they were this afternoon. It’s never a good idea to underestimate the strength of a pit bull in lipstick.
A case is made for the idea that Palin is actually more experienced in foreign relations than Joe Biden. No, this is not a joke. Read it and see what I mean.
And why do you think it was that Obama compared his own experience to Palin’s mayoral tenure rather than her governorship?
Watching the Palin feeding frenzy, it occurs to me that we now have new rules for female candidates.
These rules apply almost exclusively to candidates on the Right, of course; those on the Left (unless their name happens to be Hillary Clinton) are given the usual press pass (a phrase I tried to popularize back when I was first blogging, but which unfortunately went nowhere).
Since we all know that a female candidate’s gravitas is highly suspect, and that she is solely responsible for everything about her family, from now on female candidates will not be allowed to have a frivolous past (such as some girly-girl stuff back in high school). Nor can they have families that can be found to have any flaws.
But since those things are not possible for the vast majority of the human race, this calls for drastic measures. So I hereby propose that future female candidates for high office on the Right must be pre-selected early in life and required to take a vow of celibacy, forsaking family and other obligations and entering into a special society somewhat akin to that of the Vestal Virgins of Rome (the thirty-year period could, of course, be easily extended): Continue reading →
I grew up in an era in which abortion was both difficult to obtain and physically dangerous. Today’s commonplace alternative of raising the child as an unwed single mother was socially unacceptable in the extreme. Effective birth control was nowhere near as easy to find as it is now, either. But the lure of sex was just as great (last time I checked, that hasn’t changed).
My enormous public New York high school had a mostly working class demographic. But the two girls in my acquaintance who became visibly pregnant were from the “better” families. Although it sounds like the script of a movie, one was the captain of the cheerleading squad and one the head of the baton twirlers.
They were not my friends, and so I was not taken into their confidence about their lives. Continue reading →
I’ve been doing some reading on the blog TalkLeft, which seems to have a large percentage of liberal Democrat commenters (mostly female?) who supported Clinton for the Democratic nomination. At this point they’re not overly enchanted with Obama, but most plan to hold their noses and vote for him anyway because he’s advocating the policies they favor.
How are they reacting to the media frenzy and blogswarm that Ann Althouse has cleverly dubbed Palinsanity? Continue reading →