It would be hard to blame her. She has been attacked in ways that are just jaw-droppingly personal and mean -- consider this lovely parting gift that appeared briefly at HuffPo today in the wake of her announcement. A quote from bien pensant Erik Sean Nelson's piece:
In Sarah Palin's resignation announcement she complained about the treatment of her son Trig who always teaches her life lessons. She said that the "world needs more Trigs, not fewer." That's a presidential campaign promise we can all get behind. She will be the first politician to actually try to increase the population of retarded people. To me, it's kinda like saying the world needs more cancer patients because they teach us such personal lessons.
Her first act as President: To introduce a Pre-K lunch buffet that includes lead paint chips. Sort of a Large HEAD-START Program.
Comedy gold, no? Can you imagine anything like that being written about any other politician in the United States? And if you are wondering why it was pulled, here's the author's, ahem, explanation:
No story, I pulled it down. I got some emails from offended loved ones of the retarded. No one was seeing the absurdity of Palin hiding behind her children, so my piece was not accomplishing anything good. That’s all that happened.
Good to know. It's not that perhaps Palin loves her son. Naah. Couldn't be that. Kid is just a prop, a human shield, against the righteous broadsides of those who see absurdity in the very existence of Trig Palin. He's just something a politician hides behind. Perhaps the most interesting question here: what good can be accomplished by telling retard jokes?
I have no idea whether or not Sarah Palin should have any political career beyond what she has had in Alaska. She has provided a very valuable service, though -- she has exposed a lot of ugliness among certain of her detractors.
UPDATE: As always, Mark Steyn gets to the home truth of the matter:
Occam's Razor leaves us with: Who needs this?
In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You're a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they're tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who'd never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a "cancer".
And the result? Steyn:
Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what's the word? - "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?
National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.
That's about right. Read the whole thing.
3 comments:
that dude is an ass.
picking on the retarded kid. yeah, lotta class.
This is just one more example of the lengths the Palin haters will go to reconstruct the most innocuous things out of Palin's mouth into the most rediculous, over the top stupid or malign meaning. It's almost like they have a filter that converts what she actually says into something entirely different. It's really incredible.
Exactly, Gino.
It's mind-boggling, Margaret. And I sure the heck don't blame Palin for not wanting to run that gantelet. Mark Steyn had a very good summation over at NRO last night. I'm going to add his point to this post.
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