Teach Your Children Well

A friend of mine -- the director of a Cleveland arts organization that deals with youth and the arts -- was talking to a kid who's involved with that group. He's a smart kid who will be voting for the first time on November 4. He's excited about the prospect of voting. When my friend started telling me about this, it sounded encouraging to me. Young people have never voted in great numbers, even after the voting age got lowered from 21 to 18 in 1972.

In their discussion, she asked the young man what he thought about the candidates and whether he had decided on whom to vote for. He said he had -- McCain. She asked him how he'd arrived at that decision. Because, he said, "Sarah Palin is hot." My friend offered her succinct opinion of Sarah Palin to him. She said, "Sarah Palin is an a-hole." His response: "All hot chicks are a-holes."

Wow.

Without even commenting on that aspect of it (except to say "wow"), I'll just move on to the more political component. Assuming that Sarah Palin is attractive (and am I the only person in the U.S. who doesn't think so?), how, exactly, will that help her -- or us -- if she becomes Vice President? The young man explained that she will simply charm foreign leaders and... then everything will be fine.

Do you think he might be a bit naïve?

And is this what we're teaching our kids in Cleveland, or anywhere in the country? This is not a kid from the backwoods of Appalachian country, you know. He's from an affluent Cleveland suburb. If you're reading this publication, then this kid's family is probably much like your own.

And, anyway, to address his point: Will she actually charm the rest of the world? Here are some excerpts from an 800-word editorial in England's Guardian newspaper from October 3, 2008, the day after the Vice Presidential debate:

"Palin 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 [in the debate]."

"She proceeded, 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 force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers [in the debate]. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was."

"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."

Well, it's just one newspaper, but she doesn't appear to have charmed them.

So, listen, kid: I'm glad you're going to vote. And I don't care whom you vote for, as long as you participate in the democratic process. And I want you to vote for McCain -- if you believe that either he'll get us out of the war in Iraq, or keep us in it, if that's what you think is the right course of action.

And I want you to vote for McCain -- if you understand his policies and positions and you believe he's the one to handle the enormous financial crisis we're in, and address global warming and all the other ecological issues of the world, and tackle the growing health care and insurance problems, and create jobs, and take on all the other major issues we're all facing.

And I want you to vote for McCain -- if you think that his running mate is just what this country needs. And if you think it's okay for her to desperately try to paint Barack Obama as un-American because he happened to serve on the board of a non-profit education organization with a man who was a left-wing radical when Obama was 8 years old, and whose 1960s activities Obama has strongly denounced, and who has led an exemplary adult life since leaving behind the radical activities of his youth; while as recently as a decade ago, Palin herself attended conventions of the radical Alaskan Independence Party, of which her husband was a member and which called for Alaska's secession from the United States.

And I want you to vote for McCain -- if you think it's okay for his running mate, Sarah Palin, to whip her audiences into near-violent mobs, inciting them with anti-Obama taunts that say "he’s not one of us" and "he's not like you and me" and "he, and his ilk, are planning to destroy this country"; taunts that sound heartbreakingly like she could be quoting from the scare tactics employed by the leaders of Germany from 1933 to 1945.

And I want you to vote for McCain -- if you have really listened to what Palin has to say on all the issues before us, and really looked at her background, and you believe that if McCain wins and something happens to him, Palin is ready, right now, to step into the role of President of the United States of America.

But -- keeping in mind that this election will determine the course of the country, and the world, forever, and understanding how that will affect your own life, which is mostly ahead of you -- if you're voting for McCain based on the fact that his vice-presidential candidate, the second woman ever to run for that office, is "hot," then maybe we should think about moving the voting age back to 21.

From Cool Cleveland contributor David Budin popcyclesATsbcglobal.net
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