Thursday Night Open Thread
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Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Cry 'Sexist!', and Let Slip the Dogs of War!
Maureen Dowd is in excellent form recently with a scathing piece on Sarah Palin in yesterday's Times. She addresses both the perils of picking an unvetted Palin and the specious cries of sexism emanating from the McCain camp these days.
When you make a gimmicky pick of an unknown, without proper vetting, there’s bound to be a sticky press conference sooner or later. I watched it happen with Ferraro and Quayle, and I watched Mondale and Poppy Bush curdle with embarrassment but plow through.
The political unknowns, of course, want that tantalizing brass ring, so they’re not always completely forthcoming about their skeletons, if they’re lucky enough to be ineptly vetted. This is ironic, since the nominee who gets blindsided with these crises — Did McCain really know that this Palin reality show was about to pop and swallow his convention — is presenting them to voters as the most trustworthy people to inherit the nuclear codes.
Because Ferraro grabbed at the chance, without revealing to Mondale’s incompetent vetting team how damaging some of her husband’s financial imbroglios could be, she went from being a female icon to part of the reason it’s taken a quarter-century for another party to take a chance on a woman.
When McCain gets in trouble, he pulls out the P.O.W. card. Now Republicans are pulling out the sexist card.
Hillary cried sexism to cover up her incompetent management of her campaign, and now Republicans have picked up that trick. But when you use sexism as an across-the-board shield for any legitimate question, you only hurt women. And that’s just another splash of reality.
Posted by Metavirus at 9/03/2008 12:26:00 PM
Tags: Distortions , Experience , John McCain , Judgment , Lies , Sarah Palin , Sexism , Veepstakes , Women
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