On line at the Cafe Depot today, the woman ahead of me was talking on her cell phone so hard she couldn’t follow what was going on. When she was fumbling around for her money, and still talking, I got mad and reached over to touch her shoulder. Me: (level but stern): “You’re taking my time. Stop talking.”
Tag Archives: iritation
Trig and his awful mother
Reactions to Sarah Palin’s decision to resign the governorship of Alaska have been a reminder of her unmatched ability to elicit strong emotions from friend and foe alike. We know some of the reasons why. It’s her evangelical Christianity and her folksy manner. It’s her small-town roots and her “new feminism.”
Palin gave birth to her youngest son, Trig, who has Down syndrome. Since then, mother and son have become objects of the left’s unrelenting scorn and the right’s unflinching fidelity.
Trig is a reminder of our fierce ambivalence over disability. Every mention of his name is a pinprick to our conscience. Every photo of mother and son is a reminder of concepts — vulnerability, dependency and suffering — our culture no longer tolerates, as well as virtues, such as humility, dignity and self-sacrifice, it no longer extols.
From Palin’s bathroom mirror to the Weekly Standard’s cover
The problem wasn’t so much Palin as it was Alaska. She had become too big for her home state.
The accusations affected Palin emotionally. A rare and necessary talent for a great politician is the capacity to ignore or laugh off the critics’ most vicious assaults. FDR had it. So did Reagan. When Palin spoke at the 2008 Republican convention, it seemed as though she had it, too. Her commanding performance gave the impression that the previous week’s falsehoods, exaggerations, myths, insults, and smears did not matter to her. Not one bit.
This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, however. Over time, the attacks on Palin–on her character, intellect, appearance, femininity, and family–clearly got to her.
… she is a newcomer to the national arena. The bulk of her career has been at the local and state level, where the stakes and the tempers are low compared with the rock ’em, sock ’em dramas that play out inside the Beltway and on the cable channels and blogs. “Everyone else in ’08 had been in the game for decades,” John Coale said. “They all had been there. This was somebody playing for the first time.” For Palin, the hostility directed at her was novel and shocking. Because she prides herself on her unconventionality, and because she knows how to win a political knife-fight, she decided to fight back.
No, that’s not why she left
At Greg Sargent’s Plum Line we learn that Palin’s departure, despite what she tells us, won’t free up any money for teachers or roads. Alaska doesn’t hire lawyers per job; it has them on staff and they get their salaries no matter what assignment is in front of them. Defending Palin against all those ethics complaints may be a waste of their time, but the state won’t be spending any less on its legal department if the complaints go away .
Does she know what she did?
Palin twitters a feisty defence:
Critics are spinning, so hang in there as they feed false info on the right decision made as I enter last yr in office to not run again
And though it’s honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. But every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it’s right for all, including your family.
Ding dong
“This is not a retreat. It’s an advance in another direction.” Oh boy.
When she comes to Alaska, everyone calls her “Sarah.” Out there she’s governor–almost president-elect. She’s not Sarah. They introduce her with pomp and circumstance. Build her ego up, do that whole thing. Here, she comes back, she runs into a buch of Alaskans. It’s humbling. It’s nothing big to us. They don’t mind calling you on the carpet. It’s nothing special. She’s just one of us. But she decided she wasn’t going to be one of us…