Shire Network News #145 has been released. The feature interview is with El Marco, whose photoblog, Looking At The Left is doing sterling work in exposing the reality of leftist protests. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.
Below is the text of my commentary.
Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"
In 1939, Frank Capra directed a classic film entitled "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington", which won an Oscar for Best Writing. In it, Jimmy Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, leader of the state’s Boy Rangers, and is appointed, mostly as a joke, as an interim to fill out the term of a recently deceased Senator. While there, Smith doesn’t just sit back and idly do what he’s told. Instead, when he sees corruption and graft, even in his own political party, he acts against it, culminating in the films filibuster scene on the floor of the Senate. (That’s when filibusters were filibusters. None of this "cloture vote" stuff.)
Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith is the Everyman in Washington, the small town boy who makes good, and what each of us believes we would be like if we only had the chance.
Moving from the theater screen to the political scene, John McCain chose Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, as his Vice Presidential running mate. To rousing shouts of "Sarah who?", the American political scene, and the media trying to cover it, were thrown into a tizzy. Immediately, they fired up their dirt-digging Ditch Witch because they had less than a week to fill up their buckets of mud.
What they found was a women’s basketball player who led her small town team in prayer before the game, and nicknamed "Sarah Barracuda". A beauty queen pageant winner who won both the "Miss Congeniality" award and a college scholarship. A college graduate with a major in journalism and a minor in political science. A hockey mom, and a PTA member. A moose hunter, with better aim than Dick Cheney. A 2-term city councilwoman. A 2-term mayor who was voted into office on a platform of fighting wasteful spending and higher taxes (which she did). An ethics supervisor who actually supervised ethics; she quit her position because of ethics violations in her own party, and she continued to pursue those violations resulting in record fines. (Did I mention the guys were in her own party?) A governor of the state who ran on a clean government platform against a governor of her own party and won, and who sold the previous governor’s jet for starters. And someone who, throughout all this, maintained a huge popularity rating.
>whew< So then, with their mud buckets still clean as a whistle, the press, the Democrats and the liberal bloggers had to come up with something. So they did. One anonymous diarist on the Daily Kos (where else?) started the rumor that Sarah’s 5th child was really her daughter’s, and that Sarah faked the pregnancy to cover it up. When it ultimately came out that Bristol Palin was pregnant now, the shock value had already worn off. As hard as the NY Times tried, putting Sarah and/or Bristol on 3 front page stories on the same day, they just couldn’t get past the fact that the family, given a bad situation, was acting on their principles.
The same went for Trig, their Down’s Syndrome baby. Knowing what was ahead they chose life. For that, Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards proclaimed that "Women voting for this ticket is just like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders." Right. So allowing children to live is like poultry suicide. And vacuuming them out when they’re inconvenient is…what, exactly?
Anglosphere rock start and former SNN contributor Andrew Ian Dodge pointed me to more sources of left-wing media smears. One Washington Post story, later picked up by the NY Times, claimed that Palin slashed funding for teen mothers. What they failed to note in the story, however, was that she actually tripled the spending on it. The "cut" came when she wouldn’t quadruple it. That, of course, is the liberal mindset that comes free with an Obama presidency.
The "Troopergate" allegations of firing a public safety commissioner are probably the worst thing to come out. I mean, the governor firing someone who the courts agreed served at the sole discretion of the governor must be a scandal, right? Palin denies that the firing was over the fact that Walter Monegan didn’t fire her ex-brother-in-law Mike Wooten, who himself, it has already been established, tasered his son, drank on the job, and threatend Palin’s family; firing offenses all. So the firing of Monegan was legal, and if you want to make a connection to Wooten you do so at the peril of your own credibilty. Yeah, there’s a scandal for you.
The Left is just waiting eagerly for something — anything — to come out that will allow them to brand her a hypocrite, and will manufacture it if necessary. Don Surber said it best: "You can be an unrepentant terrorist. You can be a perjurer. You can be an ex-klansman (Exalted Cyclops at that). But Lord help you if you are a conservative and you run a stop sign."
And I would add, "or a Republican woman with hair that is out of fashion". Yes, they’re even going after that. Sarah, just prepare yourself for the photographs of you at the scene of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, or in the crowd at the Kennedy assassination. Y’know, it would be nice if there were a national organization for women to defend her against this treatment. But I imagine she can handle it herself.
Lisa Schiffren at the National Review Online noted another Veep selection similar to this one. He’d only been governor of New York for 2 years before getting on the big ticket. He was an anti-corruption reformer when he was the New York City Police Chief. He also did a lot of hunting (but no moose, as far as I know). Maybe Sarah Palin is no Teddy Roosevelt, but he turned out rather well, don’t you think?
Look, Democrats, media, leftist bloggers; please listen to me. You are watching the movie "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" and you’re booing the Jimmy Stewart character. Loudly. Granted, he’s in a brilliant disguise, but it’s still the Everyman (or Everywoman) looking at you from your TV screen. Politically speaking, Sarah Palin is the anti-corruption, cost-cutting, true-to-her-values type that everybody says they want to see in Washington. Well, at least they say they want it. Consider that.
