Mildly hysterical today

I'm not sure what got into me this afternoon, but I was talking with my friend at work about politics. Since I've been gone a week, we needed to catch up about McCain's VP choice, but for some reason my emotions were just raw. I got a little upset, more than I should have gotten while at work and more than I needed to with my friend. But it happened and suddenly I was tearing up and railing about my fears.  Luckily it was almost time to go home, and I got in touch with my friend Sharon, and she let me be incoherent to her.

All of this made me think about the emails I sent out the days after the last two presidential elections.  The second I reprinted here, about two years ago, and is about Federalist X and I feel more poignantly now what I wrote then, especially about the balances of power.

I'm not going to pour out my incoherent thoughts, because I don't think doing so would make me feel any better.  Instead I'm going to point you to some pieces friends have sent me.

If you read nothing else, read Frank Rich's piece from Sunday's NYT.  He's been on a roll lately.  He goes on to talk about how McCain's trademark haste would prove problematic in the White House, but this early paragraph hits as to what I'm truly angry about.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.

My friend Sharon sent me a NYT blog post by Judith Warner that touches again on Palin, the GOP's disdain for the citizenry of this land and America's obsession with "connecting" with the candidate.  Below, another quote I liked.

Thanks to the level of general esteem that greeted her ascent to the podium, it seems we’ve all got to celebrate the fact that America’s Hottest Governor (Princess of the Fur Rendezvous 1983, Miss Wasilla 1984) could speak at all.

Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?

Finally, my ever politically astute friend Aimee, who wrote her thesis in college about women in politics, sent me Anna Quindlen's piece on the GOP' "finding" feminism, of course when it's convenient.  She starts off with a killer GB Shaw quote, "Hypocrisy is only bad when it is improperly used."
Again, a quote.

This would all have been entertaining if it were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. These are people who inveighed against personal attacks on their new nominee when the wingnuts of their own party elevated such attacks to a fine art by accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of fictitious misdeeds ranging from treason to murder. To try to suggest Sarah Palin might garner the Hillary Clinton vote, that one woman is just the same as another, that biology trumps ideology, is the ultimate evidence of true sexism, and I hope Senator Clinton will travel the country and say so.

I'm tired of the hypocrisy and the lies, and it has already been a long campaign season.  Tomorrow I promise some Montana stories.

Comments

[Kathleen]

Claire, getting emotional about the political quagmire and the policies that represent us, the US, to the world strikes me as the only sensible response. True, some stalwarts (those with psyches far stronger than mine) need to fight idiocy and reason. You, from what I can tell, might be one of those people. But who could fully understand what's at stake without moments of hysteria--one of Freud's famous labels for women's inadequacy, but that guy grows more obsolete by the minute.
Bty, I did mention you & your sister to my son, who is so peculiar that he claimed to be disinterested in any pre-arranged meeting with his mom's blogger friend and her sister. Where did I go wrong?

[Kathleen]

Whoa: I meant, of course, need to fight idiocy WITH reason.

[Jennifer]

Claire- you're so right. Rich has been on a roll. I also so vividly remember your the earlier posts you mentioned. They should be reprinted/reposted again!!

I think anyone concerned about the state of politics and how people go about winning should read this. The deregulation of the media has done so much harm.

[Jennifer]

Not "your the"... I was typing too fast and nodding too much with all you wrote.