1) Family members = noncombatants. Free pass. I realize I cannot expect the same courtesy from everyone (e.g. a certain idiot drama queen, who is no less an ass clown than when he was wailing about the fifth column, and don’t think switching sides gives you a pass – who the hell is checking green cards around here?) but rules are rules, and while I reluctantly concede that the spouse is tough to work around these last 20 years or so, the kids are off limits. Period. Paragraph.
2) I would feel a lot better if I could shake the nagging notion that I give more thought to what kind of toilet paper to pick up at Safeway than John McCain gave to making his selection for the second slot. Then again, I doubt the contemporary GOP considers “secessionist” a liability…
Birmingham-born Californian, age fifty-two, cannot return to his native state…there are 651,972 reasons why
I would feel a lot better if I could shake the nagging notion that I give more thought to what kind of toilet paper to pick up at Safeway than John McCain gave to making his selection for the second slot.
I would, too, especially since I’m the one who buys the toilet paper in our household. 😉
You know what – I agreed with what you’re saying for a long time over the weekend but then I changed my mind. Children are fair game if you, as the candidate, make them so. She made her children part of her resume when she uses her elder son’s deployment as (1) evidence of her patriotism and (2) evidence of her experience with military leadership and when she uses her younger son as evidence of her family’s commitment to their particular “family values” then she’s made them all fair game. You cannot use your family as evidence of your values and experience and then, when they show a spectacular failure of those values and your ability to lead within your own family decide that it’s unfair. This isn’t Chelsea Clinton being called “ugly” this is someone who’s own family can’t even live up to the ridiculous set of policies she hopes to inflict on the rest of the country.
I feel badly for her daughter. I feel most of all badly because she’s going to be 17 with a baby and, by most tellings, a real shithole of a husband when I doubt that given access to and real information about other options she would have any of it. But at the same time, this is what her mother has set for her – and wants to set for the rest of America – and if it takes a little humiliation for a girl (I’d argue if you’re 17 and having sex and willing to get married then fuck that – you’re a women) so that other girls and women who would have far less access to support and services and money than she’ll have can get leadership that tries to help them then, well, fuck Bristol. Fuck her and her mother.
The instant you whore…er, I mean, parade… your children out for political benefit is the instant that they become, in a limited sense, fair game. They’re not fair game in the individual sense (neither I nor anyone else should judge the actions of a 17-year-old in those circumstances), but what the whole situation stands for is representative of greater societal ills (and not the ones perceived by the Republican VP nominee).
We should all certainly judge the actions of a mother (who would potentially be one errant Big Mac from the Presidency) who makes her own political hay from her daughter’s pregnancy, subsequent “choice” to keep the child, and “choice” to marry the father. I can’t help but think her choices might be different if, for practical purposes, she actually had any. But she doesn’t, and quite honestly that’s the way her mom (and many in her party) would want it.
It is worth mentioning that this is the same party that frowns on the kind of social system that could better support special-needs individuals. It’s this insane dichotomy: it’s bad to terminate a pregnancy solely because of a special-needs situation (granted), but don’t actually ask for help with the resulting special needs.
After all, situations like that are best left for VP candidates and rich people.