Herban Sprawl

Yesterday I received an email from a retired colleague of mine. For some reason, I missed the point of her message and thought the opposite of what she was trying to convey. In any case, in an effort to state my own position and then enable her to state hers so that we could, once again, find common ground and feel comfortable, I sent her the following. The best part is that she wrote back and affirmed that we were indeed on the same side of the fence and she was even more vociferous about her positions than I, which is just the way it has always been with us! What a relief because she is one of the most formidable women I have ever met when it comes to fighting for justice! Certain chemistry between like-minded people just ought never to be changed!

The reason I oppose Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate has more to do with the fact that I don’t believe John McCain is smart enough to lead this country. The worry I have is that his health has been compromised by recurring bouts of cancer as well as the toll being a POW took on him, both mentally and physically. When you combine that with his age, the likelihood of his passing away in office is raised, and since many don’t believe Sarah Palin is in any way qualified to lead our great nation - particularly during its current financial crises, then her candidacy must be examined more carefully.

Now, that’s the practical part of my position. It’s pretty logical and not ‘out there.’

What worries me is that Sarah Palin represents a backward step for women in terms of her attitudes and her brazen disregard for differences of opinion. For example, the idea that a woman should be forced to carry to term a child conceived through rape or incest is particularly offensive to me. I have been a victim of rape and I know the fear, the anxiety and the emotional roller-coaster that occurs afterward. If I had gotten pregnant on top of all that, I think I would have gone over the edge. A victim of a violent crime such as rape or incest deserves the right to choose. I know a woman who got pregnant after a rape. She doesn’t believe in abortion and she had the child. She kept the child. Under our legal system, she had that right, just as she had the right to not have the child if she so chose. I admire her and I know I could not have raised a child with the kind of love she has for it were it me in her shoes. I just don’t have it in me and I’m wise enough to know my limitations.

I also am fearful of the fact that Sarah Palin represents a fringe group of society that seeks to inject religion into all aspects of our lives, whether we want it or not. That is in direct opposition to the U.S. Constitution. By the same token, under the U.S. Constitution, she has the right to practice whatever religion she chooses, so long as none of it breaks any civil laws. So do I, and thanks to our forefathers, who were decidedly not necessarily Christian as defined by modern society (Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were Unitarians, as am I.), we are all guaranteed the right of freedom OF religion, as well as freedom FROM religion. It’s an important distinction that allows each of us to practice religion, or not. Since you know me pretty well, you know I don’t bow my head and pray to Jesus, but you also know I am an ethical person and that I try to live my life in way that doesn’t break laws or cause unnecessary hardship to those around me. (Well, except for those people in REA when we had to raise hell or else!) So, you know that in a pinch, you can count on me to try my best to do the right thing. I’m sure Jesus would approve of most of what I do, and he’d probably be scratching his head over other stuff!

And the last thing I don’t like about Sarah Palin has more to do with the idea that the Republican party picked her because she would appeal to the right-wing that they were losing because of John McCain’s general laissez-faire attitude about a lot of their pet issues. She wasn’t chosen for her ability to lead, just in case. She was chosen to appeal to the stone-broke, under-employed white American males who were showing signs of breaking down and voting for a black guy because they were so desperate to keep it together with this rotten economy. That, in my estimation, was an insult to those men, but men are pretty dumb, so they’re busy thinkin’ “babe” instead of “can she fix this economy or is she going to rely on all the same people Bush used?”

So this time around, I’m supporting a guy with a good education who acknowledged he needed help with foreign policy and he picked someone with really good credentials in that area. That he was able to lead community groups in areas of Chicago that had dangerously high rates of unemployment and despair tells me that he isn’t afraid to tackle thorny, and often emotionally charged, issues. He reminds me of the bale of straw we had in my first college art class. We had to draw that bale the entire term. But we learned to look at that bale and find the details. We saw the negative space and the positive space. We saw the shades and we saw the edges. Ultimately, we all went away from the experience unafraid to tackle a difficult subject.

As I continue to follow, with dismay, all the shenanigans on Wall Street, I am heartened by only one idea and that is how it has enabled Sen. Obama to be heard above all the din about the saracuda. Finally we can get back to what matters here: the economy and the war and the trillions of dollars of debt load that is falling on the backs of the taxpayers.

And, along with that, we can put the argument about the Republican ticket into its proper context – if the old guy is elected, and if he kicks the bucket then we have trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Perilous – or Palin – take your pick – they’re synonymous.

To quote Cecile Richards, “About the McCain-Palin ticket: I believe my late mother, Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas, would have said “women voting for this ticket is just like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.” Pass it on!”