Can I kick it? No, you can't.

Whiskey Tango

A lot of people have been talking non-stop about John McCain's vice-presidential pick, and with good reason. She's a woman. She's good-looking. She's got no experience. She has a baby with Down's Syndrome. Her husband is part Eskimo. She shoots guns, but never at fetuses. She's a fundamentalist Christian. And these are just her political stances. What about Sarah Palin's life outside of politics, which is to say, 98% of who she is?

The big rumor this week was that her infant son may have actually been her 17 year-old daughter's kid, and the governor claimed it was her own to avoid stigmatizing young Bristol. Utterly ridiculous, a mean-spirited allegation, and impossible, seeing as how the sweet young Palin girl is already five months pregnant. This would be a crass time to mention that abstinence-based sexual education for teenagers might not be all that effective, so I won't.

But even with this revelation, McCain is still a genius.

The key to winning an election is getting more votes (US Presidential elections, notwithstanding), and you have to appeal to large blocs of people. Soccer moms, NASCAR dads, auto-erotic asphyxiation uncles, you name it. By selecting Sarah Palin, John McCain has sent an online greeting card to the most massive group in America: White trash.

Who relates better to statuatory rape and shotgun weddings? With any luck, young Bristol could marry her teenage groom in the Rose Garden at the White House in January 2009! What a fantastic way to let the country and the world know that we've moved beyond regular guy hillbilly presidents, and just given up entirely by putting the people we see involved in domestic abuse calls on COPS into our vice-presidential mansion.

You can hope it ends up all cool and hip like Juno, but that's not how they spell it in Alaska.

Monday, September 01, 2008