Going Rouge (14 page)

The Poetry of Sarah Palin

Recent works by the Republican vice presidential candidate

Hart Seely

It’s been barely six weeks since the arctic-fresh voice of Alaskan poet Sarah Heath Palin burst upon the Lower 48. In campaign interviews, the governor, mother, and maverick GOP vice presidential candidate has chosen to bypass the media filter and speak directly to fans through her intensely personal verses, spoken poems that drill into the vagaries of modern life as if they were oil deposits beneath a government-protected tundra.

The poems collected here were compiled verbatim from only three brief interviews. So just imagine the work Sarah Palin could produce over the next four (or eight) years.

On Good and Evil

It is obvious to me

Who the good guys are in this one

And who the bad guys are.

The bad guys are the ones

Who say Israel is a stinking corpse,

And should be wiped off

The face of the earth.

That’s not a good guy.

To Katie Couric, CBS News, September 25, 2008

You Can’t Blink

You can’t blink.

You have to be wired

In a way of being

So committed to the mission,

The mission that we’re on,

Reform of this country,

And victory in the war,

You can’t blink.

So I didn’t blink.

To Charles Gibson, ABC News, September 11, 2008

Haiku

These corporations.

Today it was AIG,

Important call, there.

To Sean Hannity, Fox News, September 18, 2008

Befoulers of the Verbiage

It was an unfair attack on the verbiage

That Senator McCain chose to use,

Because the fundamentals,

As he was having to explain afterwards,

He means our workforce.

He means the ingenuity of the American.

And of course that is strong,

And that is the foundation of our economy.

So that was an unfair attack there,

Again based on verbiage.

To Sean Hannity, Fox News, September 18, 2008

Secret Conversation

I asked President Karzai:

“Is that what you are seeking, also?

That strategy that has worked in Iraq?

That John McCain had pushed for?

More troops?

A counterinsurgency strategy?”

And he said, “Yes.”

To Katie Couric, CBS News, September 25, 2008

Outside

I am a Washington outsider.

I mean,

Look at where you are.

I’m a Washington outsider.

I do not have those allegiances

To the power brokers,

To the lobbyists.

We need someone like that.

To Charles Gibson, ABC News, September 11, 2008

On the Bailout

Ultimately,

What the bailout does

Is help those who are concerned

About the health care reform

That is needed

To help shore up our economy,

Helping the—

It’s got to be all about job creation, too.

Shoring up our economy

And putting it back on the right track.

So health care reform

And reducing taxes

And reining in spending

Has got to accompany tax reductions

And tax relief for Americans.

And trade.

We’ve got to see trade

As opportunity

Not as a competitive, scary thing.

But one in five jobs

Being created in the trade sector today,

We’ve got to look at that

As more opportunity.

All those things.

To Katie Couric, CBS News, September 25, 2008

Challenge to a Cynic

You are a cynic.

Because show me where

I have ever said

That there’s absolute proof

That nothing that man

Has ever conducted

Or engaged in,

Has had any effect,

Or no effect,

On climate change.

To Charles Gibson, ABC News, September 11, 2008

On Reporters

It’s funny that

A comment like that

Was kinda made to,

I don’t know,

You know…

Reporters.

To Katie Couric, CBS News, September 25, 2008

Small Mayors

You know,

Small mayors,

Mayors of small towns—

Quote, unquote—

They‘re on the front lines.

To Sean Hannity, Fox News, September 19, 2008

4/ LIPSTICK ON A FAUX FEMINIST

Palin and Women

Sarah Palin, Affirmative Action Babe

Katha Pollitt

Ah, meritocracy! Not so long ago, conservatives had a lock on it: no affirmative action, no A’s for effort, no competitions where everyone gets a prize. People who complained that racism or sexism or any other
ism
was holding them back were whiners looking for excuses. They either didn’t want to work hard or, as Charles Murray claimed in
The Bell Curve
, they weren’t smart enough to make the grade.

Well, never mind. Sarah Palin has done for meritocracy what she’s done for those other conservative obsessions: working mothers (you go, girl!), teen pregnancy (a challenge!), masculine authority (the first dude?)—to say nothing of gravitas, statesmanship, wisdom, and all those other weighty abstract nouns George Will likes to talk about. “I’m in love. Truly and deeply in love,” Murray told the
New York Times
’s Deborah Solomon. “The last thing we need are more pointy-headed intellectuals running the government.” Palin is new, young, attractive, charismatic, a natural speaker. She’s a fascinating combination of opposites—relatable (horrible word) and down to earth but also intense and weirdly thrilling—half Rachael Ray, half Boudicca, a warrior mom. Feminist triumph or feminist nightmare? Maybe both! She’s hot in all senses of the word. If she wasn’t a big reactionary, she’d make a fantastic community organizer.

But let’s be real: There is just no way Sarah Palin is equipped to be vice president, much less president. She doesn’t know enough; she lacks the necessary grasp of, and curiosity about, our complex world; her political philosophy could fit on a bumper sticker: Us versus Them. The lack of stamps in her recently acquired passport has been much noted (yes, I know, Bill Kristol, Lincoln was not a big traveler, either); it isn’t even clear she’s well acquainted with the Lower 48. She’s prepping for her debate with Joe Biden like a student jock cramming for a test. The McCain campaign, tacitly acknowledging how out of her depth she’ll be no matter how many all-nighters she pulls, demanded—and, shockingly, got—special modifications to the veep debate format so that there would be no follow-up questions. After all, it wouldn’t be right to expect Palin to compete on normal terms with Joe Biden, who has the totally unfair advantage of being deeply versed in domestic and foreign policy and knowing how the world’s business is done. Lower standards for potential leaders of the world’s most powerful country, in the name of diversity: That’s what Republicans stand for now.

Hillary Clinton said her campaign put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling; Sarah Palin, adding that “the women of America aren’t finished yet”—as if women had stormed the barricades to nominate her—claimed her election would “shatter the glass ceiling once and for all.” That’s ridiculous. The glass ceiling is the invisible barrier of gender prejudice that prevents women, as a class, from rising to the level that their qualifications and abilities merit—the level they would reach if they were men. Like her or not, Hillary Clinton was more than equipped to run the United States; her nomination would have been a true glass-ceiling breakthrough. But Palin’s only qualification for the second or, God forbid, the first job in the land is that John McCain thought she’d lend his sagging campaign a shot of estrogen and some right-wing Christian fairy dust.

Whether or not the gambit succeeds, it has nothing to do with recognizing accomplishment, experience or even steady old boring competence. Just ask McCain’s gaffe-prone economic adviser Carly Fiorina, ushered off the stage after she pointed out that Sarah Palin couldn’t run a major corporation; Fiorina, who was fired as CEO of Hewlett Packard after a fairly disastrous tenure, ought to know. Or ask Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Condoleezza Rice, Hawaii governor Linda Lingle, or the many other Republican women McCain could have chosen had he cared about governing. As has been known to happen in less exalted workplaces, Palin got the promotion because the boss just liked her. She will do no more to shatter the glass ceiling for other women as a group than such women usually do.

There’s an upside, in that the old attack on Obama as a lightweight who is inexperienced and overreaching has all but vanished. Plus, there’s the fun of watching conservative pundits scramble to deny the obvious. “There are Republicans who are unhappy about John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin,” acknowledged William Kristol in his September 1 column. “Many are insiders who highly value—who overly value—‘experience.’” Ah yes, experience. What is that, anyway? My people choose their leaders by inspecting the entrails of chickens, and the gods have always multiplied our herds! Besides, as Rush Limbaugh said recently, “She’ll be surrounded by a sea of advisers.” Hmmm, where did I hear that before? Was it not in 2000, when doubts were raised about whether George W. Bush could handle the job?

The stress on high-end conservative pundits is beginning to show. These are people, after all, who belong to the Ivy-educated, latte-drinking, Tuscan-vacationing urban elite they love to ridicule and who see themselves, however deludedly, as policy intellectuals and grown-ups. They’ve written endlessly about “excellence” and “standards.” McCain’s erratic flounderings, and Palin’s patent absurdity, have driven David Brooks and George Will to write columns so anguished I’d feel sorry for them had they not made their bed by spending the past eight years rationalizing the obvious inadequacies of George W. Bush.

I want the people running the country to be smarter and wiser and more judicious and more knowledgeable than I am. If that’s elitism, count me in.

The F-Card Won’t Wash: Sarah Palin Is Disastrous for Women’s Rights

Jessica Valenti

The
New York Post
calls her “a feminist dream.” National Public Radio asks if she’s the “new face of feminism.” And the
Wall Street Journal
, ever subtle, calls it “Sarah Palin Feminism.” I call it well-spun garbage. (Yes, I’d even call it a pig in lipstick.) It seems you can‘t open a news-

paper or turn on the television without running across a piece about how the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, is not just a feminist, but
the
feminist—a sign that all is right in the United States when it comes to gender equality. (Turn in those Birkenstocks and picket signs, gals!)

Palin’s conservative cohorts are claiming her candidacy as a win for women and proof that it’s Republicans who are the real agents of change. After all, what more could American women want in a vice presidential candidate than a well-coiffed “hockey mom”?

Never mind that Palin talks about her teen daughter’s decision to keep her child while awaiting the chance to take that choice away from American women. Don’t worry about how Palin cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers. And forget that, under Palin’s mayoralty, women in Wasilla, Alaska, were forced to pay for their own rape kits to the tune of up to $1,200.

We’re not supposed to care about these issues because, say Republicans, we should just be happy that there’s a woman on the ticket. The McCain campaign is cynically trying to re-create the excitement that surrounded Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, believing that all women want is... another woman.

Ann Friedman, deputy editor of the
American Prospect
, wrote: “In picking Palin, Republicans are lending credence to the sexist assumption that women voters are too stupid to investigate or care about the issues, and merely want to vote for someone who looks like them... McCain has turned the idea of the first woman in the White House from a true moment of change to an empty pander.”

What’s worse is conservatives can’t understand why women aren’t lining up to thank them. In fact, the same people who moaned that women—those darn feminists, especially—were only supporting Hillary because of her gender are now screaming to the rafters because they’re not supporting Palin for the same reason. That’s what makes Republicans pulling the feminist card that much more insulting—the stunning hypocrisy. The McCain touting himself as the person who will put a woman in the White House is the same man who joked that Chelsea Clinton is “so ugly” because “her father is Janet Reno.”

And despite the talk about being the party of change, appropriating feminist symbols—at a Pennsylvania rally people held up signs of Rosie the Riveter with Palin’s face—and propping up antifeminist women as trailblazers is typical of the Republicans.

Organizations such as the Independent Women’s Forum and Concerned Women for America, who call themselves the “real” feminists while fighting against things such as equal pay and legislation to combat violence against women, have been around (and funded by conservatives) for years. Their brand of feminism means benefiting from the gains of the women’s movement while striving to keep other women down, all for a patriarchal pat on the head. Sound familiar?

As the feminist writer Rebecca Traister says: “Palin’s femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She’s the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much.... It’s like some dystopian future,... feminism without any feminists.”

The good news is, this twisted homage to feminism means conservatives must recognize it as a force in American politics—why spend so much time framing Palin as feminist if we’re all just a bunch of hairy man-haters? The bad news, however, trumps all. If this campaign is successful, American women will suffer. We’ll be under the thumb of yet another administration that thinks nothing of rolling back women’s rights.

No matter how many times feminists point out the hypocrisy of Republicans playing the F-card, however, the bigger truth is that it’s not Palin’s antifeminist bona fides alone that matter. While Palin is bad for women’s rights, she’s terrible for America. In addition to being investigated by her own legislature for abuse of power, she is also reported to have asked a librarian about the process for banning books in Wasilla, doesn’t support sex education, and has made lying about her record unusually central to her candidacy—even for a politician. These are big warning signs that cut across gender lines.

So while the McCain campaign holds Palin up as a shining example of feminism in action, let’s not forget the truth about who’s doing the spinning and what they’re selling. Because the last thing America needs is another corrupt and lying politician—man or woman.