Monday, October 06, 2008

In Beauty and The Beast, we knew which one was the Beast

JoAnn Wypijewski's September 10th, 2008, article in The Nation shows John McCain's rampantly hypocritcal morality for what it is. As I read through the article, once again I was infuriated by his cynicism. He didn't pick Sarah Palin for her qualifications. He picked her because 'Palin is the sex symbol they've been waiting for, better looking and more real than the ghastly gasbags Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham.'

Remember John's first wife? Carol? The one he dumped because she was in a wheel chair when he returned from Viet Nam, and the 'sight of her appalled him?' He replaced her with Cindy. Wypijewski writes:
At 42 McNasty, as he was called in high school, took up with 24-year-old Cindy, a former junior rodeo queen, and, having boosted his image and his net worth via a marriage vow, soon reverted to the pattern of insults and macho egotism that has typified most of his life. He denigrated her education at USC as a tour through "the University of Spoiled Children." For all but one of several miscarriages, he left her on her own. When she was popping ten to fifteen pills a day to mask her pain and "do everything he wanted," he never noticed. In 1992, in a rage over her gentle teasing about his thinning hair, he exploded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt," a one-two punch hurled in front of three journalists and two aides but unreported until recently, by Cliff Schecter in The Real McCain. On the campaign trail in June he joked about "beating my wife" and took umbrage when others failed to grasp the simple good fun in the remark. In early August he said he'd encouraged Cindy to enter the Miss Buffalo Chip beauty pageant at the high-revving, flesh-swinging biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. It might have been a fine quip except that up on the stage with her daughter Meghan, staring out toward the throng where a sign urged Show Ur Tits 4 McCain, Cindy had the thin, fixed smile of endurance, not joy. Just before the Palin pick, Mrs. McCain was so brittle that a supporter's energetic handshake put her in a cast. With the press and vast swaths of the country swooning over the Obama family, John needed a new queen.
And the new queen is Miss Wasilla 1984, a woman who believes dinosaurs and man walked together on an Earth created 6000 years ago. Lovely. Even Cindy McCain feels this is a perfect match.

She is Rush Limbaugh's wet dream. "Sarah Palin: babies, guns, Jesus, hot damn!" he crowed. "We're the ones that have the babe on the ticket!" Never before has a political woman been pictured so often in a T-shirt, armed--Rambette. Never before in a major political figure has the image of Mother been merged so readily with fantasies from porno. "You Go, GILF," proclaim buttons on Republican chests, that is, Governor (or Grandmother) I'd Like to Fuck. McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis said that "this election is not about issues; this election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates," as cynical a statement as any Republican has made. This election is not about issues, it's about personality.

JoAnn Wypijewski refers to the Biblical Book of Esther. King Ahasuerus dumped his queen, Vashti, and held a beauty pagent to replace her. Esther was his Miss Wasilla, 1984. However, Sarah Palin, a biblical literalist, will know the outcome of this story. Esther enables her people to engage in bloody slaughter against the king's other subjects, maneuvers for the public execution of his closest adviser and the man's sons, sees her de facto father become the de facto king; in sum, sabotages and unmans Ahasuerus.

We have seen Sarah Palin in action. She ranges between absolutely idiotic to charming and cagey. She's played all sides against the middle, from using sexuality as a tool to claiming her Christian values, from supporting the Bridge to Knowwhere to opposing it when the politics of that support became untenable. She's Anita Bryant with a high-powered rifle. And, she can stick the knife in your back, and twist it with a smile.

John McCain may have met his match, and he may have unleashed this disaster on all of us.

20 comments:

billie said...

now- that is about the best summary i think i have seen on this subject.

Anonymous said...

We must have been thinking along the same lines. However, what I had to say is less eloquent and on point than your post here.

She's Anita Bryant with a high-powered rifle. And, she can stick the knife in your back, and twist it with a smile.

Hopefully, she won't be serving any orange juice come Wednesday, November 5th.

Joe said...

Brilliant.

Two observations:

It looks to me like, more than anything else, Palin is positioning herself as the right's candidate for 2012, and

She is now going to exclusively appear in the role of aw-shucks, smiling, flirting attack dog for the next 4 weeks. I just came from getting an oil change and Fox News was playing in the waiting area. She gave a 20 minute speech in Florida (introduced by Joe Lieberman!?) that can be summed up as "Barack Obama voted to raise taxes 94 times, he has 'friends' from Chicago, he's pals with a terrorist, God bless America!"

Billie Greenwood said...

We're poised to be placed in the hands of a vindictive, aggressive "end times Christian." (Speaking as a Christian, "Christian" in her case should have an extra set of quotes!)

Anyway, it's been nice knowing you, Diva. You sure can write!

thailandchani said...

Ugh! This is just appalling! This is a wretched system which seems to produce plenty of wretched people. John McCain apparently is one of them. Sarah Palin is just a buffoon.

Although her high school friends didn't call her "saracuda" for no reason, did they? :)

~*

Anonymous said...

Chilling. It's becoming more and more clear that Palin is in this for her and her worldview.

Anne said...

really well-said, diva jood. thanks for putting into words what so many are seeing.

Fran said...

Now Palin has become the nasty pitbull persona-- standing @ the podium saying Obama associates with domestic terrorists. Saw the clip on the news yesterday. Calling your opponent a terrorist is more exciting than doing actual interviews where you have to answer real questions.

She takes bullshittery to a new level.

Anonymous said...

...babe on the ticket!

How incredibly frickin' typical. Can't even avoid being sexist toward their own candidate.

okjimm said...

Wowsers..... Anita Bryant.... I just read a quote from a poll on the net...

'A day without Sarah Palin is like a day without Anita Bryant.'

I liked it.

... but a day without beer and cheese is a day not worth waking up for!

susan said...

Succinct and right on the money!

Randal Graves said...

Two peas in a very unsexy pod.

Is that misogynist of me?

DivaJood said...

All y'all, thanks for the comments. I'm behind in my blogging because of work! Really! At least when I was at SlavesRUs, I had time to blog. Working for myself, well, whole nother story.

We really cannot afford to let McCain/Palin steal this election. Of course, Jon Voight thinks she'd make a terrific commander-in-chief. He's a moovee acktor so what the fuck do we know?

Utah Savage said...

John Voight's lovely daughter could have bailed out wall street single handedly. But that's way off topic. And she really dislikes her stupid dad.

Diva, this is one very good post. You write so very well, you''re smart, you're funny. Why don't you run for President?

D.K. Raed said...

Palin's candidacy is a win-win for sarah, but lose-lose for mac. Think of her as the better negotiator of the two. Kinda gives me the urghhhs.

Fran said...

All I can see is Germany in the early 30's whenever that woman opens her mouth.

It is so not a good image.

Mariamariacuchita said...

great summary and so poetically written.

Dean Wormer said...

Nice description of Palin but it's clear she's actually a drag o the ticket and I believe this election marks the end of her national political career.

It's kind of early to dissect what killed the McCain campaign (not to mention McCain himself being such a loser) but the thing that stands out for me from a strategic (tactical?) standpoint is that this is a center election and McCain was the only Republican running that could make a play for those centrist voters.

Instead of doing so McCain swung right, especially with the Palin pick. He's running a base election which doesn't match the mood of the country.

Anonymous said...

I think she was brought in specifically to drive a wedge, to create an "Us vs. Them" mentality among the Republican's hard-core social conservatives.

And it worked, at first. McCain got a nice bump in the polls, and some even showed him in the lead. But the more people get to know her, the more that support fades.

If McCain loses the election, I think Republicans will throw her away like a used napkin; if he wins, they'll lock her away in a corner somewhere and only bring her out for special occasions.

I don't think she's smart enough to figure it out, but: she's being used.

Lulu Maude said...

It's amazing how demoralized my fellow females are about Palin. They're wrecks, as am I. Real fear that we're going to be stuck with her, McCain will give one last gasp, and she'll be indoctrinated by all of Cheney's best friends.

McCain probably doesn't have any plans for her aside from getting her to fetch coffee and go to funerals, but he's famous for not thinking.