The Seattle Times, in a copyrighted story, offers some insights into Sarah Palin’s time as mayor of a tiny Anchorage exurb and a personality that can only be described as insecure and creepy.
In today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a University of Alaska professor, otherwise friendly to McCain, outlines details of Palin abysmal environmental record.
Meanwhile, Huffington Post’s Sam Stein refutes Palin’s claim that she "said no" to the "bridge to nowhere."
The New York Times’ public editor fires back at claims by McCain’s ruthless operative Steve Schmidt, playing tearful with the Washington Post, that the press was unfair to Palin.
And if you missed it, here’s Gloria Steinem’s op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, where she writes, "Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is
Phyllis Schlafly, only younger."
UPDATE: Be sure to read Arianna Huffington’s excellent Palin column:
Her critics like to say that Palin hasn’t accomplished anything. I
disagree: in the space of ten days she’s succeeded in distracting the
entire country from the horrific Bush record — and McCain’s complicity
in it. My friends, that’s accomplishment we can believe in.
This morning I read an op-ed piece in the Arizona Republic(an) by Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe, titled “Questions about Palin’s experience legitimate, not sexist”. The piece was about as far left as one can expect to find in most newspapers of record. The daring premise was encapsulated in the title: that questions about Palin’s experience are legitimate. Imagine that! Questions about a vice-presidential candidate’s experience are legitimate. Thank god we had this syndicated op-ed piece from the Boston Globe to reassure us on that point. Because frankly, I was prepared to abandon all critical inquiry, merely because Palin is a woman working in a man’s world; never mind what she advocates, or on whose behalf.
Then I read a little further into the article, and found the writer criticizing those who “titter about the truth about the Palin family — 17 year old Bristol Palin is unmarried and pregnant. What does this have to do with Palin’s qualifications to be vice-president? Teenagers have unprotected sex, against the best advice of their parents and the Republican Party platform.”
Actually, it has a lot to do with her qualifications. Because one of the primary jobs of VP is to set the tone for education policy in the nation’s high-schools, while President McCain is deciding whether or not to bomb Iran.
Everyone in this country, whether liberal or conservative, ought to be at least mildly concerned about teenage pregancy. Babies having babies. Does ANYONE wish to encourage unwed teen mothers to get pregnant? (I don’t see any hands raised.)
Now, the last time I checked, there are only two ways to prevent pregnancy: (1) abstain from sexual intercourse; (2) properly use contraception when having sexual intercourse. (The latter, incidentally, is a pretty good idea, outside of married monogamy, even if you’re not particularly worried about pregnancy, to avoid sexually transmitted diseases — some of which can result in birth defects, stillbirths, or worse.)
Palin advocates abstinence without sex-ed and without making contraceptives available to teens. And it seems clear enough — unless the whole backstory about Palin is a front and a fraud — that she is neither an absent parent nor a weak one. If her press is to be believed, Palin is, in fact, right there on top of things, bringing a strong personal will guided by strong personal religious beliefs. There is a father present in the home, also, who apparently shares these beliefs.
Yet, her unmarried teenage daughter became pregnant while living at home! Now, that’s a powerful criticism — either of Palin as a moral leader, or else of the kind of abstinence-only educational policy she advocates.
Sure, her daughter might still have become pregnant if she had been thoroughly educated about how to use contraception and about the prophylactic as well as the contraceptive reasons for using it, even if she had been given free access to contraceptives and cautioned to insist on their use when engaging in sexual activity. After all, not every type of contraceptive is 100 percent effective, and some headstrong individuals will ignore anything they are taught, regardless of the care with which the information is imparted. But she would have been FAR LESS LIKELY to become pregnant had she received thorough and realistic sex-ed, not only from her teachers but from her mother, AND been guaranteed access to contraceptives.
So exactly what DOES the unwanted pregnancy of Palin’s unmarried teenage daughter teach us about the kind of policies she would implement as Vice-President of the United States of America?
It teaches us that “abstinence only” is a kind of wishful thinking carried out by conservative parents in a society whose overall values, influencing children outside the home and church, are considerably more licentious than those of saints and disciples.
It teaches us that, in a society in which carnal sin is more probable than not, the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies is to teach practical methods for avoiding conception and to provide means making this a realistic option in practice.
It tells us that a Vice-President whose idea of sexual education is based on a kind of conservative fairy-tale, and who remains dedicated to it despite her own personal experiences to the contrary, is not the candidate which responsible persons concerned about teenage pregnancy should want setting the sex-ed agenda for high-schools across the nation.
Because if teens are having sex despite being raised by parents who feel strongly about abstinence and who have no qualms about indoctrinating their children to follow such beliefs, and neither contraception nor abortion is an acceptable alternative, then the logical outcome is teen pregnancy.