We dodged the Palin bullet (whew) and happy Fourth of July

July 4, 10:50 AMDC Ethical Issues ExaminerLaura Harrison McBride

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Boss Palin bows out  (AP/Robert DeBerry)

About those wingnuts and their misuse of language to attempt to hoodwink people:

Sarah Palin’s swan song was just such a piece of sloppy (not to say imbecilic) piece of writing. To wit:

"It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: ‘Sit down and shut up’, but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow’."

All of which she said as she was quitting. So, to recap: quitting is the worthless path of apathetic people who can’t take the heat of whatever it is they’re involved in. So Sarah quit…because she can’t take the heat of what she’s involved in. But she's not a quitter. Holy cow. Oy vey. Criminy. 

Whoooo! It’s dizzying. What’s worse is that, by Monday afternoon, every GOPer out there will have tried to explain this in some way that makes sense, in some way that doesn’t portray the GOP as a party of whack job wing nuts. I can’t imagine what sort of language they will use in their attempt, but I can hardly wait to find out. We are all running out of fingers sufficient to enumerate just the past month's unsavory revelations by top elected -- not to mention unelected -- Republicans. Does the GOP have an ethics problem?  No need to reply.  One of its ethics problems will be out of office on July 24. (However, apparently Sanford believes it is his god-given mandate to remain in office, in order to avoid the easy way out of resigning...because he will be so much better able to get right with god that way, not to mention his family, friends, mentors, constitutents, backers....Right: it must be the backers, those whose money got him into office he doesn't want to bail on. Perhaps they won't let him; perhaps they haven't gotten their pound of flesh yet, what with him taking his lily white bod off to sultry South America on their -- and the state's -- dime.)

It’s almost frightening that Palin says she wants to stay home and care for her family. Since she doesn't want to be lazy and apathetic, perhaps she will become even more fundamentalist and go around promoting the idea that a woman’s place is in the home ("I'm a maverick!"), and not in a governor’s office. If she does, she won’t realize that by going around promoting the idea that a woman’s place is in the home, she will be caught in the same oxymoronic undertaking against which she speaks. But then, none of them ever seem to understand that by whacking us over the head with their Christian values (whichever ones from Column A or Column B they’ve chosen at any given moment), they are being very unchristian.

Well, at least it was good for two things: A holiday weekend belly laugh. And proof positive that America democracy still works: We didn’t elect this airhead to high national office, thank the lord and pass the red, white and blue burgers.

Happy Fourth!

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