Wing Nut on Lipstick

A character claiming the name Katha Pollitt, which is Tilop Athak backwards phonetically, purports to suppose that "John McCain chose the supremely under-qualified Sarah Palin as his running mate partly because she is a woman." Y'see, Katha is magic, and can read minds. Must be a gypsy. Let's say, a gypsy woman. "If you have a problem with that, you're a sexist." That's Katha there, speaking. About Sarah being chose cuz she's a chick -- not the gypsy thing.

Athak continues: "She talks incessantly about being a mother of five and uses her newborn, Trig, who has Down syndrome, as a campaign prop." Cuz holding yer baby is cynical and manipulative. Everyone knows that this post-fetus should have been aborted. And what's all this incessant talking Sarah's always doing? Blah blah blah. The bitch just don't shut the hell up. I got a way to shut her up. Keep her pregnant, for a few months. Right, Kreplock? Right.

"If you wonder how she'll handle all those kids and the Veep job too, you're a super-sexist." Cuz, like, um, when she was Governoratrix of Atlantis she couldn't handle it, so what's to wonder about? Sheesh. Yer so dum. Everbady noes that VEEP is so mush harder then gubanator!!! With all them duties and stuff.

"Indeed, Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers." Cuz, like, Kathetar cares so much about babies. We just know it. That poor neglected unaborted creature baby fetus. Its quality of life ... so poor. Better off dead, s'what I say. It's what I say when I'm not incessantly blaming unwed working mothers for castrating me.

"Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex--and blaming their parents for letting it happen." Yep. All us rightwingers give her nothing but respect. We leave it to the lefties to heap contempt on her. Ironic, isn't it. Um, which of us is the hypocrite again? Us? Them? But as Obama knows, that daughter is already punished enough, with a baby.

It isn't about the mistakes our children make. It's about the guidance we give them beforehand, and the follow-through afterwards. Sluts should be shamed. Young girls who get stupid with their one boyfriend are something else. But I guess that's too nuanced a position for our earnest liberal moralizer.

"If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps." Zing! Cuz we're hypocrites, git it? Cuz of the double standard, see? Competent working mothers with supportive husbands should be judged by the same standard as welfare crack whores. Duh. I just can't get over myself and what a phony I am. I'm worse than Billy Graham.

"It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world's harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl's privacy." Um. Did I miss that? I thought I was paying attention. I must have been messing around with my boytoys. A far better scheme, if they don't have the decency to get an abortion, would have been to cloister the shameful teen away -- say she's at a fat farm.

"The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America." Let's reframe the statement. The right to kill a baby, secretly, is what Palin wants to deny every OTHER woman, and every family (as if there were such a thing), in Amerikkka. I don't quite understand the function of that "other". Is Palin somehow secretly for abortion? Is she being too private, or too public? I don't get it. Nether does Cthulhu Palwwlsowqulszuaqqqoalmaoo. For surely such ideas are too lofty for such as we for understanding!

Well. On and on and on and on it goes. Meaningless. Typical. Drek. Pointless. Pathetic. I'll be honest. I haven't read the bloated corpse of this editorial. Just the first couple of paragraphs, and the end. Why bother? I'll just get more sarcastic. I do have this salient thought: Zombies don't eat brains. It's ghouls who do that. Obviously.

As for the end, KP hoists us on our own petard, most handily. How are we to squirm like the worms we are out of her crafty trap? It's hopeless, like us. Her interrogation points, then, aimed against Palin:

§ Suppose your 14-year-old daughter Willow is brutally raped in her bedroom by an intruder. She becomes pregnant and wants an abortion. Could you tell the parents of America why you think your child and their children should be forced by law to have their rapists' babies?"

Answer: First, execute the rapist. KP would have us execute the child. Unconstitutional. Corruption of blood -- the child punished for the crime of the parent. Yes, it is emotionally difficult, to carry a rapist's baby. But they don't rape to make a baby. Procreation is not a salient motive for the crime. So you're not punishing the rapist by killing your grandchild. I won't bother with spiritual considerations, even to name them. Enough to say that the guild of killing babies ... oops -- the guilt of killing a baby must be worse than the pain of carrying an unwanted one. There is no Dukakis dilemma here. Agreed: someone must die. We say, the rapist.

§ You say you don't believe global warming is man-made. Could you tell us what scientists you've spoken with or read who have led you to that conclusion? What do you think the 2,500 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are getting wrong?

Answer: An appeal to authority is very convincing, when it's not about the Bible. All those politically appointed panelists carry a lot of weight. But to specifically answer the challenge, let's start with environmentalist Björn Lomborg. Do a google search. He's gay, but that's a good thing, right?

§ If you didn't try to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Baker over her refusal to consider censoring books, why did you try to fire her?

No one will have been fired for refusing to consider "censoring" books. The term KP is groping for would be banning. The books would not have been "censored". They were to have been excluded from inclusion in the public library, which as a public institution is required to meet the expectations of locally determined community standards, which is a matter of public policy, applied by the elected body of the city council, presided over by the mayor. The office of librarian is not a heroic one. It is bureaucratic, about following policy. Any porn that citizens want can be purchased at highly competitive rates on Amazon dot com.

§ What is the European Union, and how does it function.

I don't know. Nobody does. Wikipedia is vague on the subject. But was that a serious question?

§ Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance. John Goodman, who has advised McCain on healthcare, has proposed redefining them as covered because, he says, anyone can get care at an ER. Do you agree with him?

Forty-seven million? Don't you mean 147 million? One point four seven billion? Fourteen trillion, seven hundred billion? But yes, we all agree with him. Not necessarily in the specific, but in redefining the idea of coverage. Health doesn't start with insurance. It starts with lifestyle. But that's me speaking, not necessarily Sarah. We're practically the same person though.

§ What is the function of the Federal Reserve?

Next question. But nice try. You're a regular Charlie Gibson, with that gotcha stuff. Cuz us rightwingers is all so dumb.

§ Cindy and John McCain say you have experience in foreign affairs because Alaska is next to Russia. When did you last speak with Prime Minister Putin, and what did you talk about.

Alaska has more trade with China, Japan and Russia than it does with the Lower Forty-eight. Governors do have something to do with the trade that goes on in their states. But I personally have had many discussions with PM Putin. We talk about Judo, a lot. I do most of the talking. All of it in fact. Sometimes he acts like he doesn't even hear me. The guy's such a kidder.

§ Approximately how old is the earth? Five thousand years? 10,000? 5 billion?

Do you mean how old do you imagine it is? Cuz none of those guesses is right. I'll tell you the exact answer, when you answer me this: What is the meaning of life?

§ You are a big fan of President Bush, so why didn't you mention him even once in your convention speech?

Did Palin mention Jesus? If not, what secret message could such an omission be hinting at?

§ McCain says cutting earmarks and waste will make up for revenues lost by making the tax cuts permanent. Experts say that won't wash. Balancing the Bush tax cuts plus new ones proposed by McCain would most likely mean cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Which would you cut?

McCain says it will make up for SOME of the "revenues" (government-confiscated private property) lost. Details? Here.

§ You're suing the federal government to have polar bears removed from the endangered species list, even as Alaska's northern coastal ice is melting and falling into the sea. Can you explain the science behind your decision?

The science is thus: polar bear population is increasing, one studied group more than doubling in the past two decades. At worst, the count seems to be stable. It's called biology, a real science, the cause of which is not hypothetical or politically motivated.

§ You've suggested that God approves of the Iraq War and the Alaska pipeline. How do you know?

With this "question" you offer the final proof that you are an unserious hack. The ability to string words into grammatical sentences is often misconstrued for intelligence. And so I must apologize to my readers for the wasted time. Send me your bank account info complete with PIN and I'll mail you a voucher for, uh, a hundred dollars.


J