A commenter in one of the newspaper comment sections (NYT or WaPo I think) posted the following in tearing down Sarah Palin and the foolish (and thankfully, already crumbling) meme that Sarah Palin was "electrifying" in the convention with her hateful, insulting, truly imbecilic speech. Summarizes just about everything that's wrong with Sarah Palin, concisely rakes her over the coals for her scandals and malfeasance, and demonstrates how she's not only incompetent, but reprehensible as a public figure. And it hits her from conservative, liberal and moderate directions alike.
Let's help this go viral-- we should definitely use this as source material for the vollies of letters to the editor, and call-ins to radio shows, that we should me making!
Here's the comment:
I learned some stuff about a gal who...
Raised taxes as the Gov. of Alaska. (liberal)
Wants to teach creationism in Science Class, subverting the US Constitution. (traitor)
Tried to get books banned at the local library. (Communist)
Fired her entire staff 10 days into term as mayor, for lack of loyalty. (despotic-see Stalin)
Used every available lever to get an enemy fired from his job, and is still lying about it. (vindictive, willing to lie about it. willing to use her power for personal vendettas.)
Put a gag order on her administration as mayor of a town of 6500. (Communist-See Stalin)
Milked the Federal Government for huge series of earmarks, by using lobbyists. The highest per capita earmarker in the nation: Palin. (mad liberal)
Was not Ms. Congeniality. A Ms. Gwin, who was Miss C. , says my gal is ‘shallow.’ (shallow)
Enjoys killing animals. Doesn’t like Polar Bears. (a murderer. I value all life.)
Doesn’t believe in Global Warming. (crack-pot deluded crazy wing nut)
Went back to work three days after having a fifth child, who has Down Syndrome, an acute care condition wherein the child’s chance of thriving is often a function of how much time his or her parents spend with them. (amoral, power corrupted)
Used Alaska First as her campaign slogan, which is the same one as her husband’s old party, the AIP, a secessionist organization she recorded a supportive piece for this year!
(traitor to the US Republic)
Is being touted as Presidential Timber for her experience as the Head of the...now get this...the Alaskan National Guard." If that ain’t a hoot... (cynical lies-a lack of intelligence being fit into a lame policy)
Misled America about the Bridge to Nowhere, in her first national speech. (happy to lie for power.)
Wants to ban stem cell research.
Has no International experience. (McCain having said his VP’s most important attribute would be experience.)
Is on the record stating the Iraq war "is a task from God." (war monger, deluded, scary)
Goes to a Church that hosts anti-Israel speakers. (Religions tend not to like each other)
Left her town Mayoralty with a huge debt, having outspent all around in her city. (mad liberal)
And, perhaps worst of all, Palin would insist that my 14 year-old daughter carry and birth a rapist’s child. The problem being that Palin neo-fascist loon that she is, would not give us a choice. Not that this would be hard on my daughter, no, to remind her of being raped every day of her life.
I could care less about Trig or Bristol, or Levi, or whatever. She’s a hack. McCain stiffed the public. The idea that she's a star is like saying that Paris Hilton is an accomplished American. She's a culture war grenade, a stooge of the right, deluded, a fascist danger to the country. We already did that with Bush, ending up with a 9.2 trillion in deficit and two unfinished wars. The Bible and the Christian faith are supposed to espouse love, community and respect for the law, but especially in the form that pious, warmongering, murderous, hate-filled hypocrites like Sarah Palin construe it, is a poor govt. handbook frankly.
LINK UPDATE
Hey everyone, I didn't have a link to this comment originally because it was just sent to me in an Email from a friend, already at a "subviral" stage. My friends and I were able to track it down (I'm cribbing from one of my own replies below):
It's from the comments section following a Washington Post article, and the commenter is one robertell-- link is http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
(It's on the last page of the comments.) Prof Jonathan also found an NYT comment by the same poster (as Rob L.): http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/...
Even more interesting-- the original article is entitled "Palin's problem," by neocon Charles Krauthammer, of all things. Krauthammer of course takes the obligatory digs at Obama, but he actually takes down Sarah Palin here much more than I'd have ever expected.
If anything, this too is pretty fascinating, that so many conservatives have been mauling the Palin choice. Michael Savage outright eviscerated Sarah Palin, Kay Bailey Hutchison was unenthusiastic, Bill O'Reilly was cautiously critical, Kathryn Jean Lopez (NRO editor) was skeptical, David Frum excoriated her, and of course Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy both trashed her to the point of profanity when they were off-camera.
It's interesting in that Democrats obviously don't like her. But even many Republicans, to my surprise, utterly detest her. And Independents utterly revile Sarah Palin, almost as much (or perhaps even more than) Democrats do, maybe because her corruption, her hardline extremism and her incompetence are despised by those of an Independent temperament.
In any case, the comment is a pitch-perfect encapsulation for us to pound Palin and McCain in our communications with the mainstream media, and obviously in word of mouth with our uncommitted colleagues (since we have a link now, should be fine to Email this around, and unlike the Muslim Obama smears, this one has substance).
The key is to link this snowballing, painful, and downright scary recession to the corruption, extremism and incompetence of Sarah Palin, and the cluelessness and lack of judgment by John McCain. This comment provides with the guideposts, right on cue.
UPDATE 2 Bperk and parakinesis made a good point in their comments below, that the next-to-last paragraph maybe had some misdirected attack points in its original form, and I agree. So I've made a couple minor modifications in the comment to make it just as hard-hitting as the original author had made it, just making that paragraph say what it needs to say and also taking the commenter's last sentence and making sure it delivers a focused, and even more powerful wallop. (The original is 99% right in any case.)
I'm basically treating the comment as a kind of Wiki entry that gets carefully fine-tuned in sequence by several volunteer editors, since we're essentially using it now as a guideline for us to send letters to the editor and hit Palin and McCain hard in the mainstream media. Robertell will obviously get credit for originating this and we have the original links, and with a bit of touch-up, it should be ready to go mass viral.