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The day that Barack Obama chose Joe Biden to be his running mate I told family and friends that the smartest thing McCain could do was to choose a woman.
And boy, did he. Why Palin? Why Palin? The media keeps asking.
Are you kidding me?
McCain had to choose a woman for a couple of reasons: 1) to show that the Republican party is "modern!" and "with it!" and not "full of crap!" and 2) to try and pick up all the pissed off women voters who wanted to put Hillary into office.
But which woman to choose?
When you look at the pool of female republican senators, governors and mayors, there just aren't that many. Narrow that pool down to the women who are ultra-conservative--which McCain needed on his ticket to win back the confidence of the evangelical vote--and the pool becomes even smaller. (I mean, c'mon. There are plenty of smart republican women out there who are pro-choice. I believe all the Bush women are pro-choice, as well as Cindy McCain, though none of them will talk about it openly.)
Finally, she had to be a good looking woman, because republican men have trouble focusing on what a woman is saying unless she's pretty; think Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham.
The idea that Sarah Palin was chosen on her merit alone is laughable. She was a political move, pure and simple, and a good one at that.
Oh yeah, except there's that whole teenage daughter pregnancy thing.
When it hit the news that Sarah Palin has a teenage daughter who is pregnant out of wedlock, conservatives rushed to her defense faster than the U.S. invaded Iraq. In fact, for the first time in their history, conservatives behaved as though teenage pregnancy was just no big deal.
Bill O'Reilly basically said that because the Palin family has the money to take care of Bristol Palin's baby, the teenager's unintended pregnancy is totally fine. Whereas any teenage pregnancy in the inner city, which often necessitates taxpayer funding to pick up medical and food bills, is a big no-no. Of course, this is just months after O'Reilly called Jaime Lynn Spears' parents "irresponsible."- These are people, mind you, who could afford to feed, clothe and house an entire truckload of out-of-wedlock babies.
Conservative columnist Cal Thomas also sprang to Palin's defense, calling the media hypocrites. His so-called line of reasoning in his editorial dated Sept. 6, 2008, is that the media spews nothing but sex, sex, sex 24 hours a day--irresponsible consequent-less sex to boot--but now that same "liberal"- media insists on pulling America back to its Puritan roots to condemn Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter.
Really? Because obviously, Cal, it's not the media that's condemning teenage pregnancy. You said that yourself: the media doesn't give a crap about morality and sex. It's CONSERVATIVES who spend all their time trying to force everyone to keep their private parts in their pants and then fail miserably. The media is just trying to point out the monumental pile of stinking, steaming hypocrisy that's been plopped in front of us.
Cal goes on to say that Sarah Palin's position to teach "abstinence only"- sex ed in schools, which he himself advocates, is in no way hypocritical. Because, Cal's family went through the exact same thing, and he still thinks that screaming "Abstinence!" at teenagers will somehow get them to stay pure, even though sex is really, really, really nice.
"Our daughter," he writes, "experienced a premarital pregnancy."-
Wow. First off, how much do you love that language? Our daughter "experienced"- a premarital pregnancy. That kind of takes all the responsibility off of her, doesn't it? Nah, she wasn't out doin' the deed. She was just minding her own business when Wham! Bam! She experienced a premarital pregnancy.
I have no problem with abstinence being taught in public school, as long a fully comprehensive sex ed course is taught along with it. I had one myself in the tenth grade--taught by none other than Kirstie Alley's sister, Collette Baughman. We learned things about human sexuality in Mrs. Baughman's biology class that my parents could never have taught me, many things that I've probably forgotten today, things that I hope my daughter is taught in public school.
I don't care that Sarah Palin has a pregnant teenage daughter. I really don't. I have zero moral opinion on the matter. It's their family and they have to deal with it in whatever way they choose.
But please don't make your personal opinion public policy that could harm my family. That, frankly, pisses me off.
