-Hey, this Sarah Palin chick sure is exciting! A knocked-up teen-age daughter, a husband with a DUI (twenty years ago- maybe the media can check to see if he wet his pants once in kindergarten), a sister with a messy divorce. This is the first Republican candidate for national office in a long time who actually resembles a normal American with a normal American family. Normal families can get a little messy at times, a little chaotic with not everyone behaving like English ladies at a tea party.
All this is why middle-class America will can relate to her and like her and possibly even sway a few more people to vote for John McCain than they would without Palin on the ticket. Certainly parents with teen-agers will have a least a little bit of sympathy for the Palins. So the 17-year-old who's having a baby will marry the baby daddy. No political damage. Where else is there no fire where a media grown tired of the beautiful slickness of the Obamas sees smoke?
There's the head of the Alaska state police that Palin allegedly fired because he wouldn't fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law. The media doesn't point out as readily that the fired gentleman himself says he had never had any direct contact with Palin about the brother-in-law. This is a non-issue which will fade away, especially in light of juicier National Enquirer-type "issues" like pregnant teen-agers. The husband with a DUI? That one faded fast as well, since it happened twenty years ago. And I seem to recall a certain president who had a DUI in his past (as well as alcohol abuse and possibly cocaine use), yet managed to get elected twice. There are indeed a lot of issues as far as Palin is concerned but these issues are, in the reality of the voting world, non-issues.
There was an article in the New York Times that raised questions as to how Palin, a mother with five children, the youngest of whom has Down syndrome, will be able to handle raising a family coupled with the responsibility of being in the second highest office in the land. Well, no one has asked Barack Obama how he would be able to handle raising children while in office. In fact, no man ever running for office has ever been asked that. I wasn't fully sold on the concept before, but now I realize sexism is indeed alive and well. Maybe the lady in the pantsuits was right: aspects of the media coverage of her campaign may indeed have been sexist. If there are parents running for office, be it a man or a woman, they should be asked the same questions regarding child rearing, or neither of them should be asked. That's fair.
As for all the talking heads and their concern over the vetting of Sarah Palin, which many in the news core thinks was only perfunctory (that's a twenty dollar word) at best, one can only shrug. The average voter doesn't even know what "vetting" means. They think it has something to do with their dog. Unless there's something really, really wacky in Palin's background, like her doing something really weird to one of those moose she hunts, all this chatter about vetting is a waste of space. Of course, with 24-hour TV news channels, talk radio and those things that fewer and fewer people read called newspapers, there's a lot of space to waste. (A quick word on newspaper editorials: Very few people, other than political addicts such as myself, read them. They are not read, I don't think, by the vast electorate, and have very little, if any effect on anything.)
The one thing I will say about family, is that if you bring them on stage of in front of camera and an interviewer, as have Palin and Obama, then you provoke media scrutiny of your family. If you don't want that, leave the kids at home, with adult supervision of course.
Sarah Palin looks like the type of person who can take a punch, metaphorically speaking. She won't be scared off by overly excited reporters by the hundreds, and would, I'll bet, look at dealing with the media invasion as a challenge. Sarah Palin isn't going anywhere, nor is John McCain going to ask her to do so.
Here's my advice to the sweaty, wild-eyed media hordes: take a deep breath.
-The Cubs have lost four games in a row at Wrigley for the first time since I don't know when. The White Sox have lost five out of their last six games. The end is near! Well, I have news for you, both these teams are too good to fade away and not make at least the playoffs. This is a good time for starters, both pitchers and position players, to take a few days off and get their stuff together for when things are really serious. It's better to lose a few games now than in October.
Here's my advice to Cubs and White Sox fans: take a deep breath. (For all you White Sox fans, don't forget to exhale after that deep breath. You wouldn't want to hold your breath until you turn Cubbie blue, would you?)
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