Immediately after the shootings and assassination attempt in Tuscon, conservatives lept to Sarah Palin's defense, insisting that she was not responsible for the shootings. This is missing the point. The issue is not that Sarah Palin is responsble for these acts. The real problem is that Sarah Palin is irresponsible. Sarah Palin embodies irresponsibility, not just in what she says, but in how she acts, right down to the essence of who she is as a mother, as a politician, and as an American.
Sarah Palin is an irresponsible mother, even to her unborn children. when she was pregnant with Trig, she was giving a speech in Texas when her water broke. Keep in mind this was a high risk pregnancy: a special needs child at the age of 44. Did Sarah Palin rush to the hospital so that the baby could get the best possible care during childbirth? Of course not. She got on 12-hour flight bound for Alaska. This was an incredible, life endangering act for her baby and utterly: irresponsible.
She let a teenage boy sleep over in her daugher's bed in her own house, and refused to give her daughter birth control. Irresponsible.
During the presidential campaign, she suggested that Barack Obama was secretly a terrorist against the United States. Irresponsible.
After being elected to govern Alaska, instead of serving out her term for the people who voted for her, she quit less than half-way through to go make a fake reality t.v. show. Irresponsible.
Sarah Palin makes up stuff all the time. During the healthcare debate, she kept invoking the specter of "government death panels", when there was no such thing in the bill. Irresponsible.
While it's a proven fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, she bolsters the mad fantasies of the racist birthers, saying it is "fair" to question the legitimacy of Obama's citizenship, and thus his presidential authority. Irresponsible.
Her posting a target list with crosshairs was irresponsible. That's why she finally took it down ~after~ metaphor met reality. But before the shooting, she defied many warnings and requests to remove it, including one from the now wounded representative giffords. Irresponsible.
At a time when the nation is grieving a horrible assassination attempt and mass murder, she defends her violent rhetoric rather than use her pulpit to encourage calm. Irresponsible.
However, the most irresponsible thing Sarah Palin has ever done is to perpetrate the hoax that she is somehow qualified to be vice president, and potentially president of the United States.
She pretended to have international trade experience with Russia when she didn't. She pretended to be an expert in energy policy, when she isn't. She pretended to be an experienced military commander. She's not. She even pretended that she reads newspapers and magazines! She doesn't.
All of this comes at a time when our nation faces unprecedented challenges: spiraling debt, multiple "wars", and radical climate change and other manmade ecological disasters. A responsible leader would be working to unite the country behind these common causes.
But not Sarah Palin. Because Sarah Palin is irresponsible.