Sarah Palin

Bristol Palin's pregnancy appears to have thrown the political world into a rage. I'm not quite sure why. The only dimension of that situation that is political is that Bristol's pregnancy is yet another symptom of the bankruptcy of one of the right's pet causes: abstinence-only sex education. In the end, I don't think it'll amount to much by itself. The only people who get really upset at this sort of thing--social conservatives--will give it a pass because Sarah Palin's a social conservative. (Imagine if Chelsea Clinton had turned up pregnant at seventeen. James Dobson would have never let us hear the end of it.) Now, if Bristol had been caught with another girl...

That said, I have plenty of better reasons for disliking Sarah Palin. First, she's a Republican, and if the last eight years have taught us anything, it's that Republicans are by and large disreputable creatures. Next, as Wasilla's mayor, Palin tried to ban books she deemed naughty from the library. When the librarian resisted, Palin tried to have her fired. Next, there's the whole matter of her firing the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner because he refused to (improperly) fire her ex-brother-in-law. Then there's the whole issue of McCain's method of picking Palin, which seemed to boil down to right-wing+XX chromosomes=running mate. If that's the way McCain'll pick his potential successor, what about the rest of his cabinet, or his Supreme Court justices? Then there's the matter of her courtship of radical right wing groups like Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum and the Alaska Independence Party. (Yeah, I thought the Civil War closed the question of secession, but I guess since George W. Bush took us back before the legal precedents of the Magna Carta, the question is open again.) Then there's her support of creationism in biology classes. (Another issue that was, for all rational people, closed in the mid-nineteenth century that she'd like to reopen.) Then there's her lying about her fight against the "bridge to nowhere". And there's her global warming denial, and her support for Pat Buchanan. (Has anyone asked her what she thinks about the Holocaust?)

All that's just in four days. I'm sure I'll see other things down the line. But those aren't reasons for her to be dumped from the ticket. The contemporary Republican party seems to like everything that I listed, and though I'm not watching cable news right now, I'm guessing an army of hacks has already fanned out to argue the virtues of book banning, creationism and abuse of power. After eight years, they've grown awfully good at it.

Sarah Palin's apparent failure to see that her children are properly educated about contraception strikes me as irresponsible and stupid, but that falls under the heading of her problem. (I do wish that her public policy choices wouldn't inflict this same problem on people far less able to bear the costs, but that's tantamount to wishing she weren't a Republican.) I dislike her because her policy interests and political goals would place cruel burdens on people I care about, starting with me. I dislike her because she's a symptom of this country's advancing decadence; she's another crackpot that too many people will take too seriously and defend too loudly.

But don't worry about her being dropped from the ticket. The Right will love her whatever she does, or did, for no other reason than that the Left hates her, and that's what counts.