I Might Be Laughing

I cannot, cannot, cannot understand how anyone could have watched Sarah Palin's performance last night and thought "gee, that's just what we need" gosh darn it. When did we decide that education and experience are a bad thing in our public servants. Just because we want a fresh approach or a new view doesn't make a solid education an elitist or insider requirement. Do you want the high school dropout running your business? All that folksiness was so over the top that I thought I was going to puke and I hope that most people see through it, whether they yearn for familiarity or not. "Say it ain't so Joe" ? My child has never been allowed to say ain't and neither should our national leaders. We are a laughingstock in the world for so many reasons, I can't imagine the hilarity (and abject terror) amongst our allies as they watch us taking this woman seriously. The format of the debate helped her significantly as she was never pressed in follow up to actually respond to the question asked. She clearly did not know what an Achilles heel was and wouldn't have admitted error, mistake or change of ideas even if she had. So she just repeated the campaign speech she had memorized for the third or fourth time, ignoring the questions altogether. I am a mother, I was never a mother before I was a mother. Nature and temperament and, yes, asking questions, made me the good mother I am. Being a good mother, even being a good lawyer, does not make me qualified to be Vice President of the United States, it doesn't even make me qualified to be the CEO of a medium size company for crying out loud. She is insulting to educated rural dwellers, she is insulting to women by trading on her gender and her children as if it makes her better, she is insulting to our intelligence. If it weren't so scary, I might be laughing.