Let’s see, how to appeal to all those wavering independents and disaffected Hillary supporters? Let’s insult those stupid Democrats and Obama people reeeel good and kick ‘em in the teeth, sneer at their efforts to be inclusive, to work toward unity and rehabilitate America’s damaged image around the world, or to help people in great need, and then make a shameless plea for their support at the polls. Scoff, especially rudely, at their community organizing efforts – the ultimate and most effective hands-on grassroots outreach programs that help people in need directly where they live – especially if government has turned its back. If Sarah Palin wasn’t belittling the community organizer, Rudy Giuliani before her was literally laughing at the very words “community organizer” every time he uttered them.
I wonder how the community organizers of America will take to this repeated slap-in-the-face - they who toil long hours for far lower pay and benefits (if they’re lucky) than Palin OR Giuliani likely have ever had to try supporting a family with. “Obama has never had to lead people in crisis,” Giuliani smirked. No, he’s merely been in the trenches with his sleeves rolled up, HELPING people in crisis, when he could have been in Manhattan, going for the big bucks like you’ve been doing, Rudy, ever since your time as mayor ran out. Maybe Giuliani and Palin enjoy the luxury of being arrogant and smug like this because they’re fortunate enough never to have needed the help or ideas or energy or efforts of a community organizer. I’m sure these Republican celebrities and the conventioneers who snorted and stomped and ate it all up are, at heart, nice people. At least I would hope so. But that’s assuming they even have hearts. And unfortunately, I don’t see much evidence to support this from any of the behavior on display on Sarah Palin night.
“She spoke to me as a mother,” according to one female delegate from California. I’m sorry to hear that. Does it mean said female delegate, too, is a thumb-your-nose meanie? Listening to Sarah Palin made me wonder about this, as she paraded around the stage of this political pageant in her “America’s Hockey Mom” garb, flattering herself as being the pit-bull with lipstick. Does that mean Palin is raising all those kids to be mean, hurtful, snide, and snarky – the way Mom just was – to crazed, slobbering cheers from snorting red-meat attendees? I’m a mother, too, and she did not speak to me. To say her remarks, and those of Giuliani before her, were off-putting would be the understatement of the decade. Evidently the Republicans aren’t content to guilt us into voting for John McCain, who died for our sins broken bone by broken bone – as Fred Thompson recited in long, arduous, agonizing detail the night before. No, if we aren’t driven by guilt, or the standard GOP fare - fear, then maybe it’ll be by flat-out bullying.
I should have known. I’ve sat through more Republican raise-the-roof campaign speeches than I can stomach. The hypocrisy and half-truths (at best), and flat-out lies (at worst) were legion. Both Palin and Giuliani also made sure to include the reliable fall-back references to 9/11, although Palin had an ingenious new way to sneak it in. After all, her older son ships off to some place called EYE-rack on – bless my soul – September 11th of this very year. I guess he’ll be fighting for her freedom to mock and insult and belittle all the people with whom she disagrees.
And that’s the painful point of this particular evening. We heard little of what the Republicans specifically plan to do to help America or dig her out of the epic economic and foreign policy holes into which their traditional policies have dumped her. But we did hear plenty of what they obviously consider their best strengths – being mean and nasty. That and more tax cuts for the rich and drilling in every other person’s back yard – with the possible exception of John McCain’s many properties – will get you a few minutes needing to meet with a community organizer.
They don’t offer anything meaningful for anyone but the very smug and the very rich – because the tax cuts they occasionally mention this week will inevitably be the same old baloney – or baloney for you if you’re not among the elite haves or have mores. They don’t offer many other stories than the one we already know almost too well by now about John McCain’s background. Did you know he was a P.O.W.?
They don’t offer any indication that they won’t keep bloating Washington the way Republicans have for the past seven-and-some years, especially if they like all that ultra-expensive war-making and exploding debt which will be tantamount to a lifetime tax increase on every man, woman, child, AND four-footed creature in the nation, endangered or not. They don’t dare mention He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as their immediate legacy, even though their stale ideas are just George W. Bush, piled higher and deeper. They don’t offer change except to dress the next Dick Cheney in a skirted suit. And while Palin thumbed her nose at the media and insisted she was going to Washington to serve “this great country,” I wondered if that was the same country from which she and her husband, an Alaskan Independence Party member, seem so interested in seceding. Or, wait a minute. It must just suddenly be all different now.
If you want smart-ass remarks and cruel, arrogant putdowns, and you want to talk trash about Barack Obama, Palin and pals are your kind of people. Palin proved in her big speech that she could sling mud as well as shooting moose. Yes, she can dish it out. And she can read that speech that was written for her by the McCain campaign guys very well. Here’s hoping she’ll be able to take it, too, because she made it clear that she’s ready to play with the big boys – on equal footing, and to be as mean, nasty, and insulting if not moreso. Maybe that also means they no longer have to live under the restrictions against duking it out with a girl.
