the basic difference between obama & palin

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[the following is is a paraphrase of a comment made elsewhere--but (a) it makes a point that needs making, and (b) otherwise i ain't got nothin--so it's going in.]

all public criticism of senator obama in this election cycle, regardless of the issue--rev. wright, bill ayers, annenberg, rezko, voting "present" when he shoulda taken a stand, etc.--has pretty much gone like this: (1) point is raised, (2) cries of "racism" are immediately and shrilly directed at whoever dared raise said point, (3) turmoil ensues, (4) after a suitable, politically-correct interval, barack eventually addresses the issue, peppering his wounded response with words like "divisive" (his code-word for "racist"), and (5) that's it--once barack's spoken on the matter, that's supposed to settle it, and any further questioning by anybody indicates nothing more than racism on the part of the questioner.

governor palin, on the other hand? say what you want about her--and i've said a lot--in the last three or so weeks, this ol' gal has taken a merciless beating on every minute aspect of her past by the press and the left, on a scale the likes of which i've never seen in american politics.

and, so unlike obama--and this is what stands out in my mind about her--regardless of what's been thrown at her, she hasn't whined even once about her treatment on the national stage; she evinces fearless toughness in a way the good senator can't even approach.

bottom line: he comes off like a whiny bitch, and the bitch takes it like a man.

and you really wonder why the race is so close?

it happened at ralphs

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this was yesterday--minor incident on its face, but i can't get it outta my mind.

i'm at the grocery store, squatting down and reading a label. i sense a blur of motion to my left, and all of a sudden this little girl of maybe 3 or 4 is all over me, jumping up and down and pounding my back in an exaggerated gesture of affection--you know, like kids do at that age.

she's adorable, big smile on her face, and i smile back, give her a little hug, and just as i'm in the middle of saying, "well, hi there, sweetheart, what's your na--"

another blur of motion in my periphery, and the kid is yanked away from me into the protective grasp of, i assume, her mother, who turns without even a glance in my direction and walks back to her cart, all the while admonishing the child to never, ever talk to strangers. she looks back over the woman's shoulder at me as they turn the corner, but she's not smiling anymore.

welcome to the brave new world, kid.

oh, and one more thing

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today's david's birthday. he was exactly fifty-one weeks older than me back when we were in high school, and he's exactly fifty-one weeks older than me today.

funny how i always remember his birthday and forget mine.

an inside post

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[and one that'll probably bore you silly, so feel free to skip it. but i needed a safe place to put this particular email exchange so i'd have a record of it, and that's what blogs are for, right? or maybe that's just what this blog is for.]

in response to this post, an old friend's email contained the following:

So, I guess that explains to me a little about you because although you came out later, I do not think that you passed your prime. But apparently you did. To me, you were actually in the ripe years. But, for you, you thought of yourself as already on the downhill arc.

I say this now at 40 because I can certainly imagine myself at 25 VERY attracted to me at 40. I doubt you think so. Indeed, I think you would not even give yourself a second look if you at 25 saw yourself in a bar at 40.

Of course if this happened, it would also cause a tear in the space-time continuum and we would all be destroyed.

to which i replied:

ah, life would be so much easier if i was into white guys in their 40s, since so many of 'em seem to be into me these days. but i never was, and never will be. and as far as finding myself attractive--hell, i wouldn't have done me back when i was 19, and i certainly wouldn't now.

i remember though, back around 1991 when i first hit town, more than one guy told me i was at the height of my studliness and i'd better enjoy it while it lasted. i just laughed.

to which he replied:

I don't know how to respond. I guess the only thing I can say is that you have never been able to generate much enthusiasm for an emotional attachment--a relationship. Because that changes everything.

[he completely forgot about v, of course--and how that sadly didn't change everything.]

Your primary basis of reference is who you trick with...and while that has its place, you seem to have no other reference point, no other perspective. And you do not seem to want any other perspective. You were so excited when you first met Roman...his name escapes me for the moment...and to have an actual first love. Whatever happened to that?

[...]

Basically, you have not changed a lot in the 17 years that I've known you. While it is true that I can say that about a lot of people, it's also true that I can't say that about too many people I respect.

So, why not?

If I'm being harsh, you know it's 'cause I love you. If I really wanted to wound, well, now, you would know that too.

to which, just now, i replied:

au contrare, mon frere--i've changed tremendously over the past 17 years. problem is, it's mostly been for the worse--i've magnified my failures and minimized my successes to the point that the idea of sticking my head up outta the ol' foxhole again is pretty much more than i can bear; i anticipate defeat to the point that my world has pretty much shrunk down to what i can see around me. i work and i go home.

his name was rummel, btw. i "loved" him because he was safely unavailable; had he returned my interest in kind, i'd have probably run screaming. the experience--that failure and its associated pain--did pretty much cure me of such foolishness, though, i'll say that for it.

you know me well in many ways, r__, but you've never really understood me. you can't look far enough past the way that you yourself relate to the world and other people to recognize that the way i do it might be irremediably, unfixably different from yours; even as smart as you are and with all the therapy you've had, when it comes to me, you're still, like, "oh, snap out of it." it's a lack of empathy on a level i see (and expect) quite often in the stupid, the unreflective and the lame, but rarely do i come across it in people i respect.

makes us even, i guess.

seventeen years, summed up neatly.

like i have something to say that's different from everybody else's blatherings on the subject

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but has that ever stopped me before? of course not, so let's begin.

1. first, i'm a little surprised that several very bright people have taken my initial assessment of sarah palin as some kind of endorsement. all i ever said was, she is who she is, and always has been, in a way that her opponent can't even begin to approach. i stand by that assessment.

2. and yeah, i said "her opponent," because in case you haven't yet realized this, her opponent is not joe biden [hell, if russia hadn't invaded georgia the week before the light-on-foreign-policy (among other things) democratic nominee had to make his vp pick, mr. blowhard bank-owned senate-foreign-relations-committee-chairman with his bad hair plugs, capped teeth and prior dismissal of the head of the ticket wouldn't have even been in the running]--make no mistake: this race is palin v. obama.

3. the other thing i said back then was, she's not gonna be taken down by scandals, and i stand by that one too. troopergate? so she fires people who cross her--everybody in power does, and nobody gives a rat's ass. she was for pork before she was against it? again, nobody but the liberals cares. she shoots wolves from helicopters? wow, guns and helicopters--sounds manly to me; can you imagine the effete obama nutting up enough to do something like that?

4. and now for the family crap--and this is what really slays me: watching the liberal shitstorm of holier-than-thou condemnation because palin's public family-values stance doesn't jibe with the private train-wreck reality of her actual family life. and understand: these are the same people who ten years ago just as shrilly admonished us that whatever shambles bill clinton made of his private life should be between him and his family, and had absolutely nothing to do with his ability to run the country. fuckin' two-faced hypocritical assholes, all of you!

5. but what really chaps me about this is, the reason this woman's family is a mess is because she did exactly what the liberal feminists who are today so loudly denouncing her fuckin' told her to do: she said, "fuck stay-at-home motherhood--i'm gonna go out and fulfill my professional destiny as a woman and let my kids fend for themselves." and now, big surprise--her son's a drug addict, her daughter's a pregnant slut and she has a troubled marriage.

6. the thing is--and the reason this is not only not gonna hurt her with the electorate, but probably help her--is that her family is pretty much just like every other fucked-up family in america today, and for pretty much the same reasons; hell, the only thing missing is the divorce and remarriages.

7. but what really, really kills me is, all of the foregoing is sideshow stuff, and has absolutely nothing to do with the substance of why this woman is so totally, completely and disastrously wrong for the job she may well be called upon to do.

8. why is it that my countrymen--both left and right--are these days so easily willing to cast the fate of their country into the hands of telegenic, charismatic people whose primary career accomplishment is glib mastery of the teleprompter?

whoever said it was right--we get the government we deserve.

[h/t to april for the above image]