On Palin

My mom had me at a relatively young age. She was twenty-two years old, recently married, and still figuring out the nuances of adulthood. We didn’t have an easy life by any means. My dad worked two jobs during the majority of my childhood while my mom worked at various supermarkets as a cashier. Together, they brought money in at a steady pace and were able to provide for me everything I ever wanted. I never knew that my parents were struggling until I got older. I never knew about the sacrifices my parents made in order to buy me nice clothes and get me the toys I wanted and send me on all of the school trips. It wasn’t until I was older and on my own that I started to appreciate how high the cost of living is and how hard it is to take care of your own needs, let alone those of a child. I’m thirty years old now and doing quite alright and I still can’t even comprehend the level of sacrifice I’d have to make in order to bring a child into this world. My parents were unselfish in the most romantic sense of the word. My parents are, and always will be, my heroes. I can’t imagine ever meeting anyone else in this world that will ever show the commitment and resolve that they did to family.

My mom is a fighter. She fights for me and my sister, even to this day. There’ll be times when I’m on the phone and she catches a slight hint of depression in my voice and offers to “kick the shit” out of anyone that’s hurting me. I remember her fighting for me as a kid, going up against grandparents and aunts and teachers and other people that bring more than a fight with them. People that bring a demand for loyalty through thick and thin. People that can end hopes and dreams with the mark of a red pen. And she always stood up to them – she was steadfast and committed to one thing this world: family. Me. My sister. My dad. My mom and dad are the two most influential and inspiring people in my life. They are real people with real problems.

If either my mom or dad called me up and told me that they were selected to be the Vice Presidential nominee I would wish them the best of luck and rally everyone I know to vote against whatever ticket they were on. If that ticket were to win, I’d seriously contemplate moving out of the country (admittedly by way of an ambassadorship to Italy, I’m not saying I’m perfect). Because, here’s the thing: I can’t think of anyone in the world with more life experience than my parents. I can’t think of anyone in this world who commands more respect than my parents…

…but my mom does not belong in national politics. And Sarah Palin seems to be half of the person my mom is.

Yeah, Sarah Palin was the mayor of a small town. And, yeah, Sarah Palin is the governor of a small state. But, at the end of the day, Sarah Palin is campaigning on the fact that she’s a mom. That she has a strong sense of family values. But unlike my mom, who’d defend me and my sister to her dying breath, Sarah Palin seems to have no idea what family is about. She has no idea what it means to have unconditional love for a child and she has no idea what it means to protect her children from the forces that are constantly conspiring against them.

Let’s forget “experience” for a moment. Let’s forget about the fact that she feels she’s ready to be the second most-powerful person in the United States without even understanding what the job entails. I’m an opportunist, we’re all opportunists. If someone plopped a ten-million dollar advance on my lap in exchange for the next great American novel I’d accept in a second – I’d work out the details after the ink has dried. Being an opportunist is one of America’s greatest traditions and I don’t fault Sarah Palin for that at all. Here’s what I fault her for: throwing her 17-year-old daughter to the wolves.

There was a fair amount of circumstantial evidence piling up that Bristol Palin was the mother of Trig Palin. Most of it was hearsay and big leaps, nothing concrete. There was, quite possibly, a million different ways to combat the rumors if that was even necessary. Huffington Post didn’t even touch the story yet. Daily Kos was backing down. I saw more mentions of the rumors from conservative blogs that were blasting Daily Kos for even bringing it up. It was a non-issue at best, and all Sarah Palin had to do was release one photograph or say, “You guys are out of your fucking mind,” and it probably would have died.

But Sarah Palin didn’t do that. Instead she said, “My 17-year-old daughter can’t be four-month-old Trig’s mother because my 17-year-old daughter is five-months pregnant.”

Let me rephrase that. “My 17-year-old daughter is, indeed, irresponsible and is, indeed, a campaign issue but not the way you ugly liberals (and conservative commentators) are saying she is.”

My mom would never throw my ass under the bus like that, she would never throw me to these fucking media wolves the same way Sarah Palin offered Bristol to them. It is disgusting and it is in no-way indicative of a candidate that believes in “family values.”

The Sarah Palin situation has been making me sick these past couple of days, but today was the final straw. Today I saw a person who puts career first – where family, country, and integrity come into play I have no idea.

And there’s another big problem here, while I’m at it. Sarah Palin, within four days of accepting the vice presidential nomination, has had nothing but bad press come out against her. Is it muckraking? Sure, to a point. But even the relatively green Barack Obama managed to minimize the attacks against him, or at least hide his flaws well enough so that they trickled out instead of coming into play all at once. And that’s because Barack Obama is a politician. The vetting process is carried out mainly by our current tabloid media, and it’s only the real politicians that rise to the top and take the barbs and the investigations and the allegations and come out of it contenders. Being a politician isn’t always a bad thing. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Ronald Reagan – they were all politicians. They all had skeletons in their closets and some of them occasionally came out to play. But they came out over time. They were marginalized and pushed to the back. These people were able to go about their business, forcing change and good policies, and were never weighted down by the whispers and accusations of the press and the country.

Within four days of entering the national scene, Sarah Palin has not been able to speak of her vision or her leadership skills because all of her skeletons started falling out of the closet. She can’t keep her house in order; she can’t keep her business in check.

I don’t necessarily want “real” in a vice president. I certainly don’t want a theatrical version of “real” that panders for votes. And I also don’t want someone in office who can’t keep their own affairs in check. That can’t execute the proper cover-up from time-to-time in order to save face, especially when your face is the face of this nation. Sometimes, being a politician is a good thing. Being a responsible mother is always a good thing. And I firmly believe that Sarah Palin is neither a great politician nor a great mother.

I honestly hope she finds some way to gracefully back out of the ticket. I hope she does it in a way that doesn’t hurt her, McCain, or this country politically. I can handle McCain as president if that’s what I have to do, I cannot handle Palin stepping into the position if it were to come down to that.

Labels: editorial, politics

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