A Seat at the Circus

I freely admit that the current governor of Alaska and failed vice presidential candidate is my bete noire. I will be so happy when we don’t have Sarah Palin to kick around anymore.  This woman makes me tired.  Not tired in a “Oh how does she do all she does?” way.  My oldest daughter, Erin, makes me tired in that way.  No,  Gov. Palin makes me tired in a “God! Will you just go home and close the door and shut up?” way.

She also is such a dunderhead that she scares me. She’s still going around giving interviews and showing up at conferences giving the same stump speech that she gave during the campaign.  Evidently, she thinks this is how a “leader of the party” is supposed to behave.  Lord help her, the woman is nothing if not deluded….and persistent.

The instancess of how Palin screwed up in this recent campaign are so many that I don’t have the space or patience to list them all.  For brevity’s sake, let’s just look at one example, the Katie Couric interview, specifically the “What newspapers do you read?” question. Now that she’s gotten the hint that she really messed up that question during that interview,  she’s out there trying to get do-overs.  She’s now throwing out the names of papers that, curiously, she could not remember during the Couric interview itself.

Oh, come on now.  Do you know the names of papers and publications that you read regularly?  Could you answer that question off the top of your head?  I sure could.  It ain’t that hard.

Okay, here’s mine.  I read the statewide paper, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, every day.  Every day.  If I’m traveling away from Arkansas, I look it up online. I agree with almost nothing of its editorial policy, but it carries the news that affects me most personally.  No one has to put it in front of me either.  We subscribe.  I pick it up off the doorstep each morning.  When we lived in the country, I hiked out to the paperbox every morning.

Also, whenever we’ve lived in a small town, I read the small town paper, i.e. The Cabot Star-Herald or Marianna’s Courier-Index. One needs to keep abreast of who is getting married, who’s died, and whether the water bill is going up.  Presumably Wasilla, Alaska has a daily or weekly paper, say something akin to a Wasilla Weekly Fish Wrap.  Palin could have mentioned that and looked like less of a fool.

I read the New York Times.  Every day.  What a wonderful newspaper.  What a pleasure to read.  I haven’t always read the NYTimes so regularly.  Until recently I only had access to it infrequently.  Even when I lived way out in the country, I’d pick one up whenever I had the chance and read it from cover to cover.  Now that I’ve got access to it online, I never miss it.

Palin could do this too.  She just doesn’t.  There’s only one reason that she couldn’t name a paper, especially a national paper that she regularly read.  She’s intellectually incurious.  Sounds like a distaff version of George W. Bush to me. 

Here’s what happens when you aren’t intellectually curious enough to pick up national or state publications (this includes the weekly news magazines) or you depend on someone to put a paper in front of you, as Palin claimed was her wont: You miss a lot of stuff that’s happening in your world.  You might miss the fact that it’s scientific fact that global warming exists.  You might be less informed about international affairs, such as facts that spring up about what is actually happening in Iraq and not just what your National Guard son brings home from his unit meetings.  You might learn more about the big oil and gas companies are actually doing up in your state, things that they might conceivably be able to keep out of the local papers and tv reports. You might learn that elsewhere former beauty queens and sports reporters are not revered as people well-qualified to move on to high office.  You might learn that you don’t know everything.

These are valuable lessons and newspapers are valuable tools in teaching them.  Couric wasn’t trying to play “Gotcha!” as you so ineloquently put it.  She was just stymied for a straight answer from you and threw you a bone.  You couldn’t catch it and blamed her for not putting it in your mouth.  Oh yeah, I’ve never seen or heard of a college-trained journalist or a former working journalist who had such little interest in or regard for journalism.

If she’s not reading newspapers or magazines regularly then she’s surely not going to take the time to read actual books, unless it’s that latest Danielle Steel.  Maybe she can peruse that while jetting around the country on personal appearances.  Here’s a clue, Sarah.  It’s not the same.

On the other hand, I just saw Barack Obama on “60 Minutes.”  He said that he’s currently reading non-fiction books about the administrations of Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  He’s looking for clues from the best on how to govern us out of the current mess that a non-reading, disinterested president left us in.  Obama picked these out himself and he’s reading them himself.  No one put an abridged version of these books in front of him.

We were really lucky when Palin helped McCain lose this election.  I hope she’s off the national stage soon.  It can’t come soon enough for me.  But while she’s off in Alaska prepping for her next foray out to run for higher officer or to go shopping at Neiman-Marcus, let’s all encourage her to do some daily reading.  It’ll help everybody….just in case.

It’s been a happy week at the Circus.  We’ve been living off the euphoria of the Election.  All of it wasn’t good.  Our friends, neighbors, and other Arkies, in their infinite wisdom and schizophrenia decided that we should have a lottery, while banning homosexuals and cohabiting heterosexuals from adopting or fostering children, AND inflicting our state legislature on us every year rather than every two years, when it seems that they do enough damage. 

All I can figure on those first two amendments is that the conservative Christians among us let their natural prejudices and their preachers lead them into voting for the foster care/adoption ban, which let them keep what they call their consciences clear, but they got in the voting booth and the Devil made them vote for the lottery.  It is a curious thing.

Also, there’s a map out showing the new voter shift.  In this election, more, many, many more counties in the U.S. voted Democratic rather than Republican.  More as in 1,173 counties voting Democratic by 10 or more percentage points versus 225 Republican counties voting Republican by a same number of percentage points.  Even as one goes down in percentage points, the phenomena still holds.

Looking at this map by blue and red colors (what else?), it just jumps out at you.  Nearly the whole dang country is now blue.  Except for Arkansas and a few backward others.  We’ll always be able to count on Appalachia and south Louisiana, and pockets of Alabama, Florida and Oklahoma to stand with us, but my Gosh!  Texas and Mississippi have turned! 

Even Alaska, ALASKA, voted solid blue except some counties in South Central Alaska.  You know what’s there, that area concentrating around Anchorage and Wasilla.  I’d say that Gov. Palin did nothing to help her standing in her own state in her adventures outside of its confines.

So, here we sit in the most Republican, conservative-voting section of the country.  What’s a couple of liberal-leaning hard-core Democrats to do?  Well, we take comfort in the tiny baby blue section of the Arkansas map that we reside in and look with hope to the other tiny baby blue slice up in Northwest Arkansas where the flagship university sits.  Hopefully, the kids will get educated and spread out to the rest of the state eventually.  It didn’t happen with my age group, but maybe it will with this one since it’s not confused with issues such as Vietnam and civil rights.

Going back to the night of the election, I wrote in the previous blog of our experience at Sticky Fingers at the Obama Watch Party in Little Rock.  TV people were everywhere that night.  One cameraman set up near our table, right in the path leading to the restrooms.  Having been in this line of work myself, I kept wanting to go over to the cameraman and say, “Son, you are set up in the worst possible place in this building.  Don’t you think that if you moved your camera over there (to the other side of the big TV screen), you’d have a better vantage point?”

But I didn’t do that.  You know how much professionals in any endeavor appreciate total strangers telling them how to do their job.

At one point in mid-evening when absolutely nothing was going on, I took a trip to the restroom.  As I walked past the cameraman, I noticed that he had a hot camera, i.e. it was recording.  I hated that I fouled his shot, such as it was, but could not help it at the moment.

The night after the election I was watching the local news on ABC affiliate KATV Channel 7 when the anchor mentioned the crowd out on election night.  Just as she said “the crowd” I walked by in the video, blocking out the sun, the moon, the stars, and everyone at the party.

That was the only shot they used!  Now why did the station do that?  Here’s just one white-haired, white woman in a sea of people and she (I) was the only person who evidently went out the night before.  Where was the footage of the euphoric black people crying, screaming with joy, and falling to the floor in prayerful thanks?  Was that not considered “visual” enough?

I don’t get it. Neither did my daughter Paisley, who said, “Why didn’t they take my picture?  I went to the bathroom three times!”

But now we’re getting back to normal around here.  The Ringmaster, who doubles as the guy who cleans up after the elephants, is completing a very big home improvement project under the Big Top.  He has ripped out the old, cruddy carpeting from our den and, with the help of our son-in-law, laid a beautiful hardwood floor.  It is a great improvement.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Yesterday, November 4, 2008, the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was realized.  It turns out, Boys and Girls, that all men are created equal, and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and its Amendments are for every citizen. 

Amendments V, VI, VIII (look them up yourselves, but the Guantanamo situation and the excesses of the Patriot Act figure in here) and especially Amendment XIV, which guarantees the right to vote of every citizen, seem particularly apt.  It seems some Republican officials and leaders across the land still have trouble coming to grips with Amendment XIV, but they didn’t get away with depriving people of votes, and thus, stealing the election this time.  For that, we may all be grateful.

Some of my family decided to go out last night to find what we hoped would be a celebration.  Boy, did we find it. But before we left the house, Bill brought me a piece of paper upon which he had written his electoral vote prediction.  He picked Barack Obama with 368 electoral votes to John McCain’s 170. For a while there it looked as if Bill out-predicted all of the pundits and experts.  Now that the most recent number being bandied about is 349 to 162, it doesn’t seem as if his crystal ball was crystal clear, but he still prognosticated better than most.  If North Carolina comes in for Obama, Bill may look like a genius.  All media outlets are hereby invited to bid on his services.

At first we had trouble last night finding a watch party.  Normally, the political parties in Arkansas set up watch parties at the nicer hotels in Little Rock.  They make good places for people to gather, for news crews to set up, and for candidates and office holders to show up and accept accolades or consolation, as the case may be.  Recently, in 2006, the Democratic Party held its watch party at the Peabody Hotel, a great venue for such goings-on.  That’s where we planned to go.

However, late yesterday afternoon daughter Paisley called and said that she had heard that there would be no party there.  Huh?  Well, former Governor and Senator David Pryor, the acting Democratic Party chairman since the murder of former leader, Bill Gwatney, dropped the ball.  Pryor is usually a well-organized guy with an eye to something other than narrow personal interests.  But last night he only organized a watch party for his son, Mark, one of Arkansas’ current senators, who was running for re-election.  He set it up at Cotham’s a medium-sized restaurant in Little Rock near the State Capitol.  No way would this place be big enough to host everyone in the state who wanted to watch the Democrats roll up votes.  Plus, it was advertised as strictly a Mark Pryor party.  Not good, former Senator Pryor, not good at all.

Bill looked all over the Internet for info on other watch parties.  I couldn’t believe that the state Democratic Party wouldn’t hold some kind of party for the faithful.  It was unheard of.  Finally, I hit on the brainstorm that the television stations would have to be set up for interviews somewhere, so I called one of the local affiliates and asked where they planned to be.  News personnel told me that they would be at the watch party at Sticky Fingers, a chicken restaurant in the River Market near the Clinton Library.  Well, that was more like it, but still more downscale than I thought the occasion warranted.

Bill and I arrived early, about 7 p.m. at Sticky Fingers.  We found an empty table near the front of the restaurant and ordered dinner.  Paisley and our niece, Lee, a teacher at Central High School, joined us shortly afterward.  We found ourselves in the best seats in the house.  We were right in front of the giant television screen showing CNN all night and got to see every total as it came in, plus watch the gathering humanity and building drama as the night progressed.

I was right about one thing.  Sticky Fingers did its best to accommodate and feed and water everyone who needed feeding and watering, but it ain’t big enough for the kind of momentous occasion that happened last night.  Within minutes of the arrival of Paisley and Lee, every seat was taken and there was hardly room to stand.  Those who did have to stand had to do so for hours.

This was not an all Black crowd either.  Whites were about equally represented and there were a few scattered Asian-Americans.  The ages were more mixed that expected too.  I was not surprised to see some older African-Americans in the crowd, but at a table near us sat a trio of dressed-up elderly white women who appeared to have gotten lost on their way to a country club bridge tournament.  They quietly raised their glasses in unison whenever a state came in for Obama.

Big crowd eruptions happened every time a state was called for Obama, but the biggest were reserved for Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida.  Then, at around 10 p.m. CNN called the election for Obama.  I nearly went deaf from the ensuing cacophony.  It was a sincere, spontaneous blast of exhilaration and relief. 

When the election was declared, I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a roar of approval anywhere other than when Arkansas beats Texas at football.  This may have been louder since it was a first.

Seated at a table next to us was a group of five or six African-American women.  When the election was called, everyone in the place leapt to their feet, but these women were beyond thrilled.  They were overcome.  One of them, a young woman, was so excited that she fell over on me and nearly knocked both of us to the ground.  She cried, she screamed, she hugged me like I was her mother, and cried some more.  After about a minute of unrestrained joy she fell to her knees and leaned on an empty chair.  I thought that she had fallen accidentally until I realized that she was praying.

For the uninitiated, it might have been a frightening thing to see, but I am a Delta girl.  I known unbridled, uninhibited joyous fervor when I see it.  This was Church.  I just stood back and watched in awe.  It was nearly as moving to watch as it was to experience it.  For as happy as I was that Obama had won, my interest was political, historical, and cultural.  For the group at the next table and a good many others in the room, it was personal.  They had waited and worked and dared to hope for it for decades or lifetimes.

One of the other women at that table and I began talking. or shouting, since the decibel level in the room was so great.  She told me that she and others in her group had spent months calling and canvassing in the state.  Then, when it became apparent that Obama had no chance of carrying Arkansas, they joined others for a two-bus tour into Missouri over the weekend to canvas.

I thought about that and of how those people had paid their own way and left family and jobs for one last push to complete the near-impossible.  I leaned over to her and said, “Look what you did.”  She smiled through her tears and said, “No! We all did this.  I did it and you did it and everyone in this room and everyone who stood in line determined to vote did this.  It couldn’t have happened without all of us.”

And she’s right. I know that within a few weeks or even days, we’ll all be back to our complaining, back-biting selves, but for one night at a chicken shack in downtown Little Rock and at similar venues around the country, we were all brothers and sisters.

I told my new friend that I thought that Tina Fey was largely responsible for pulling the election toward Obama.  She agreed and said, “We all need to send Tina Fey Thank-You cards.”  Then she yelled that we should all thank Tina Fey.  Blessings for Tina Fey were asked for all around. 

Then, as the Obama and Biden families congregated onstage in that great tableau in Grant Park in Chicago at around 11 p.m., I heard behind us an older black female voice call out, “Now that looks like America!”  And by Golly, it did.

 So on Election Night, whether your candidate or candidates rose or fell, it was a good night to be an American.  We can now look out at a landscape that shows us to be a more mature, yet hopeful country.  It was a long time coming.

Having voted yesterday in a two-day solitary search for a method in which to ply my democratic principles, I was reminded of a recent visit to Lady Liberty.  While in New York City in September, my husband, younger daughter, and I took the opportunity to go out to get a close look at the Statue of Liberty.

We’ve all seen it before, I have a few times, from a distance.  But before we left for our New York adventure, a favorite cousin of mine with a New York daughter told me that going out to the island was a must-see.  She had done it and saw Ellis Island on a recent visit and proclaimed it to be just about as fine a thing to do in New York as going to the theater.  That was all it took for us to put it at the top of our list.

I don’t know what I expected from our visit to Liberty and Ellis Island, but it was a transcendent experience.  It was also a polyglot experience.  From the moment we got to the National Park Service ticket booth at Battery Park, all through the visit and the trip back, we hardly heard any English spoken.  I’m not kidding! I had to keep checking my environs to make sure that I hadn’t arrived in a time warp.  We heard languages and dialects springing from the mouths of Indian, Hispanic, German, French, Russian, Eastern European, Italian, Scandinavian, Irish, Pacific Islanders, and African peoples.  And this is in 2008.

About the only people, other than the Arkies and a few other tourists, who spoke English were the guys who operated the ferries.  These guys displayed the accents of every borough of the city, and they really worked.  Managing boatloads of people, obviously, is not a cushy job. In addition to being strong enough to tangle with the ferries, ropes, lines, piers, etc., these men have to be polite and concerned enough about the safety of the people in their charge that they’ve got pretty good social skills.  And they move hundreds and thousands of people every day.

With so many varieties of speech, dress, skin color and manner, I felt like part of a minority group for one of the few times in my life.  I wasn’t uncomfortable, I just felt obvious and different.  Since this was on a beautiful Sunday, most of those we saw were in family groups.  Some of them came in multi-generational family groups. 

I wondered if most of these people were new to these shores.  I suspected so.  In any event, it occured to me as we neared the statue that all of us, every last one of us, was on a pilgrimage.  It didn’t really matter if we had just arrived on Tuesday or if our families were among the Founding Fathers and Mothers.  We were going because it meant something to us.

As we neared the Statue, both going out to her and coming back toward the New York Harbor, I got a sense of what it must have been like for all those immigrants who entered America past the Great Lady.  It actually was quite easy to imagine oneself back in the late 1800s or early 1900s, gazing out at the woman welcoming all into the Promised Land.  After goodness knows what that leads people to pick up and leave family, friends, and homeland and then to endure a sea crossing with less than luxury accommodations, here, finally, was a tangible symbol that a new life was available and open to all.

None of my ancestors nor my husband’s came past the Statue nor entered Ellis Island.  But 12 million others did from 1892 through l954.  Both my and Bill’s families got here much, much earlier, many of them during pre-Revolutionary War times.  I don’t think that means much other than things went south for both of our families in the Old Country earlier than they did for many other peoples.  Either that or we just come from really restless, cantankerous families.

Some of my ancestors did actually come through the New York harbor early on.  That bunch was part of a group known infamously as The Edwards Heirs, a group who lays claim to a good bit of lower Manhattan that holds Wall Street and the Financial District (it’s not worth nearly as much these days), the old Trinity Church grounds, Battery Park, parts of Central Park and a few other choice properties.  It’s said that Aaron Burr was part of a swindle that removed this property from family holdings.  Some in the family still bear a grudge.  But that is another tale for another time. 

Ferrying through the harbor, I thought of the hardships of all immigrants and of the hope and anxiety these immigrants must have felt as Lady Liberty lit the way, for after they got by the statue they still had go through untold tests and anxieties on Ellis Island. I could hear excited babble all around me.  Everyone must have been feeling the same thing.  I couldn’t speak without a catch in my throat.  Bill had a tear in his eye.  Paisley simply took pictures, then turned away.

On Liberty Island itself, the families on our ferry scrambled.  They searched for food, they spread out picnic lunches and snacks.  Kids romped on the grass and couples strolled hand-in-hand.  Many lingered on the grounds that overlooked the Manhattan skyline.  This must be the best vantage point in the area for that scenery and a magnet for photographers.  It’s a breathtaking ode to architecture.  I enjoyed looking at “my property.”

The Statue of Liberty herself is the main attraction.  She’s much more impressive up close and personal than from a distance.  She does not have a bad side. Looking at this American symbol, it’s surprising to note that Bartholdi’s statue was meant as a monument to an international movement of republicanism rather than as a symbol of immigration. But once Emma Lazarus got her hands on the subject matter and wrote her poem “The New Colossus,” it became America’s symbol and a welcoming beacon to immigrants everywhere.

I dare you, dare you, not to think of parts of Lazarus’ poem as you sail past this statue in the harbor and gaze upon:

“A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles”…… and “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lite my lamp beside the golden door.”

Wow! What a message.  They’re still coming, and they still believe. 

And that’s why I always vote. Don’t get in my way. Don’t tell me that I can’t, and don’t tell me that I’m not patriotic.

I just got back from Early Voting.  Casting my ballot is about as close as I ever get to a religious experience.  Voting in a national election is High Church.  I go in and genuflect to the flag, inhale the incense (the crowd), and proceed to the altar for communion. I never fail to emerge cleansed, uplifted, and ready to go forth, full of hope and eager to meet tomorrow. Of course, I’ve been sometimes, make that often, disappointed in the past. But verily, I say unto you that I shall vote, no matter what the cost!

I started my voting history by casting an absentee ballot in l968.  That was a momentous election, Nixon vs. Humphrey, the beginning of our long, national nightmare.  I voted in subequent elections on paper ballot in my home county of Lee, then moved to the big city of Little Rock and voted on the early voting machines.  For awhile Bill and I used a discarded ballot box as a lamp table in an early apartment.  When we moved to Lonoke County, a country county abutting Little Rock’s Pulaski County, we voted in a fire station and went back to paper ballots.

This, undoubtedly is the easiest and best way to vote.  You just go in, say “hi” to your neighbor, literally your neighbor, get your piece of paper and make your selections.  Piece of cake.  But back here in the city, we vote on Election Day in a nearby church, on voting machines.  I don’t trust those things.  But that’s the way we do things now.

I’ve chosen to vote early in the past two or three elections.  I don’t think it’s any easier and know it isn’t any faster.  Before we moved from Lonoke County, if you wanted to vote early you had to do it at the Lonoke County Court House, an old building on the National Register.  I did it there once.  Had to stand in line in the basement of the moldy old building for nearly an hour.  My husband, who just went to the fire station on Election Day breezed right through.

But here we are at a very important moment in American history.  I don’t want hitches on Election Day.  I can’t stand in the rain for hours or even ten minutes.  I’m going to, By Jove, cast my ballot as one of my basic Constitutional rights.  It wasn’t easy this time.

My first attempt was yesterday when Early Voting began.  I went to the Laman Library in North Little Rock.  It’s a large library where I’ve early voted before with no problem.  Normally, I walk into the library, go to the large room that formerly held a good sized Children’s Section, go through the election officials and vote. 

Not this time.  A line snaked from the absolutely full voting room out the door into the back of the library, around the walls of the library on three sides and nearly out the door.  I asked the lady in front of me how long a wait was anticipated.  She said, “They’re telling us ‘two hours.’”  Two hours?  For Early Voting?  I never heard of such a thing.

I decided not to stay, but to try again later.  But first I studied the crowd.  It was about a 50/50 mixture of Black and White, various social classes, mostly middle class.  There were several nurses or technical medical people in scrubs.  The Black people seemed to be making a family affair out of it.  I saw lots of multi-generational groups, one of them had to have four generations among them.  Several couples were taking turns, during a two-hour wait!  A man or woman would be waiting outside with children while the partner stood in line inside.  Now this might mean that a couple was taking four hours out of their day and time off work to vote.  Amazing.  In Arkansas.

I would say that this bodes very well for Barack Obama.  Arkansas has been projected in the McCain column since the first of this campaign season.Of course, this is Central Arkansas which is the mostly likely to go for Obama, except for the extreme eastern counties in the Delta.  McCain should carry the rest of the state, especially the Republican strongholds in northwestern Arkansas.  However, a report this morning indicated that voting officials up in Benton County report that they haven’t had much early voting up there.  Benton County is the county where Bentonville sits, Sam Walton’s Wal-Mart international headquarters, and you can’t get anymore Republican than that.

Excuse me?  They’re not lining up in Benton County to cast votes for McCain, which would be the only votes for president those voters will be casting?  What does that mean?  Could it be that many of those Republicans are sitting this one out or that they’ll hold their noses and vote for McCain on Election Day? 

I headed back out today, earlier than the day before, to try to vote again.  This time I couldn’t find a parking place anywhere around the library.  I headed across the river to an early voting site near the Pulaski County Courthouse.  This one was supposed to have double the voting machines and election officials than any of the others.  The place was clautrophobic and dimly lit, but the line did move quickly.  Since this is in the South, one must be patient for people in line and at the voting machines to stop and hug old friends and acquaintances in line and among the elections assistants.  It’s a small price to pay.  This time I was able to get the deed done. 

Whatever all of this means for McCain and Obama, I think we’re in for a wild ride here.  This election could be historic in more ways than one.  I, frankly, am glad that I’m alive to see it and to partcipate.

Amen. 

What is this man doing?  And why is he doing it and at this particular time?  Clearly, Senator John McCain has lost control of his tongue, possibly the rest of his body, and almost certainly the upcoming presidential election.

I happened to be watching the last presidential debate on Wednesday.  Barack Obama got up out of his chair and calmly started walking across the stage, presumably to  embrace his wife, Michelle.  McCain sprang from his seat as if he were being ejected from another plane that just got shot out from under him.  Then he did kind of a little John Belushi dance of spastically turning from one side to the other as if he was really uncertain of where to go and what to do. He cut-up like he was joking with his grandkids or the guys in the locker room at his country club.

I watched this with my husband and questioned unbelievably, “What’s he doing? That looks absolutely nuts.”  And that’s what it looked like on the live TV feed.  In the above still photo, it looks even worse. We can all thank photographer Jim Bourg of Reuters News Service for this Kodak Moment.

There is a sort of history of presidents and presidential candidates shooting themselves in the foot by being photographed doing questionable acts.  Go back all the way to Calvin Coolidge wearing full American Indian headdress.  LBJ gladly showed photographers his recent surgical scar.  Nixon brought a photographer out to his private beach at San Clemente and had himself photographed “at ease” walking along in a full suit and tie with the ocean washing over his wing-tip shoes.  Michael Dukakis helped blow his election by climbing into a tank and donning an oversized helmet.  George W. Bush proudly put on a flight suit and landed on an aircraft carrier, posing like a grinning fool in front of a very premature banner stating ”Mission Accomplished.”  Seven years later, it’s still not finished.  But none of them, NONE OF THEM, made such an ass of himself as McCain has in this instance. 

Okay, here’s what I want to know.  Who does this kind of thing while onstage for a presidential debate? McCain has made himself look ridiculous in the previous debates too, but this is something special.  He has reminded me of the way a child behaves when it’s been confined to sitting still and quietly for longer than its attention span allows.  Normally, you’ll see this kind of behavior in kids after being let out of school or church service.  They can’t tolerate the forced inactivity and they go a little wild for a time. 

But that’s children.  This is a fully grown man…who’s been in the United States Senate for decades.  He’s running for President. Does he think that any voter out there believes that this is presidential?  Radio commentator Randi Rhodes, a smart and funny woman, opines that McCain may have prostate issues.  I think she might be onto something there.

Whatever McCain’s problem is, this is not acceptable.  Is it any wonder that the rest of the world thinks of us as immature and undisciplined? I can’t think of any other world leader who would allow himself to be caught doing this kind of thing.  Well, maybe that nutty North Korean dictator with the bad haircut.  There’s no telling what he’d do.  Now that I think about it, this is kind of my point with McCain.

I hear from a variety of news and political sources that John McCain is an honorable man.  I haven’t seen much of that lately or in times in the past, but I’ll assume that he can be.  I have no interest in watching anyone humiliate himself or embarrass the country.  The best thing John McCain can do now is simply to go away quietly.  And the sooner the better.

Okay Students, I’ve graded your final test for Miz Dixon’s class in Journalism 101.  I regret to tell you, boy do I regret to tell you, that most of you flunked.  With few exceptions, and these come from some surprising quarters, you’ve blown it.  A lot of you will get no credit for this one.  You’ll have to take the whole course over.

I don’t want to hear all this moaning and groaning and cries of “Not fair!”  “But Miz D., I didn’t have time to study.”  “You didn’t prep us for the test well enough.”  I don’t want to hear it.  You are all presumably adults and have been at this gig for long enough to know what to do and how to do it.  You failed, plain and simple.

As you know, your grades for this term in this class covered mostly the 2008 Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates.  That would include the three presidential debates and the one, thank God just the one, vice presidential debates.  Greater weight was given to the last debate because, well, it was the last debate.  It is closer to the time of the election, plus you’ve had plenty of time now to assess the candidates propensities as well as that of the electorate.

Here’s how the general failure breaks down.  You fell into old, bad habits …again.  I know how you guys love to cover the horse race.  It’s exciting and catches the attention.  That’s why all of you are in this class.  You all have ADHD, and are manners challenged, but that’s another issue and I’m not grading on civility. 

Covering the horse race is good and necessary, but once again THE HORSE RACE IS NOT THE ONLY THING!  Pay attention to the issues and to the candidates’ overall performance.  It also wouldn’t hurt to listen to what the candidates are saying.  The public certainly is doing that.  If you could somehow train yourself to watch and listen to the candidates in the ways that the average observer and potential voter is doing it, then you wouldn’t be so confused AND DOWNRIGHT WRONG when you get to the analysis of the debates and the inevitable quibbling about who was the winner and loser.

Too many of you are letting your biases run away with you.  I know that your network masters are all Republicans and you all want so much to “belong” and get the good party invitations, not to mention being able to fly on the candidates’ planes. Too bad, Maureen Dowd.  It’s hard to feel sorry for you, but you did get screwed by the McCain people this time. 

I know that many of you have socialized at the McCain family barbeques, especially you, Tom Brokaw.  And Andrea Mitchell, we all know how you took a bad deal and married a much-older Alan Greenspan and that it benefitted you in Republican circles, but it’s been decades since you turned in a decent story.  Frankly, if your sugar daddy didn’t move in high circles, you would have been given the old heave-ho years ago.  I don’t know why NBC keeps you.

All you Fox people and most of you MSNBC people are just banging out stories from either side of the spectrum.  There’s no objectivity anywhere from any of you folks.  MSNBC does get points for being clever and intelligent and sometimes entertaining.  Class, you must maintain your objectivity.  It is paramount in this class. 

I single out CNN as the worst of the bunch.  This network has a reputation, undeserved, for being a bastion for liberals.  The CNN reporters, commentators, and anchors try to make a big show of being objective.  Neither thing is true.  The CNN network is unrepentently conservative Republican.  Just listen to their slant on any given day or night and especially after a debate or election night.  Last night and on many others, after reporting Obama way ahead in the polls, you guys persisted in promoting McCain.  That’s in promoting, not reporting.

One thing CNN did in the debates is trot out all, and I do mean all, of their various talking heads to give their opinions on the debates.  You Republican commentators lined up over here and you Democratic commentators lined up over there.  No one seemed to have seen or listened to the same debate.  Shameful.

Here’s another bad habit that continues to come out.  You’re all trying to impress each other.  Forget it. No one is impressed with any of you.  Journalists are among the least trusted people in the world.  There hasn’t been an impressive one among you since Woodward and Burnstein.  Quit grinning Woodward and Bernstein.  You two haven’t been impressive since you worked together back in the ’70s on that Watergate story.  Apart, your work has been woefully below average.

Mostly, you all are just lining up on your favorite side and spouting the old party line.  It’s boring and you’re not even misleading many viewers any more.

Soledad O’Brian, you got a “C.”  Be grateful for small favors.  You drew that lousy assignment tracking the “uncommitted” voters up in Ohio.  Whew! What an impossible task that was.  You had to make sense of what some producer  thought up as a gimmick to see who was connecting with the voters.  They had these voters get  into the same room and watch the debates at the same time.  They gave them machines to turn switches that showed whether people approved or disapproved of what the candidates were saying.  The television audience was able to follow how these voters rated the candidate’s performance during the debate by staring at a graph at the bottom of the picture.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.  Here you were, Soledad, on your fourth leg of this assignment, and at no time did the overall impression of the voters afterward coincide with how they rated the candidates during the debates.  It was uncanny.

Last night, for example, the green line, which represented the men in the room, consistently rated McCain higher than Barack Obama.  The women consistently rated Obama higher.  Overall, it appeared that McCain had the better night.  But when O’Brian asked her group of Ohioans at the end of the debates who they thought won the debate, the majority went with Obama.  The majority also selected Obama as the one they planned to vote for.

Soledad was so confused by this that I thought she’d scratch her head and sit down for a good cry.  I understand, Soledad.  The inconsistency affected me that way too, until I figured out what was happening.  The group was rating the candidates on the particulars with their little switches.  However, what was going on in their heads was a different sort of selection process.  This one focused on each candidate overall.  They were choosing who they thought was presidential and who they thought they could live with for the next four years.  It was a big win for Barack Obama.

This little wiring of the focus group did produce at least one interesting but predictable result.  The men loved it when McCain made a feisty or “I’m gonna kick your ass” comment.  The green line shot up whenever that happened.  The women hated it.  The yellow (female) line dropped.  Apparently, this signifies that men like provocation more than women. 

Now this next section of the test is one that you all did most poorly on.  And nearly all of you flunked this outright.  Immediately after the debate the networks went to immediate analysis.  In nearly every case, you guys went for John McCain.  “McCain punched harder, “McCain came out swinging,” McCain connected more often,” “McCain may not have pinned Obama to the mat, but he was the aggressor and played offense all night.”  “Obama  played defence too much and simply tried to stay off the ropes.”  The advantage was to McCain and the poll numbers would surely show it.

My goodness, Students.  Did you all think that this was a World Wrestling Association event? You’d have thought that Bob Shieffer was a stand-in for Vince McMahon.  This goes back to the horse race mentality and the lack of general objectivity, but it was a flagrant foul.

Now, I hate to laugh at my students, especially to their faces, but you guys were hysterical last night and I couldn’t help myself.  After all of you, with the notable exceptions of Keith Olberman, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews of MSNBC, especially Chris Matthews, (Chris, nice job of objective reporting, a first for you) after you guilty parties opined that McCain was the clear winner of the debate and therefore, back in play as a candidate, the early polls came in.  Obama won all of them and in every category.

Talk about having egg all over your faces….it was so bad that even all of you egotists looked embarrassed and some were even momentarily struck silent.  That’s a moment in television history.  David Gergen, of U. S. News and World Report and appearing on CNN, appeared dumbstruck and tried to disappear into his laptop.  Campbell Brown went to him for an educated opinion on what was happening and all Gergen could come up with was “Hell if I know.”  Naturally, this drew a big laugh from his two desksful of fellow panelists, because it was the reaction of all of them.  They just didn’t want to say it and expose themselves as ignorant.  And here’s the thing: If Gergen, who in addition to being a respected journalist (and yes, David, I know you’re normally a star pupil and not used to flunking a class) served as an advisor in the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations can’t figure this thing out, then how can any of you?

I know I haven’t talked about you moderators yet, but I’ve been saving you for last.  Bob Shieffer, you distinguished yourself last night by not disgracing yourself.  There was nothing extraordinary about your performance, but you were steady and forced the candidates to stay on the topic, not easy when one of the participants is hellbent on doing things his way, no matter what.

Charlie Gibson, you let the candidates ramble and the answers drag on.  The debate was supposed to be about foreign policy, yet you let them drift off time and again on the economy.  Tom Brokaw, again, and I’ve warned you about this before, you let your own self-admiration and I expect, your friendship with John McCain color how you moderated this second presidential debate.  Also, you allowed McCain to wander all over the stage, behind and in front of Obama and at the end, between you and your teleprompter.  Most unprofessional and distracting.

But Gwen Ifill, I am most disappointed in you.  You have, after all, moderated presidential debates before and done a creditable job.  This time, honey, you got gamed.  You got gamed and you got gamed badly.  I know.  I know.  You’ve got that book coming out about African-American politicians and there’s no way in this year that you could leave out Barack Obama.  Not and sell any copies.

Here’s where you messed up.  When the Republican Party machinery saw that you were going to moderate the vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, they set up a howl the likes of which would make a pack of wolves proud.  “Bias!” they shouted.  “Take her out as moderator,” they demanded, knowing full well that no one was going to allow them to dictate who would moderate the debate.  Then you said that, of course, you weren’t biased and could do the debate just fine, thank you.

You played right into their hands.  The ploy worked on you and you bent over backwards to give Sarah Palin an even break, better than an even break.  You wouldn’t do anything to raise the spector of bias to the point that Palin refused to answer some of your questions.  She stated that she wouldn’t answer the question you asked, but would “speak directly to the American people.” 

Outrageous, Gwen.  You let her get by with it.  You even stated later that you let her ”wiggle away.”  For shame. Not only do you get an “F-,” but you are required to watch reruns of Bill O’Reilly on the old “Current Affair” show.  What you should have done is call Palin on that tactic right then.  Stop her in mid-sentence and say, “Gov. Palin, you agreed to the guidelines ahead of time.  You must answer the questions I put to you or I will have your mic cut off and you won’t be able to speak at all.”  See, that’s not so hard, is it? Or you could have just stepped aside to begin with and let someone moderate who didn’t have a book coming out.

Here’s something else I wish you had called Governor Palin on, Gwen.  She mentioned that she had a lot of diversity in her family.  Really?  I’d  like to know what it is.  Why didn’t you ask her, “Who and in what way?” ?  We all know that her husband Todd is part Native Alaskan or Eskimo, but that’s no stretch.  With 15.6 percent of the population of Alaska with that racial background, nearly everyone up there has someone on their street (or ice floe) who is Native Alaskan.  Did she mean that she had family members who are Hispanic (4.1 percent), Asian (4.0 percent), Black (3.5 percent) or mixed race (5.4 percent)?  Perhaps she meant that she had a second cousin who is gay or lesbian.

With 67.6 percent of the population of Alaska being snow white and with John Wayne as their patron saint (I have relatives there), it’s unlikely that the racial make-up or sexual preferences of her family is diverse by any definition of the word known in the lower 48.  If she wasn’t lying or misinformed, I’d like to know who exactly these diverse peoples are, giving her permission not to “out” anyone who didn’t want to be outted.

Come on, Gwen and all you others who haven’t done the follow-up question!  Since the total population of Alaska, according to the 2005 census, is 663,661 that indicates that the entire black population of the state rounds up to 23,000.  This is a population the size of everyone in Paragould, Arkansas, which is the 17th largest city in the state of Arkansas.  And most of these African-Americans came to Alaska as part of the military.  They stayed near the military bases in Fairbanks and Anchorage.  It would be safe to say that except for the cities of Fairbanks and Anchorage, you could travel all month across the width and length of Alaska and never lay eyes on a single Black, Hispanic, or Asian person.  I’d like to know how many Governor Palin knows personally.

I’ve got some suggestions for the lot of you students.  Get back to basics.  First, lose those egos.  Remember why you took this class to start with.  You wanted to report on things the way they are.  You wanted to make a difference.  Because your ilk has some fairly esoteric skill sets that means in order to serve your country and serve it well, you need to get in there and pay attention.  Dig.  Don’t go for the easy answers and explanations.  Ask the hard questions. Forget about face time and big money.  Listen.  Watch.  Lose your preconceived notions and be objective.  Above all, fight the owners as much as you can.  They already know how they want you to write the story.  And they’re wrong.

Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave.  Walter Cronkite is hanging his head in shame. You students used to know how to do this.  You can do it again.  You have to.  The republic is depending on you.

Class dismissed.

Husband Bill and I watched the last 2008 Presidential Debate last night.  Doing things such as this is one of the things that keeps our marriage strong. We tend to laugh at and be horrified at the same things, and this season’s debates proved to be a rich field in which to mine both laughter and horror.

Barack Obama was a clear “winner” in all three debates, regardless of the immediate opinions of most of television’s commentators.  There is another blog on TV’s sorry performance in these things. Last night Obama distinguished himself mainly by not doing very much, except answer most of the questions put to him.  He just stood there and didn’t look ridiculous at any point, which in this election year translates into “presidential.”

Poor John McCain.  The man truly is a war hero.  But he seems to have the strong belief that this entitles, if not qualifies, him to be Commander in Chief.  We’ve got some serious entitlement and Oepidal issues here.  What is a boy to do when both his grandfather and father were admirals and he is clearly not cut out for that line of work?  He becomes President of the United States, of course.  So there!  I’ve made everybody proud And bested Dad and Grandad.  These he-man types really ought to do something in college other than party if they want to go into politics.  Just some basic reading and higher education could save them a lot of embarrassment in the long run.

In the first debate McCain seemed angry just to have to be on the same stage as Obama.  It wasn’t a lot better in the second when he still avoided looking at his opponent.  This second debate, in the town hall format (which was supposed to have favored McCain), McCain looked somewhat dazed and crazed.  He alternately stalked and stumbled around the stage like an old bull.  He constantly addressed us all as “my friends.”  Don’t know about you, but he’s not my friend.  I’ve followed his checkered career at least since he was one of the Keating Five, and my friends don’t cheat the American people.

McCain was marginally more coherant in this third debate and didn’t make any gaffes as big as calling Obama “That One,”  as dismissive and disrespectul a term as I’ve ever heard one presidential candidate call another.  For this third debate McCain and Obama were blessedly assigned to seats at a table with the moderator, CBS veteran reporter Bob Shieffer. 

McCain, being able to sit down for this one and therefore use all of his blood supply for thinking rather than charging around desperately seeking votes, wasn’t nearly as wild in his demeanor.  However, that is not to say that he distinguished himself this time either.  He seemed alternately angry, snide, juvenile (as in “I’m not George Bush.  If you wanted to run against him, you should have run in 2004.”), cranky and out of touch.  At times it looked as though he was about to jump out of his seat and walk over to flick one of Obama’s ears.

It was a desperate performance.  At least I hope it was a performance.  The only other explanation for McCain’s feigned outrage over the Obama campaign’s allegedly dirty tactics that Obama has “never reputiated” is that McCain truly believes that horses***.  McCain says he’s particularly offended by Congressman John Lewis’ comments that remarks and shouts made at McCain and particularly at Palin rallies were racial and incendiary.  Lewis compared the tenor of these attacks to be similar to those uttered by former Alabama Gov. George Wallace in the ’60s and ’70s.  Lewis also stated that while Wallace threw no bombs, his rhetoric inflamed crowds who in turn took it out on black people. 

The fact that John Lewis is absolutely correct in his assessment is totally lost on McCain, who maintained that he was in a high dudgeon over Lewis’ remarks.  And McCain tried to equate what has been going on in his and Palin’s rallies with Lewis’ comments as if they were anywhere equal in tone and severity.  I lost some respect for Obama when he let McCain get by with that.  Obama actually said that Congressman Lewis went too far.

Let me tell you a little bit about John Lewis, for those of you who are too young to remember those awful uncivil times of racial unrest or those who just slept through it.  Lewis was a very active young Civil Rights worker.  He marched with Martin Luther King Jr.  He organized lunchroom boycotts to obtain equal rights for all.  For his trouble he was beaten to a bloody pulp more than once.  He was nearly killed in one particularly brutal beating…by the police.

John Lewis knows an incendiary comment when he hears one.  He knows a dangerous situation when he sees one.  He has no interest in returning to those bad old days and is frightened when he sees and hears the cat-calling and behavior the wing nuts are exhibiting at the Palin and McCain rallies.  I know it when I see and hear it too.  It’s been all over the news and Youtube for any who want to see.  I’ve seen this kind of thing up close and believe me, it’s what comes just before the violence starts.  What I’ve seen and heard about the Palin/McCain rallies recently makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Palin seems to vary between being terrified at what’s going on and not knowing what to do and being excited about the reaction to the red meat she’s throwing the crowds.  I heard a sound bite of her yesterday saying that she loved mixing it up and seeing the crowd’s over-the-top reactions.  Is she really that naive?

Does John McCain truly believe that Obama saying that McCain has been “erratic” compares in any sane way with folks in his and Palin’s crowds yelling out “terrorist” or “kill him?”   I don’t know in what alternative universe John McCain resides, but I don’t think it’s Arizona.  If he seriously thinks that what the two campaigns have done is comparable in any way, then things are more awry in McCainLand then we thought.  But I don’t for a second believe that this is truly what the man thinks.  Then he throws out in the debate, in the same paragraph, if not the same sentence, that he is “proud” of all the people who show up at the McCain and Palin rallies and participate in this stuff.  Really?

Oh, and I don’t know what Senator McCain calls his behavior of the past few weeks, but I call it erratic.  Let’s see: First he says the “fundamentals of the economy are sound.” Then, when companies start collapsing right and left and the economy is going straight into the tank with a speed that even he and George W. Bush can no longer deny, he jumps up and announces that he’s suspending his campaign and in Mighty Mouse fashion is flying to Washington (”Here I come to save the dayyy”) to bring the nation out of it all.  But first, he cancels an appearance at The David Letterman Show, while at the very moment he’s supposed to be on Letterman he shows up at a studio belonging to Letterman’s network to submit to an interview by Katie Couric.  Did he think that Letterman wouldn’t find out and wouldn’t be ticked off?

And let’s not forget that he couldn’t do anything to get the Congress to budge before it recessed.  Then he kept everyone hanging in the air about whether he’d actually show for the first debate, at which he made a spectacle of himself by fuming at Obama and not being able to tolerate even looking at him.  The second debate was simply weird.  That pretty much fits my definition of erratic.  But Obama just let all this pass.

Here’s what Obama should have done when McCain threw his mock or real outrage at Obama for Lewis’ comments or for Obama calling some of McCain’s appearances “erratic.”   Obama should have looked at McCain and said “Please.  You can’t be serious.  It’s not the same and no amount of your protesting that it is can make it so.”

But we’re through this awful phase of the 2008 Presidential Campaign now and we won’t have to go through this for another four years.  If all goes as expected, the old war horse will be put out to pasture soon.  From the looks of things, it will be right on time.

It looks as if my prediciton is finally coming true.  I’ve been predicting that America was going to hell in a handbasket ever since the election that propelled Nixon into his second term.  That paranoid, cheating, liar whipped like a yard dog the decent man and candidate that was the unflashy George McGovern and proved pretty resoundingly that the American voter can actually be slapped in the face with something like the Watergate break-in and still back the crook.

There’s been a steady slide in presidential leadership since then (Bill Clinton showed promise, but let his zipper problem get in the way).  I thought that George W. Bush’s two disasterous terms were the nadir of American politics, but recent weeks indicate that we can sink even lower.

The Wall Street crisis/debacle seems to have come as an appalling shock to everyone.  But wait!  Haven’t we seen this kind of thing before, and didn’t we learn anything from the history of the Great Depression?  Evidently not!  Since the Reagan Administration, we’ve seen the dismantling of all the protections set forward during the administration of FDR.  The bad times could never happen again.  No Siree.  Not possible.  We’ll all get rich and have fried chicken and RC Cola and Moon Pies and live forever….if you’ll just let us deregulate this one more little thing.

I’m so upset about what is happening with our tenuous economy and how our “leaders” have handled it that I really can’t even write coherantly about it.  But there is something I can write about.  It’s Sarah Palin.

Governor Palin of Alaska first appeared on the national scene when John McCain, the Republican nominee for President suddenly invited her to join him at the top of the ticket.  By now, it seems obvious that this decision was a cynical choice to try to gain disaffected Hillary Clinton voters.  Or it was simply the latest evidence that McCain is growing senile.

How did McCain’s team come up with this choice anyway?  No one would agree to his first choice of Joe Lieberman, who often appears with McCain in the unenviable position of “handler.”  You see, Lieberman, though technically an Independent, actually served for many years as a Democrat and ran for vice president during the still-disputed 2000 election, as a Democrat.  He often votes with the Democrats. Having him run alongside McCain would just be too weird.

McCain doesn’t like Mitt Romney, so that was out.  There were too many negatives to choose the better known, more experienced people who live all over the country.  Thus, Sarah Palin.

Here’s how well the McCain people vetted Palin.  They didn’t.  They left that untidy detail to Cindy McCain, the presidential candidate’s wife.  Yep.  And how well did Mrs. McCain do that job?  It came out of the McCain camp (I mean they actually released this information) that Cindy McCain asked her if Palin thought that she had the time to be both the mother of five kids, one of them a special needs newborn, AND be the vice president of the country. Palin’s answered with a question of her own, “What does the vice president do?”

WHAT DOES THE VICE PRESIDENT DO?!

Did this woman take no civics courses in high school?  How about an entry level government course in college, which she alleges to have graduated from?  This is the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard from someone who purports not to be… well, ignorant.

Then, continuing with the obviously very deep vetting process with Cindy McCain, she answers, “I’m a mom.  I can handle it.”  By that logic, then every mother of any age in America is qualified to be vice president.  I don’t think that’s the case.

Surely, surely, the McCain campaign went up to Alaska to further investigate Palin’s background, experience, and fitness to serve.  Surely, they’d check for scandal.  Well, guess again.  When the national media were let in on the vice-presidential surprise and beat a path to Alaska to do research, as they should, they were met by media folk from the northernmost state who proclaimed, “We wondered when someone was going to come check her out.  You guys are the first ones up here.”

Let’s look at that statement a little more closely.  The media was told that no one in McCain’s campaign, nor the Republican National Committee, nor anyone who might be conceived as a Republican operative had been curious enough to investigate Palin’s background.

I won’t be so cynical as to question whether Ms. Palin ever deigned to drop the bombshell about her teen daughter’s pregnancy.  Either she kept it a secret or she divulged it.  The McCain campaign, if they didn’t know, got bamboozled by Palin.  The McCain campaign, if they did know, tried to keep this info quiet until after the Republican convention.  Then, they pretended that they knew all the time and thought it was a wonderful thing and tried to sell the American public on that.  Unbelievable.

Even more unbelievably, if we are to believe the polls taken immediately after the convention and for several weeks thereafter, the American people did buy it.  Heavens to Betsy, what are we coming to?  Teen pregnancy, which the Republicans have preached against for decades as proof of the need for family values, their family values, was suddenly now okay.

It was widely reported that Republican operatives shone a bright, shiny light on the Palin’s family values.  Mrs. Palin supported abstinence-only birth control programs in Alaskan schools.  Well, I guess we can see how well that all worked out.  But the Palin’s were lauded for not being hypocritical.  Bristol would be keeping the baby and marrying the 18-year-old father.  I wonder how much input the two of them had in that discussion.

A word must be said about the father-to-be, an 18-year-old high school hockey player.  He has been described, by his friends, as “sex on skates.”  That sums up just about every 18-year-old boy I’ve ever come in contact with, but just for argument let’s suggest that before the Palins allowed this person to date their daughter, whether or not they knew of his description, that they sat down with him and explained just exactly what they expected of him while he was in the company of their daughter.  Governor Palin could come to the meeting with a prop, say her moose gun.  Her big, ole husband, the blue-collar worker who looks plenty strong could be in  the room, looking grim.  This might even be the time to bury the hatchett with that ex-brother-in-law, the state trooper, and have him in attendance.

Call it a teachable moment.  The young fellow may have dropped Bristol Palin like a hot rock or he might have been less likely to make the moves on her.  Either way these young people would be less likely to be faced with an unplanned pregnancy and way too early marriage. 

It may not have made any difference at all.  Even way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, when I was growing up, such things happened, just not with so much frequency.  All through my high school years, and some of my junior high years, I witnessed one girlfriend after another fall by the wayside through unplanned pregnancy.  Each was a victim of teen sex, inadequate birth control, and a social system that preached, “Just Don’t Do It.”

I suspected something was amiss with the Palins during that first introduction of Governor Palin and her family.  One thing you can say for them is that they are a telegenic bunch.  That was quite a tableau that we were presented with.  The undeniably pretty Palin, her hunk of a husband, the great-looking kids, the new baby that was supposed to be an advertisement for the no-abortion-for-any-reason-ever crowd. 

But wait!  I noticed something that didn’t seem quite right.  In those first moments, as Palin afflicted us with her uncharming accent, I saw that they had put the oldest daughter in charge of the four-month-old baby.  And she was holding the child strangely.  Bristol Palin had the baby in front of her, not the way one normally would hold a young one, especially one with a problem.  I saw the awkwardness of the eldest Palin daughter and wondered two things: (1) Why is that kid holding the baby instead of the father or another surrogate for the mother? and (2) Why is she holding him like that?

She had to hold the baby in that fashion for quite a while, long enough to test the back of the strongest unpregnant 17-year-old.  And then, of course, we all learned the truth within a few days.  She held her little brother in order to hide her own pregnancy.  I’ve got to question Governor Palin’s concern for at least two of her children.  Why on Earth would any caring parent put her pregnant unmarried teen-age daughter through that?  Why would she put the girl in charge of the baby that obviously needs the undivided attention of a committed adult?

I have nothing but the most sympathetic feelings toward Bristol Palin.  She has been thrust onto the world stage at arguably the most vulnerable time of her young life.  She’s been the subject of all sorts of media and civilian reports (some from her classmates). She’s been the butt of jokes. 

I recently attended  the musical Spamalot  on Broadway.  It’s in its third year, but producers obviously are making an effort to change jokes to keep the play fresh.  Toward the end of the play, one character, a talking tree, states, “I am the real father of Bristol Palin’s baby.”  The comment was met with a couple of seconds of silence while the audience pondered it, then the audience broke into sustained laughter and applause. 

Okay, Bristol Palin was not there, so she wasn’t embarrassed at that moment.  But this is the kind of thing that has been thrown at her since this announcement.  If her mother and father didn’t anticipate something like this, they should have.  Shame on them. She’s seventeen and she needs the undivided support of her mother.  However, she has been required to support her mother in her mother’s quest for high office.  That ain’t fair.  That’s not devoted motherhood, that’s overweening ambition.

And while we’re on this loving mom topic, let’s discuss the baby, little Trigg Palin.  Bless his heart.  Who’s looking out for his best interests?  Not mama!  She’s got bigger fish to fry. 

Here’s what Palin did when she was in this pregnancy.  They did the necessary tests, so they knew that the baby would have Downs Syndrome.  They elected to continue the pregnancy.  Well, good for them.  But see what she did after that and you’ll begin to wonder just how committed Miss Sarah was to delivering a healthy special needs child.

Palin flew to Texas to attend a governor’s conference.  Her water broke there.  Well, if you have to be away from home when you’re about to give birth, you could do a lot worse than to go to a big city Texas hospital.  You could, for instance, go to an Alaskan hospital in a small town.  I have relatives who live in Alaska, and even they don’t go to Alaskan hospitals.  But that’s what Palin did.  She hailed a plane and flew 12 hours back to Alaska to have the baby.  Do you have any idea how dangerous this is, for mother and baby?

I’ve had two babies myself, many years ago, thank goodness.  The memory lives with me.  After having my water break on its own with one kid and having it broken in the hospital with the other, I can attest to the fact that many, many babies come within the hour after the mother’s water breaks.  Both of mine did. I’ve also known lots of women who had the same happen to them.  I guess it’s possible to cross your legs for twelve hours so you can fly home to have your child (perhaps for political reasons?), but why on earth would you choose to do that?  It’s bizarre and unsafe.

It’s apparent that Governor Palin does not have a clue about certain guidelines concerning the childbirth process.  I can’t believe that any woman who’s already had four babies has to be prompted on this, but let’s help her out here.  First, if you are pregnant, and it’s not quite time yet, and your water breaks, go immediately to a hospital in the place where you are actually standing.  Second, do the same if your water breaks and you go into labor. Third, if said labor is premature and you are going to deliver either a healthy baby or a special needs baby, go directly to a hospital where you are.  Fourth, do not get on an airplane, espcially for a 12 hour flight.  Fifth, there is no fifth.

So now that little Trigg is here, and by some miracle he’s been able to survive his birth, he’s hardly had a chance to sleep in his own crib.  He’s being trucked from one place to another and is hardly where he needs to be, which is in his mother’s arms.  I’m not suggesting that she breast-feed him during an interview, but my gosh, could she show him a little concern?

I mentioned to my husband last week that I had yet to see Palin carry or otherwise hold this child.  Barack Obama picks up more kids not his own daily than I’ve seen Palin do to her own.  Then last week there was footage of her carrying the baby down the steps of an airplane.  Finally, I thought.  But the manner in which she carried this child was strange for the mother of any baby, especially of one descending from a place where an accidental fall might occur, like an airplane. And she carried him exactly like our two daughters used to tote around their dolls and the family cat.  It was absent-minded and lackadaisacal.  Her body language told a lot.

Is anybody asking how attentive a parent Sarah Palin can possibly be to that baby and her other children if she is the second highest officer in our land?  I remember when I was a young mom.  I had no babies with special needs, other than the special needs that all babies have, which adds up to 24-hour a day, 7 day a week attention and work. 

One of my daughters seemed to arrive on the planet with no need for sleep.  She was not an easy baby, but very loveable, which served her well.  I spent nearly the first two years of her life with her attached to my hip.  It was necessary.  The only way I could get her to sleep was to lie on a couch with her on my belly and chest and then to stroke her until she fell asleep for a few blessed minutes or hours.  Sometime during the third month I believe that I began to hallucinate from lack of sleep, but I adored her.  We all survived that time, but that is not an atypical experience.  A baby requires the attention of its mother.

I decided that I would not vote for Sarah Palin the second I saw Trigg Palin.  I would love to have a woman be vice president or president, but I am not so cynical that I would vote for one who would not be good for the country or her family.

It has also been reported that Sarah Palin’s quest for high office is not a new thing.  Someone who was a mentor in Alaska told her before she ran for mayor of Wasilla that she had a future in politics and stated that with luck and hard work Palin could someday be the governor of Alaska.  Palin replied, “I want to be president.”  Am I the only person who finds that an incredible statement?  It’s not quite as egomaniacal as George W. Bush’s comment that he thought that God wanted him to become President, but it’s in the same territory.  We saw where that led us, didn’t we?

And, of course, in the past few weeks we’ve been treated to the many ways that Palin needs to be kept away from the White House.  Numerous interviews prove that she has no grasp of national or international issues.  I don’t care how long the Republicans prep her for interviews or for her debate, she pretty much doesn’t know squat.

In a former life I was a teacher.  I’ve taught in junior high, high school, and college.  I know the Palin “I-don’t-know-anything-about-this” look well.  It’s pretty easy to discern when she’s been caught off-guard, and it’s hardly ever with a “Gotcha!” question.  The Katie Couric interviews are now the stuff of legend.  The only way Couric could have made it easier for Palin was to ask her what her favorite color was.

All of Couric’s questions were simple, straight-forward stuff, but Palin either said something ridiculous, resorted to gibberish, acted cute, or got that look that says, “Oh, no.  I didn’t study this.”  In my teaching days, I called it the “There are those who say….. and then there are others who say….”  It’s a time-worn tactic of the unprepared and/or the not-very bright.  And they always are surprised and upset when it doesn’t work.

For her part, Couric either looked like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing or that the phrase, “What the Hell?” just ran through her mind.

The vice-presidential debates are tomorrow night.  If Palin does what I think she can’t help from doing, this whole messy business should be over soon.  Surely at long last, the American people can recognize all of this as what it is and we can begin the long road back to sanity and decent government in this country.

Since starting this blog, I’ve tried to share the length, depth, and breadth of my experience.  One never knows when one shares a happening from one’s life if it is going to help or give insight to another person.  And I am all about helping my fellow human.

Recently while traveling in New York City, I was required to do something that never in my wildest imagination could I have predicted that I would ever do.  I had to shoot up in Sardi’s Restaurant, that famous New York Broadway bastion for theater-goers and denizens.  I did it and didn’t get thrown out.

I’ve been a diabetic for going on 15 years or so.  Sometime back there my then-doctor informed me that my blood sugar had been out of the normal range through a couple of routine tests and that she was now giving me the diagnosis of borderline diabetes.  I was horrified.  The doctor informed me that I should try to contain it with diet and exercise, but that she felt that I should also take an oral medication to get the numbers down.  If that didn’t work, then I could count on having to take the shots someday.

I don’t like shots.  I told the doc right then in no uncertain terms that I would never, NEVER, take the shots.  She’d just have to help me do what I could to control the damn thing without shots.  I remember to this day the look on my doctor’s face.  She looked shocked, then she just shook her head.

I rocked along walking a tightrope down the border for about a dozen years, changing meds several times in an effort to hit on a regimen that worked when the last one ceased to.  Then, three years ago I crossed the border.  I had gotten sick, real sick.  It had nothing to do with diabetes, but I was in a coma for more than a week. Being able to take oral medications was out of the question, so I was given insulin via injection.

One of the more unpleasant things I learned when I came out of the coma was that I was now insulin dependent and would have to take shots (that’s mulitple) daily if I wanted to continue to live.  Well, that changed everything and I got real cooperative right then.

So I’ve been injecting two types of insulin (one three times daily, another one at night) for three years.  Three of the shots have to be taken directly before a meal.  This can be a problem when eating out.  At first, I always excused myself to go to the ladies’ room.  My husband got used to my shots quickly and it didn’t bother him to see me give myself a shot, but I was concerned about being seen by others in the restaurant.

I felt and still feel that it is up to me to keep my unfortunate task private and not to intrude on the dining pleasure of people around me.  I can imagine how off-putting it would be to see the stranger next to me to suddenly roll down their pants, exposing his or her belly, and giving a shot in this unattractive body part.  If I wouldn’t want to witness this, I surely don’t want others to witness this behavior from me.

But there is an inherent problem in excusing oneself from the table to go take a shot.  It is restaurant restrooms.  Even in the clean ones, it is difficult to spread out one’s kit in a clean place and to prepare to take the shot standing up.  And, I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve given some woman a start when she either came out of a stall or entered the restroom to spot this woman giving herself a shot in the stomach.  They think they’ve come in on a true junkie.  I try to explain, but sometimes I can tell that I am not believed.  It was worse when I used the original delivery system that I was provided with.  Those were real hypdermic needles and I truly looked like a junkie shooting up in the bathroom.  The ones I use now come in a long cylinder that looks like a fat fountain pen and are more easily disguised.

To avoid the whole bathroom scene, I now try to sit in booths or inconspicuous places in restaurants so that I can give myself my shot surrepticiously.   But this, too, is tricky.  It is difficult to guage how soon after you order that the food will actually be placed before you, especially if it is in an unfamiliar restaurant.  I’ve tried asking the wait staff about how long before we’ll be served and usually get met with confused looks.

So I’ve gone to a method of guessing, such as ”How long do we think it will take to prepare the steak, fish, hamburger, veggies, manicotti, etc.?”  If I’m wrong and it takes longer than I thought, I could take my shot and then sit as I feel my blood sugar drop, sometimes dangerously.  Or if I wait a little bit longer, I can give the wait person a special treat by exposing my belly and giving myself a shot just as the wait person walks up to the table.  I’ve nearly made several waiters and waitresses drop the orders altogether while I employed this tactic.

It’s a problem, but one that I’ve gotten used to dealing with multiple times daily.  And I’ve called it “shooting up,” in an attempt at gallows humor ever since I’ve been forced to do it.  I thought I was the only one.  Then I recently read an article on Patti LaBelle, a fellow diabetic, and she said that she had to “shoot up” five times daily.  I’ll bet there are more of us out there, but the term does give a sense of the isolation that we diabetics feel in having to perform this duty, like a heroin junkie.

I didn’t have much trouble while in New York finding restaurants and cafes in which I could take my medicine without much notice.  But twice in one day I faced real challenges.

While my husband and daughter got in line to head to the top of the Empire State Building, I chose to stay on terra firma and get some lunch.  I had been up there twice before and the last time was reminded just how terrified I am of heights. In fact, Bill told Paisley that he wanted to take her up there to see if the claw marks I left up there on a wall were still there.  They went up and I stayed down.

I found a hot dog/hamburger place across the street and headed there.  After placing my order I noticed that there was no place to sit.  People were either standing around the counter and eating or they went back out onto the street for lunch.  Where would I take my shot?

Postponing lunch was out of the question.  I was already feeling shaky and needed to eat…right then.  I spotted a place to stand near the cash register where I could shield myself from prying eyes.  No one would see me but the two guys behind the counter.  But I felt that I needed to ask their permission.

I asked the young man who seemed to have the best grasp of English.  I told him, “I am a diabetic and need to take my insulin shot.  May I stand over there and take it?”  Bless his heart, he said that I could.  I stepped over to the cash register, which at the moment had no line.

Then a weird thing happened; at least I thought it was extraordinary.  Another young man, this one with a tenuous grasp of English, stepped over to where I was and said, “Can I watch?”  He was young and cute.  I wondered why he had the slightest interest in peeking at an older woman’s belly. I guess I hesitated.  Then he said in broken English, “Mi madre es diabetes.  She take uh,…..” and he did a pantomime of someone taking pills.  I said, “Ah! I used to take those.”  Then he said, “Someday she have shots.  I help her.”

So I let the guy watch.  By this point there were other customers lined up behind me waiting to pay for their lunches.  Nobody said a word, except for the other man working the counter.  I heard him say, “Wait.  Let lady do what she have to do.”  Nobody objected.

Don’t tell me that all New Yorkers are cold and rude.  I don’t want to hear it.

That evening we were headed for the theater to see Spamalot.  My husband made reservations for us to dine at Sardi’s beforehand.  It was right across the street from Spamalot’s theater.  Bill, Paisley, Whitney (our young cousin who lives in New York) and I were pleased to see and taste that Sardi’s was everything we’d hoped it would be. 

The diners were definitely an upscale crowd.  The waiters were ancient and seemed to have worked there since the place opened.  But they were fantastic.  They didn’t hover, but were right there when we needed anything.  Plus, the food was delicious.  The only fly in the ointment, as far as I was concerned, was that we weren’t in a darkened corner or booth.  We were seated right out in the middle of the place.  It was candlelit with ambient lighting, but still I was right out there for everyone to see.

“I can’t take my shot here,” I told Bill.  “I’ll have to find the ladies room.”  I asked our waiter where it was and he said that there was one upstairs and another one that could be reached by going outside and next door.  Well, I couldn’t do one and had no intention of doing the other.

I told Whitney what I was about to do and cautioned her to turn her head if it bothered her.  Then I pulled up my napkin to hide my abdomen, rolled down my pants just a little bit, and took the shot.  Nobody noticed a thing.

With that experience under my belt, so to speak, I’ll now take my shot wherever I please.  If I can shoot up in Sardi’s, I can shoot up anywhere.