Accidental Blogger

Sujatha has posted a timely piece on the inane backing and forthing between the Obama and McCain camps that is currently passing for serious political debate. The inanity is being generated mostly by the McCain campaign whose manager Rick Davis has publicly stated, "This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."  Hence we are mired in controversies about pit bulls, barracudas, moose, polar bears …. and lipstick.

The truth however is that for all the intimidating talk of Sarah Palin "field dressing" her Democratic opponents, Palin has not answered a single question directly about her stand on any of the several issues that concern voters this election year. So far she has appeared at public events in the company of her seasoned running mate and read the same speech from the same script that she used in her acceptance speech at the GOP convention. Palin is scheduled to talk to ABC news anchor Charlie Gibson tomorrow, Sep 11, a day whose emotional symbolism is not lost on anyone just as all the other propaganda the Republicans are disseminating as substantive political message. Is Gibson going to behave like a professional journalist who acts as a fact checker and digs for real information or is he going to play along with Palin’s self promoting truisms about "a hockey mom who juggles BlackBerries and breast pumps" and who is also a "pit bull with lipstick" when the situation demands?  If Gibson needs help, Maureen Dowd has a few suggestions.

(cartoon by Nick Anderson; click to enlarge)

[Palin] has rocketed in the polls, drawing women and men with her vapid – if vivacious and visceral – scripted cheerleading. But if you’re reading this, Charlie, we want to know everything, including:

• What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids between Juneau and Wasilla and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?
• Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn’t all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?
• What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs as mayor and as governor?
• When the phone rings at 3 a.m., will she call the Wasilla Assembly of God congregation and ask them to pray on a response, as she asked them to pray for a natural gas pipeline?
• Does she really think Adam, Eve, Satan and the dinosaurs mingled on the earth 5,000 years ago?
• Why put out a press release about her teenage daughter’s pregnancy and then spend the next few days attacking the press for covering that press release?
• As Troopergate unfolds here — an inquiry into whether Palin inappropriately fired the commissioner of public safety for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law ” it raises this question: Who else is on her enemies list and what might she do with the F.B.I.?
• Does she want a federal ban on trans fat in restaurants and a ban on abortion and Harry Potter? And which books exactly would have landed on the literature bonfire if she had had her way with that Wasilla librarian?
• Just how is it that Fannie and Freddie have cost taxpayers money (since they haven’t yet)?
• Does she talk in tongues or just eat caribou tongues?
• What does she have against polar bears?