The net that shall enmesh them all
Edited, Written, and Published by Josh Nossiter
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
It's not because McCain hopes to win the support of disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters by running with a woman. Even McCain isn't so foolish as to expect Clinton fans to vote for a candidate virulently opposed to everything Clinton stands for simply because she has ovaries. McCain has too much respect for the women of America to demean them in that way. Remember his respectful joke about Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno? And just look at the way he treats Cindy.
It couldn't be a pander to right wing evangelicals disenchanted with McCain's failure to be born again. True Palin opposes abortion under all circumstances, and believes we're doing God's work in Iraq, and tried to get books she considered irreligious banned from the Wasilla library, and wants the biblical creation myth taught as fact in the nation's schools. But she has ovaries. For evangelicals that means she's supposed to stay home and mind the kids and serve her lord and master. As the Southern Baptists put it, a wife must "submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." How can she do that if she's campaigning and fund raising and sitting in cabinet meetings?
It's not toadying to the NRA. Sure Palin's a mighty huntress who, as Fred Thompson helpfully pointed out, is fully qualified to be a heartbeat away from the commander in chief's job because she knows how to field dress a dead moose. Or was it a caribou? Yes she believes in the sanctity of the second amendment as interpreted by the NRA, and that therefore every man woman and child in this great nation ought to be fully armed at all times. True she fired the Wasilla police chief because he supported a ban on concealed weapons. But the NRA is all about manliness. As has been noted, Palin has ovaries.
So why Sarah Palin? McCain just turned seventy-two, and as Barack Obama acutely observed, is apt to lose his bearings. This time he's gone beyond confusing Shia with Sunni or getting mixed up about the Czech Republic and the borders of Iraq. It didn't help that he'd just dined well, eating two helpings of a rich dessert. His sugar high produced the following befuddled thought process: "Must pick my Vice President… mmm, Baked Alaska… Hope I'm going to be OK… OK… Alaska… salmon… forests… lumberjacks… Oh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK, I sleep all night and I work all day, I put on women's clothing, and hang around in bars… Palin!" That the call went to Sarah and not Michael was just poor staff work.
©Joshua C. Nossiter, 2008
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A NOTE TO READERS ***Update***
Another three week plus hiatus, from April 30th until May 23rd, again due to Yahoo Geocities dismal service.
There was nothing new at The Nossiter Net between March 3rd and April 26th, 2007, nearly eight weeks. The reason: tech sabotage. Yahoo Geocities, the host for this site, denied access for the entire period. At one point, they even managed to lose all the files. In many discussions with Yahoo staff, no clear explanation was forthcoming. No one seemed able to fix the problem. Ruling out the possibility of Dubbya’s revenge, I finally wrote to Mr. Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO of Yahoo! Inc and described the ordeal the page had undergone since the beginning of March. A week later, a helpful Yahooo engineer named Jason called. He had my letter before him. Though he couldn’t do the repairs on on the spot, he promised a fix by the next day. That was April 26th, nearly two months after shutting me down in the first place.
The Nossiter Net apologizes, which is more than I can say for Yahoo Geocities.
