I stopped by a news shop today and the first thing that caught my eye was Sarah Palin’s face on the magazine racks. The Governor was featured -instead of bald Britneys and drunk-driving Lindseys- amid the saturated, buy-me-first headlines of the National Enquirer, which blasted accusations of adultery and drug abuse at her and the Palin clan. Now I usually don’t do this, but lately my distress at the cynicism of the Republican VP choice has been so great that I could not avoid picking a copy from the quickly thinning stack of magazines.
According to the Enquirer -which was dead right on accusing John Edwards of cheating on his wife- Ms. Palin’s son is a nasty partying fiend who can’t get enough of bong hits and oxycontin. Should it ever bear the faintest resemblance to the truth, the smear will wreck the McCain candidacy in a split second, rendering just how much of a maverick he was in picking someone without properly vetting them.
As far as I know the Enquirer piece is bull; a story tailored to the frustrations of anyone who has fathomed the possibility of a vice president who has left the US only once -or lately, a president who can be as irresponsible and cynical about leading the world’s most powerful country as to pull off this kind of thing with a straight face. But as I read I caught myself really hoping those accusations to bear truth. Not because I am an Obama fan – I realized too late that Hillary would be a better President- but because the Palin VP pick is really the biggest and most humiliating joke I have ever seen a politician get away with.
New York Abridged 