[Dialogue] FW: The British take on the VP debate

[frank bremner]

One voice from Down Under, where we sometimes call ourselves "the 51st state":
(1)



A Brit take on Palin.  OK as far as it goes. But, but, but ..... I just hope that they don't get too smart-arse and start considering the nature of that section of the population that likes her.  If they get too smart-arse (maybe that warning is too late!) they'll just further alienate her support base.  
 
Have these critics gone a bit deeper, and considered what they might say to the concerns of her supporters?  I've yet to read anything anywhere about what would reach these voters.   
(2)
My comment is influenced by the Australian media's smart-arse attacks on Pauline Hanson, Lindy Chamberlain, and so on.  It's easy to criticise and create a storm, "to sell papers", etc.  How much of it parallels the misogynist nature of some - I emphasise some - of the criticism of Hillary?
 
I'm also influenced by those scenes in The West Wing of Josh and co, stranded out in some rural area, amidst people who vote Republican, just being all at sea about how to relate to the locals.  They couldn't wait to get back to "safe" Washington.  
 
(3)
 
I'm also influenced by my late mother's comments about certain Labor politicians who thought that all farmers drove Volvos and were very rich.  Those politicians had no idea how transitory a good year could be, and how overhead-rich and cash-flow-poor a farm could be.  On the other hand Labor to her meant shearers, waterside workers, and so on  Intellectual or ideological Labor supporters from university backgrounds (lawyers, teachers, clergy, and other professionals) were initially outside her ken.  She shifted a little in the early 1970s towards the Australian Democrats, mainly by continuing to support a Liberal MP (attorney general of SA at one stage) who became a Democrat - someone with a strong personal following as a person who listened to local concerns.  
 
My farming cousin Don once asked me (about 1980) how I saw the politics of farmers.  I said "Conservative [our Liberal party has both liberal and conservative wings], because those parties address the concerns of farmers, and Labor doesn't".  From time to time, Labor has addressed those concerns, at state and federal level, and has won office.  [Don was a member of the Labor Party back then, and has been involved in agricultural policy-making for a long, long time.  More recently he went to Mongolia and China looking at farming practices.]
 
(4)
 
I disagree with most of what McCain and Palin say, from this distance, but, but, but .... 
Cheers Frank



Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 16:28:47 -0700From: synergi at yahoo.comTo: oe at wedgeblade.net; dialogue at wedgeblade.net; springboard at wedgeblade.netSubject: [Dialogue] The British take on the VP debate




I'm still trying to digest the enormity of the Republican meltdown. Especially since Republican deregulation has taken down our global financial system with it.
 
Either McCain is so incredibly stuck in some kind of Reaganism that he's totally blind to global reality, or he's so totally cynical that he has knowingly bowed to Karl Rove and chosen Sarah Palin to literally take his candidacy and his party down in flames. The anti-Palin reaction among undecided and independent voters is a major negative, and one of many major negatives, for the entire ticket. What could he be thinking? And if he's NOT thinking, what does that say about his ability to rise above Palin's level of critical analysis of global/national trends?
 
Marshall
 
And now for some refreshing Brit wisdom:
 The British take on the VP debate Apparently the Brits don't have their heads in the sand!     Flirting her way to victory Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both  female candidates and US political discourse The Guardian (London)  Friday October 03 2008 18:30 BST  At  least   three  times  last  night,  Sarah  Palin,  the  adorable,  preposterous  vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a  male  candidate  with  a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made  such  a  brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the  voting  public,  it  would  have universally noted, discussed and mocked.  Palin,  however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for  female candidates and American political discourse that, with her  newfound  ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now  deemed to have performed acceptably last night. By   any   normal  standard,  including  the  ones  applied  to  male presidential  candidates  of  either party, she did not. Early on, she made  the  astonishing  announcement  that  she  had  no intentions of actually  answering  the  queries  put  to  her. "I may not answer the questions  that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to  talk  straight  to  the American people and let them know my track record also,"  she said. And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she  was  supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack  lines,  platitudes,  lies, gibberish and grating references to her own  pseudo-folksy authenticity. It  was  an  appalling  display.  The  only  reason  it was not widely  described  as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to  judge  the  truth,  wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric  they  are  paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as  interpreters  of  a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both  venerate and despise. In  pronouncing  upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a  candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she  is  capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the  financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The  criteria  are  far  more  vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin  could  avoid  utterly  humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether  urbane  commentators  would believe that she had connected to a public  that  they  see  as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor,  mission accomplished. There  is  indeed  something  mesmerising  about Palin, with her manic  beaming  and  fulsome  confidence  in  her own charm. The force of her  personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her  answers   last  night.  It's  worth  reading  the  transcript  of  the  encounter,  where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said  was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how  the   middle  class  has  been  short-changed  during  the  Bush  administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:      Say  it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again.      You   preferenced   [sic]   your   whole   comment  with  the  Bush      administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans      what  we  have  to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned      education,  and  I'm  glad  you  did.  I  know  education  you  are      passionate  about  with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and      god  bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who      I  think  is  the  best  schoolteacher  in  the  year, and here's a      shout-out  to  all  those  third  graders at Gladys Wood Elementary      School, you get extra credit for watching the debate. Evidently,   Palin's  pre-debate  handlers  judged  her  incapable  of  speaking  on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to  simply  disregard  questions that did not invite memorised talking points  or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky  average-ness,  which  she  did  to  the  point of shtick - and dishonesty.  Asked  what  her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't  understand  or  chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose  her  because  of  her  "connection to the heartland of America. Being  a  mom,  one  very  concerned  about  a son in the war, about a special  needs  child,  about  kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those  tuition bills?" None  of  Palin's  children,  it  should  be  noted, is heading off to  college.  Her  son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old  daughter  is  engaged  to  be  married  to  a  high-school dropout and  self-described  "fuckin'  redneck".  Palin  is  a woman who can't even  tell  the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own  life,  never  mind  about  matters of major public import. In her only  vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What  kind  of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is?  That  her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how  high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk. 
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