Tuesday, September 30, 2008

It's the stupidity, not the skirt.


'It is going to be so good,' I said.
'I know. I cannot wait,' Roomie said.
'Utter trainwreck.'
'Disaster,' Roomie agreed.

I cannot help but thrill at the upcoming debacle that will be the VP debate. I'm heady with it. I shiver when I think of it. If this was a Roman arena, I'd be one of those barbaric spectators, with my thumb turned down.

It's unseemly, isn't it? Unlike other feminists who've been writing about their conflicted feelings toward Palin and how her running for the 2nd in Command makes them feel bad about their feminism, I have never felt bad about wanting to see this woman get shoved off the political stage, never to be seen again. But until today, I had no idea why I was getting more and more ginned up to see Palin destroyed so publicly.

I saw a glimmer of a reason yesterday when I watched one unbearable minute of the Couric interview. I tried, I really did. I tried to sit through them but the incoherence, the plain cluelessness, the vacuity - it all did me in! Aargh! I couldn't take it and stopped the video. I still haven't seen the whole thing. I can only read it in transcripts, in short spurts.

I couldn't bring myself to watch the Gibson interview, either.

But today, when I was talking to Roomie, I realized that watching Palin get plucked out of nowhere like a modern day Courtney Cox in a Bruce Springsteen video has made me suffer a high school flashback, back to a time when I hated seeing charming mediocrity succeed. There's no good way to explain it without sounding like a bitch so I'll just shrug and admit it: smart people make me swoon, stupid people make me angry. Especially deliberately stupid people.

And Sarah Palin is deliberately stupid.

I count her among the people who refuse to learn; people who refuse to research (or at least do a little digging); people who refuse to think critically or ask good questions; people who refuse to explain things in clean, elegant ways; people who refuse to speak without using jargon, cliches or sentimental shorthand - ugh! I cannot stand seeing these people in positions of authority!

For the last 8 years, such a person has been our President and it has triggered every single one of my snobby, brainiac issues. It infuriates me to see such a person leading our country and if someone like Sarah Palin, a woman several degrees dumber than Shrub, gets into the White House, I might as well lose eternal faith in the benefit of higher education.

LeBlanc at Bitch Ph.D. says it a bit more elegantly than I but the point stands: I can't stand Sarah Palin because she epitomizes everything I don't respect.

And I can't WAIT until Biden wipes the floor with her.

4 comments:

Orange said...

I hope she doesn't somehow manage to be well-prepared for the debate. The expectations for Palin are so low, if she's only terrible rather than absolutely abysmal, it will be touted as a victory.

The debate is booting The Office off the air this Thursday. I'm counting on Palin being the female Michael Scott and giving some good (if pained) belly laughs.

Delia Christina said...

I know. Rachel Maddow said all she has to do is speak English and people'll think she won!

Gaah. This is what I mean about mediocrity. When did barely showing up mean success? What about frakking standards??

liza said...

You said it. LeBlanc's post made me realize why if I think the election in the middle of the night (when I get up to feed the sprog) I CANNOT get back to sleep because I get so deeply irritated and itchy over it. Palin gives me a rash, and the circus around her makes me break out in hives.
And also: its not snobby to expect the people in charge in a democracy to be able to explain themselves. The other thing that makes my head explode about her is the "dumb blonde" act (in spite of her dark hair) that passes for charm.

Delia Christina said...

the Kathleen Parker piece above this post mentioned a letter she got from a reader who said they like Palin BECAUSE OF her incoherence!

what the hell???

i really want someone to explain to me when and how it happened that being incomprehensible became an American virtue.