So yesterday I'm in a check-out line perusing the scandal-rags on the self and there she is. Sarah Palin on the cover, all dolled up like a skin-flick secretary - hair up, glasses, make-up and skin all deployed as a sexual feint. A pretty little lie wrapped up in a skirt.
I've seen this before. Those vacant eyes with a hint not of kindness or humour, but of contempt. I had a job once with a large institution, working on a publicly funded field project involving a great deal of public interaction. My supervisor for a time was a pretty little fundie ball of repressed sex and hate. Hearing and seeing Sarah Palin speak and slime on TV brought the memories flooding back.
My first encounter with Palin's doppleganger was the experience of being stuck for several hours in a vehicle listening to Christian fundie rock, whilst my supervisor attempted to
This character I worked for... all her outfits were of the tight-enough-to-teach-reproductive-anatomy variety, and competed with bare skin for majority body coverage on her, uh, distracting figure. At the same, she would attempt to segregate non-married couples in hotel bookings because she didn't want them to have 'relations' out of formal wedlock.
What really got me though was the contempt for everyone and everything that oozed from her being. You, as an employee of lower station were not to be trusted and that was clear. Other persons of her rank were subverted. At one point she replaced another supervisor who was transferred out. Patronisingly sweet while the change-over took place, but as soon as the old boss left, she dismissed and binned all their work and proceeded to blame us for the consequent chaos. At that point, the money was no longer worth it.
But it was when that contempt turned into outright corruption that things went really south. The public, to her, were apparently lying to us, she was sure and that made it OK, nay, necessary for us to lie to them to make up for things on pain of jobloss. She had no evidence, not one iota of proof. The actual reason for her suspicions was a stalled administrative procedure on our part. This was explained to her to no effect - we didn't make errors, apparently, so it must be the public. As a member of the public, I was fucking pissed.
After that, we fled like rats off a burning ship. This was apparently alright by her as we were "incompetent"and she was going to bring in her own pros from Dover. We were happy to leave, and of course, her and her pros fucked the entire project in record time, to the point where she was finally fired by the overlords (who were quite aware of her shortcomings but seemed to face obstacles in letting her go).
I see the same batshit crazy contemptuousness when I see Palin. You can sense her contempt for anyone not in total subservience to her, be you a TV interviewer, police chief, or head of the Alaska National Guard. It's the same fundie mix of sex, lies and hate for those not like them. It's not whether you have a point or are following the rules, it's the fact that you dare challenge. She's not thinking about the foreign policy question she can't answer, she's deflecting while she figures out how to have you fired or flayed.
Writ large, this is contemporary conservativism reduced to its basic elements. It's not really about economic or social ideas. It is about contempt of the other. The other being anyone, or anything not like them. Anything that challenges a worldview of contempt. Being different justifies all manor of hypocrisy and conivance. It's a fuck you for being Muslim, non-white, gay, unwed, poor, liberal, socialist, red, green, agnostic, athiest, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Pastafarian or whatever. It is no wonder they attract bigots, zealots, and closet cases.
I don't know about John McCain. My sense is he is likely internally confused, stuck somewhere in the US of 1920-1970, before the dirty hippies and the negroes put a team in the race, but is trying to do politics in 2008. He doesn't get civil rights, he doesn't get race, he doesn't get class or gender, or the intertoobs. But I think godless commies, crew cuts, and uniforms make a kind of sense to him. McCain doesn't have the same sort of appeal that Bush has to the base. He doesn't appear as one of them, no matter his charms.
But his running mate is none of that. She can send an email, but couldn't tell you much about the Cold War other than the Russians were bad and Alaska had a lot of air force around. But she wouldn't care for any of that anyway - she's a pretty little pile of malice recruited for bigots, redneck penis, and religious nutjobs. The base, in other words.
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