G-L-O-R-I-A

Gloria Steinem is so completely hot. I mean, she was always physically attractive, but now that she's older she's attained that glow that women over the age of 50 or so seem to acquire of which I, as a relative toddler, am so completely jealous.

I got to see her speak tonight at my alma mater, got to talk to her, take a picture with her and all that good stuff. She's just so - freaking - brilliant.

Ironically, if the people who throw Steinem's name around as a pejorative - as if she's the ultimate stereotypical man-hating, fuzzy-armpitted "feminazi" - ever listened to her speak, I think they'd be surprised. For instance, tonight she spoke movingly of the relationships between feminism - a word she barely used - and other movements for equality, placing everything in historical context. She pointed out how the scary stats about violence against women actually "exonerate" (her word) the vast majority of men - one in three women will be a victim of sexual assault in her lifetime, but the average rapist rapes 14 different women, meaning that a very small number of men are violent predators, and the rest are decent, loving men. Most of all, she outlined again and again how activism for women has benefitted all under-privileged groups, including working class men. She spoke of how veterans of war with what they called "shell shock" or "battle fatigue" (um, PTSD) were once belittled as the female victims of violence still are. She refused to denigrate women who dress in what some would call a "slutty" way, saying that you can't always infer a person's intent from their appearance - you might see someone hungry for male approval, when the woman is actually body-positive and could give a rat's ass what the dreaded male gaze thinks of her.

I asked her how to deal with the standard shut-down that feminists are scary, serious, no fun and hate men (um, have you MET me???). I was especially interested in hearing the perspective of someone who's simultaneously been painted as the bogeyman by anti-feminists and as too tarty with her mini-skirts by some feminists. Her answer: tell the truth. Point out to the person calling you names how, say, tax credits for caregiving would benefit them. And as always, be yourself.

For Steinem - and I think I understand this so much more having seen her in person, rather than just reading her - it's about agency. Whether a woman wears a burqa or a minidress, works in Hooters or works in her home, is not the issue. What matters is that the individual is doing so of her own accord, after deciding what's best for her and her family. Arbitrarily labelling conduct right or wrong doesn't get us anywhere.

I've always been fascinated with Steinem for her intellect, even when I haven't always agreed with her (for instance, what I consider her overly subjective delineation of pornography and erotica). But I admire the hell out her for proving with her very existence that feminists - all people - can be serious, life-loving, sex-positive beings, and all at the same time.

She's firmly on my People I Want to Have a Beer With list. I think it would take a couple for me to work up the courage to ask her what she thought of "American Psycho," a movie with which I have a love-hate relationship...and which was the breakout film for her step-son, Christian Bale. (Seriously, you can't tell me that never came up at Thanksgiving dinner...) That was really my only complaint about tonight. She totally needs to bring him along next time. In the Batsuit, preferably. ;)

WHAT. THE. PURPLE. HELL.

I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that the House of Representatives just voted down the $700 billion bailout plan that the White House and Senate wrestled to produce late last week. The good news is that all 435 House members (including North Carolina's entire Republican delegation, all of which voted no) are up for job performance review in a little over a month.

And Congress wonders why they have a single-digit approval rating. Seriously, they picked a hell of a time to crawl out of President Bush's ass.

Look, no one actually thinks this is a swell idea. (Except for treasury secretary Henry Paulson.) No one is just thrilled to death at the prospect of the taxpayers shelling out billions that should rightly go to our roads and schools just because a bunch of a-hole mortgage lenders got greedy. Like many, I resent that Americans have been struggling for years with rising energy prices, credit debt and health care costs, with Congress and the president showing zero urgency for our economic issues.

But the fact is that if we don't do something, our entire economy will collapse. Look at that, I agree with President Bush on something. I think we can do this in such a way that protects taxpayers - rather than just handing Paulson $700 billion with no strings - and I think the plan that the House just pissed on is as close as we might come to that. Meanwhile, the stock market keeps falling, the rest of the world is getting nervous and some idiot running for Senate in Colorado actually thinks the Treasury's going to print more money.

Any version of the bailout violates so many principles that I don't know where to begin. But the thing is, when grown-ups are faced with an impossible situation, they do what they have to do to get out of it. They make the hard choices. They do not, however, fall to the floor of the House chamber kicking and screaming like toddlers. "Waaah! Socialism! Waaaaaaaaah!!!"

So, to Virginia Foxx and Company - grow. the hell. up. And fix this sh*t, NOW.

The 10 people you meet in every living history museum

I was back in the 18^th Century saddle today, volunteering at Bethabara Park doing a craft demo. I tend to nostalgia-ize the years I spent as an interpreter at Old Salem before I graduated college and started my “real” career. Except for the negligible salaries and benefits, there’s really no better job for someone who loves history, loves talking about history and loves showing off one’s skill at some folk art form that no one under the age of 50 (in Germany) can do.

But the thing is, like any service profession, an interpreter can’t pick and choose who she talks to. It’s your job to talk with everyone who buys a ticket, no matter how annoying, irritating or downright weird. Until today, I’d forgotten how nearly every museum visitor falls into one of the following groups:

The Looker
When I go to museums, this is me. The Looker already knows all the basics because The Looker did her graduate thesis on whatever it is your museum specializes in, or at the very least read the guidebook. The Looker's feet hurt, or she's not an auditory processor, or he just doesn't feel like wading through Floorboard Guy, Quilt Lady and/or Susie Homeschool to listen to your standard Historical Disney spiel. It's nothing personal. It's just that The Looker has been through many, many museums, and as such already knows that she won't see a TV in the parlor. The Looker is above these things. Fortunately, The Looker is usually courteous enough to tell you that he/she's "just looking" as soon as he/she comes in the door. Do the both of you a favor, and let The Looker roam free. If The Looker should have a question, The Looker typically is capable of determining that the person in the costume/Park Ranger outfit might be able to answer it.

Floorboard Guy
Floorboard Guy is fascinated with the wider-than-he’s-used-to-seeing floorboards to the exclusion of everything else in the entire museum. Moreso than the clothes, the hearth cooking demos and your attempts to describe documented facts of life in 1788, it’s this 18-inch wide slab of pine under his feet that really brings it home that, holy sh*t! Life was different back then! [RANT: floorboards in backwoods houses were big because the trees from which they were cut were big. Until recently, skinny floorboards meant more cuts at the sawmill. Lots of cuts = expensive. So, even in the 1780s, super-rich people sometimes had fancy “modern” skinny boards. To a 1780s person, big floorboards weren’t all that cool. Kind of the reverse of quilts…I won’t go there, the rant’s too long as it is. End rant.] Floorboard Guy typically comes in two varieties. Most common, and generally harmless, is the golly-gee type, who just wants to marvel at the giant boards and the square nails holding them together. (Don’t get him started on the nails.) Ignoring the dozens of other paying customers streaming past, he’ll cheerfully monopolize you with tales of his great-grandmother’s farmhouse that had boards just like this! With square nails, too! Far more obnoxious is the second type, who’s deeply skeptical of your claim that the floorboards are original. In his mind, there’s just no way that a floor could’ve survived 200-odd years under any circumstances, even if the building was in use up until the point when it became a museum, and you can introduce him to the person who did the restoration. His laser eyes will spot every two-square-inch patch or uneven spot in order to bolster his claim. Floorboard Guy is often married to Quilt Lady.

Quilt Lady
Quilt Lady knows more about fabric than you ever will. So you’ve devoted years to researching 18^th Century garments and construction techniques, practiced them yourself and maybe even have an advanced degree in history/anthropology/textile studies. Well, Quilt Lady will have you know that she personally earned an Honorable Mention in the Harnett County Fair Craft Show (adorable kitten division) so you can f*ck off. Quilt Lady doesn’t care that the pieced Becky Home Ecky “patchwork” quilts she’s used to seeing didn’t show up until around the Civil War, when cheap fabric and sewing machines came along. She’s blissfully unaware of the whole-cloth and appliquéd quilts that rich people paid other people to make for them back when quilts were a pain in the keister to make. She’s deeply committed to the prairie fantasy of her foremothers saving scraps of their wedding dresses to painstakingly cobble together quilts so they wouldn’t freeze to death. (Why her idiot foremothers didn’t just walk to the dry goods store and buy a damn blanket, I don’t know.) Quilt Lady has trouble distinguishing “Little House on the Prairie” and the Harnett County Fair from life in 18^th Century North Carolina, and this doesn’t really trouble her. Also, whatever it is you’re doing, you’re doing it wrong. But she still wants to buy it from you.

The Super Darwinist
The Super Darwinist is so passionately devoted to the concept of biological evolution that he or she fervently believes that human beings grew two feet within a single century. Oh yes, it’s true. Just look at those low doorways, it’s all the proof anyone needs that the average man in 1780 was no more than five feet tall. No wonder they looked up to Washington and Jefferson so much! (Ha, ha, I kill me.) Okay, really. The issue here is that it’s natural to look at things through your own life perspective, ignoring the fact that “back then” was a foreign culture. So you’re used to doorways that come a good foot or so above your head. But Joe Blow the Colonist didn’t go down to Home Depot when he was throwing up his cabin. He didn’t worry about building codes. He worried about keeping heat in the rooms every winter. Joe Blow the Colonist might’ve bumped his head every time he walked into his house, but at least he saved on the firewood. And that was really all that mattered to Joe. My advice: stop obsessing over the doorways and look at the 14-foot ceilings for a change. In truth, of course “they” were smaller “back then.” They had sh*tty health care and nutrition compared to modern Americans, for one thing. But the average American man today is only about five-foot-seven. Collectively, we’ve grown two or three inches in the last 200 years. Inches. Inches.

Little Susie Homeschool
Unlike Quilt Lady, Little Susie Homeschool really does know more than you about pretty much everything. That’s because, while you’re at your second job delivering pizza because you work at a living history museum, Susie is reading. Everything. She blew through Howard Zinn and James Loewen at an age when you were still rushing to finish your homework in time for “You Can’t do That on Television.” The demo interpretation you’ve worked so hard to dumb down for Floorboard Guy won’t cut it with Susie, because she’s already mastered whatever it is you’re demonstrating. You really hope that Susie and her parents visit on a slow day, because she’ll either be A) someone cool you want to talk to all day, or B) a floor-hog who’ll expect to get to talk to you all day. She tends to either touch nothing or want to touch everything.

Captain Ritalin & Family
Remember those myths you’ve heard about kids whose parents died horribly on the frontier, and so they were raised by wolves? Captain Ritalin’s parents didn’t get dysentery on Oregon Trail or anything; they’re just deeply engrossed reading every word of the displays in the front room of the museum…which would be awesome, if their energetic offspring weren’t climbing the priceless 18^th Century furniture three rooms over. Instead of wolves, Captain Ritalin’s caregivers rely on modern pharmaceuticals to do the dirty work for them. And you, of course. (Not that you will be permitted to discipline, or even directly address, the Captain.) If you don’t want Captain Ritalin to crawl into that restricted room, then you should’ve just used barbed wire and armed guards instead of that too-subtle chain across the door, shouldn’t you have? Another variant of this type sees Captain Ritalin’s keepers not ignoring him, but rather chasing him at full speed through the entire house. While this can be hazardous to other visitors and/or priceless 18^th Century artifacts, the plus side is that they usually breeze through in 2.7 seconds, and then they’re out of your hair.

The Toucher
Clearly a tactile learner, The Toucher is incapable of gleaning anything from the museum experience without being able to handle everything in his or her path, including you. Fragile glasswear, ancient books, actual food, real live interpretive staff and their personal belongings – nothing is off-limits. If it’s in the physical space of the museum, The Toucher will feel it. I once had a guy cross the barrier and climb into a fireplace – which, by the way, contained an actual roaring fire at the time – in order to ascertain for himself that the chimney was real. Seriously.

City Kid
At the museum where I worked, our daily schedule showed not only how many school children were visiting that day, but where they were from. One thing I learned very quickly – while public school kids from major metro areas may have an advantage over their rural counterparts in many areas, when it comes to the museum experience, they’re dumber than buttered toast. Don’t bother asking City Kid where in her kitchen he thinks Mrs. Tavern Keeper cooked dinner. City Kid has never even seen a fireplace in person. Don’t expect City Kid to know where Mrs. Tavern Keeper would’ve gotten the chicken she’s cooking. City Kid knows that chicken only comes from KFC, or the poultry section at Food Lion, if it’s a special occasion. City Kid is so completely, utterly, unfathomably ignorant of anything outside the sphere of “TRL” and “CSI” that it’s not even funny. Don’t even bring up the spinning wheel. You will frakking blow City Kid’s jaded little mind. (For awhile we had a live chicken at our museum. One of my favorite memories is watching 8^th graders from Paisley Middle – the city school to end all city schools – giggling while this rooster ate feed out of their hands. They’d never seen a live animal other than cats or dogs.) On the plus side, City Kid is apt to think that fetching firewood for you is insanely cool. Whereas Country Kid knows you’re just using him for free labor.

Country Kid
Generally more polite than his city counterpart, Country Kid is also likely to be a little less impressed with whatever it is you're doing. That's mainly because Country Kid's life and culture are a little closer to the life you're interpreting. Country Kid has livestock, chops wood on a regular basis and has actually personally witnessed the sewing of clothing. Unfortunately, Country Kid also got up at 4 a.m. to start the 50 m.p.h. bus ride to your museum, so he's getting a mite crabby. Also, his chaperones are trying to squeeze in enough time to hit the mall this afternoon, since they're here in the city and all, so they may not be as attentive as you would like.

The Guy You Really Really Wish You Could Hang Out With All Day
He may be an expert in the production of 18^th Century backwoods floorboards, cooking, shoemaking, etc. She might be a descendant of the family whose house you’re interpreting. Or maybe an exchange student from Germany who’s overjoyed to have stumbled onto a cache of German-ness in North Carolina, of all places. This person always seems to visit on the Saturday before Christmas, or five minutes before closing or something, and as such you don’t have nearly as much time as you’d like to pick his/her brain. My favorite variant of this type is the little kid who listens raptly to every word you say about knitting/profile drawing/basket weaving/pottery or whatever it is you’re talking about, and when his or her parents finally drag him/her away, you hear this excited little voice outside the door, saying, “I totally want to try that when we get home!” All the big talk about how much you love history aside, this visitor is the reason you take that extra job delivering pizza, and you know it.

Fish in a barrel

Sigh.

She doesn't know what the f*cking Bush Doctrine is

Yes, really. The person who claims with a straight face that living 3,000 miles from Moscow and giving birth to a son who enlisted to go to Iraq make her more qualified than the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be vice president seems to be totally unfamiliar with the most influential foreign relations policy since James frakking Monroe.

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.

Mother. Of. Pearl.

Ralph Stanley endorses Barack Obama

When the Rovites among the McCain campaign talk about Senator Obama's alleged "elitism," they're directing that attack to an audience they think will be receptive to it. Namely, older, usually white Americans living in rural areas who epitomize "traditional values." In other words, Ralph Stanley.

It didn't work.

Or, as my mother, the soon-to-be master of Appalachian studies, put it: " Country music icon, guy who won a Grammy for singing 'O, Death' on the 'O Brother Where Art Thou' soundtrack, and has pages devoted him in all the books I have to read for my history of country music class --- that guy. RALPH FRICKING STANLEY endorsed the 'arugula-eating' black guy!!!"

When is a woman vice president not good for women?

I feel like I'm piling on Gov. Sarah Palin. I'm not out to attack her, I promise...But when polls show that women are starting to lean toward voting for the John McCain/Sarah Palin ticket, I just feel like a little education is in order. If you're all about voting for Sarah Palin, that's your right. Just make sure you're doing it for the right reasons.

Right reasons to vote for McCain/Palin: I'm a hard-right conservative who is totally cool with spending taxpayers' money on shooting wolves from airplanes (how sporting), but not on shelters for young pregnant women who aren't lucky enough to have, say, the governor for a mother. I don't believe that human activity has any effect on climate change, so we shouldn't worry about changing our behaviors - like investing in alternative energies.

Wrong reasons to vote for McCain/Palin: She seems really cool. I'd like to bone her/hang out with her (depending on your gender and orientation).

And then there's this: among the measured decisions Palin had to make in her demanding position as mayor of that town was that rape victims should pay for their own rape kits. This isn't a question of fiscal responsibility - it's a law-and-order issue. A rape victim cannot file charges without a kit collected by a specially trained sexual assault response (SART) nurse, which are usually only stationed in emergency room. You can't go to your family doctor. Unless evidence is collected in the ER by a SART nurse, it won't be considered valid, or uncontaminated, because the chain of custody can't be certified.

So now you're in the ER, where my insurance would charge me $150 just to walk through the door. But what if a rape victim doesn't have insurance? She not only pays for the processing of the kit, she pays for the other normal ER costs. (Of course if you don't have a job that provides insurance, you're most likely getting paid by the hour. If you have to take time off work, that's even more money you're losing.) See, when my car was broken into, I don't recall the cops sending me a bill for the fingerprint processing. But that's what rape victims have to deal with in many places.

We have crime - a crime that will affect one in five women at some point in their lives - not being reported because a victim doesn't have insurance? This isn't some Goddess circle/hairy legged feminist issue - it's a criminal justice issue. Maybe there's a reason Alaska's rates of sexual assault and domestic violence are so much higher than any other state...

I f*ckin' love Jon Stewart

Seriously, I want to have 10 of his babies.

Just in case you've bought the MSM's apparent belief that this election is all about who does and doesn't shoot underaged knocked-up moose because they don't wear American flag lapel pins (...or something):

Federal Highway Fund Running Out of Money (or, That Thing That Builds 80 Percent of our Bridges is F*cked)

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to be Put Under Federal Control (or, The Guys Who Brought You the War in Iraq Will Now Control Your Mortgage) (alternate title: Seriously Worrisome Precedents, 101) (other alternate: Holy Shizznit, This is Bad)

And just in case you're somehow still of the John McCain/Phil Gramm School, and you believe that our economy is just fine, and you're a whiny baby if you think otherwise...

Unemployment Climbs to 5-year High of 6.1 Percent (or, People Who Lost Their Jobs in August: Ten Times the Population of that Town Sarah Palin was Mayor of)

I used to joke that if McCain won the presidency, I'd have to move to Mexico because I wouldn't be able to afford to live here anymore. Now I don't think I'm joking...

All you need to know

The New York Times analyzed the language used at both the Democratic and Republican conventions, with an eye toward sussing out each party's priorities. I don't know if I'd go quite that far - after all, context matters, and the GOP basically lost a day due to Hurricane Gustav. But still.

Someone at ThinkProgress did the same thing for the RNC only, looking for words not like to pop up at the DNC, such as "hockey mom" and "maverick." (No word on "jilted first wife" or "ex-maverick sell-out," I'm afraid...)

Quick Hit: Roy Carter poised to knock off Virginia Foxx

Check this out... Virginia Foxx is justbarely leading Roy Carter in the 5th District Congressional race:

The closest Congressional district in the state is the 5th, where Virginia Foxx leads Roy Carter 48-46. I really hope the DCCC and other folks take the pick up opportunity in this district seriously. There are races on the Red to Blue list that based on the data I've seen are less winnable than this one. Carter is a uniquely appealing candidate and has the opportunity to pull off the same kind of shocker Larry Kissell almost did in 2006 if he gets the resources he needs to run the strongest campaign possible.

It is hugely, insanely important that Carter win this race and send Foxx back to her hole. If you haven't yet had the chance to meet Carter - first of all, how's that possible? The guy is everywhere - you're missing out. He's a lifelong professional educator and one of the nicest people I've ever met. Unlike Foxx, a Bush-kissing, hurricane-victim-ignoring, professional politician with a shady past and a mean streak, Carter was moved to run for office out of a genuine desire to bring the concerns of ordinary North Carolinians to Washington. Isn't that what our system is supposed to be about?

UPDATE: And there's this...Junior Johnson endorses Roy Carter.

More facts I like

We've heard a lot lately about how ineffective Barack Obama has been in his three years in the U.S. Senate, and some little bon mots about how he's better at writing memoirs than legislation. So I thought a little reality might be in order.

Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004, and began his term in January, 2005. Eight others joined the Senate at the same time. Let's compare the supposedly absentee lightweight Obama with his peers:

Barack Obama (D-Illinois)
Bills sponsored: 65; co-sponsored: 364; sponsored bills passed: 0

David Vitter (R-Louisiana)
Bills sponsored: 52; co-sponsored: 186; sponsored bills passed: 1

Ken Salazar (D-Colorado)
Bills sponsored: 63; co-sponsored: 276; sponsored bills passed: 0

Mel Martinez (R-Florida)
Bills sponsored: 21; co-sponsored: 202; sponsored bills passed: 0

John Isakson (R-Georgia)
Bills sponsored: 25; co-sponsored: 300; sponsored bills passed: 1

Richard Burr (R-North Carolina)
Bills sponsored: 20; co-sponsored: 179; sponsored bills passed: 1

Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma)
Bills sponsored: 11; co-sponsored: 136; sponsored bills passed: 0

Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina)
Bills sponsored: 24; co-sponsored: 99; sponsored bills passed: 0

John Thune (R-South Dakota)
Bills sponsored: 27; co-sponsored: 145; sponsored bills passed: 2

Wow. It actually looks like Obama sponsored more bills than any of his fellow first-term senators, closely followed by the only other Democrat to enter the Senate that year. If we're going to use the introduction of legislation to committee (where the vast, vast majority of bills die), Obama makes the other frosh look like slackers. Of course, any yahoo can submit a bill - the real trick is getting legislation out of committee, through debate and up for a vote. And by that measure, Obama's right where you'd expect a first-term senator to be.

I also think this rundown of Senate attendance during the last two years is interesting - especially the guy who's first on the list by an insanely large margin, followed at a distance by Obama and the pack of other Senate Dems who ran for president this year.

But who will protect us from Siberia?

In the week since Gov. Sarah Palin was appointed Sen. John McCain's running mate, one of the talking points emphasizes her "experience" as commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard, a standard job for a governor. Which is why I thought this was interesting.

"Just six months ago, Air Force Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, the Alaska Guard's top officer, warned in an internal memo that 'missions are at risk.' The lack of qualified airmen, Campbell said, 'has reached a crisis level.'...

Campbell is due to receive a third star on Sunday — a promotion approved by Palin, who has authority over the Alaska National Guard. He described Palin as very supportive of the Guard, but said she gives him latitude to manage the force. Governors typically do not have a direct role in day-to-day operations...

Members of the Alaska Army and Air Guard have been sent to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and other overseas locations before and since Palin was sworn in as governor in December 2006. They've handled duties ranging from training the Afghan National Army to communications support. When on these federal missions, National Guard troops are under the command of the Defense Department and not their governors."

Facts are our friends.

Look at me, defending a conservative Republican!

Who had Thursday in the "how long will it take for someone to call Sarah Palin 'shrill'" pool?

As those of us who lived through the Democratic primary earlier this year - and those of us who've paid attention to anything, ever - know well, "shrill" is one of those words that only seems to find itself applied to powerful women. It's a warning that, if you don't abandon your uppity ways and get right down to baking cookies, next time you'll get the B-word.

Okay, look, Harry Reid spokesperson - I know you're a Democrat, but that doesn't mean your sh*t don't stink, you know? The same Republicans who at best shrugged off the "shrill"/"bitch" attacks on Hillary Clinton and at worst participated in them have suddenly discovered that sexism exists, and that it's unfair. So they're doing their best to co-opt the traditional progressive position. It would be a shame if progressives responded by turning into the very bigots we've been fighting all this time.

Besides, there's enough material on which to attack Gov. Palin without resorting to gendered name-calling.

"Viscera are not the seat of wisdom"

George Will's take on Gov. Sarah Palin as Sen. John McCain's VP pick. He seems to be taking a slightly different line on her than he did Sunday on whatever talk show it was. I always like George Will better in print than on TV, because he seems more deliberative. I like deliberative-ness.

Will is an old-school, small-government conservative - the kind I like, because they have brains and they force me to use mine. Competition is good for businesses, and it's good for policy, too. You're not likely to hear George Will spreading rumors about how Obama's mother's sister's next door neighbor said she hated America one time after too many Alabama Slammers. I respect that he worries about Senator Obama's short resume when it comes to international issues - hey, I worried about that, too.

In today's column, Will writes about how experience isn't the be-all, end-all; it must be coupled with demonstrated judgment. He pulls out presidents Buchanan and Nixon as examples of highly experienced leaders who nevertheless turned out to be horrible presidents.

"Clearly, experience is not sufficient to prove a person "qualified" for the presidency. But it is a necessary component of qualification.

So are two other attributes. One is character. Richard Nixon was qualified by his experience as congressman, senator and vice president, but disqualified by character. The second is a braided mental rope of constitutional sense and political common sense....

Among the four candidates for national office, perhaps only Palin might give a Madisonian answer -- one cognizant of the idea that the federal government's powers are limited because they are enumerated -- if asked to identify any provision of the Constitution, other than the First Amendment, that imposes meaningful limits on congressional or executive authority to act.

If so, she would be a good influence on Washington, including McCain. But is there any evidence that she has thought about such matters? McCain's selection of her is applied McCainism -- a visceral judgment by one who is confidently righteous. But the viscera are not the seat of wisdom."

That's a mighty big "if." Wait - I can see the words forming in your mouth, don't even go there. I say again: Obama went through more than 50 primary elections, 20 debates and has managed one of the best-run campaigns in recent years. That's what made me overcome the concerns I had about his experience - what Will calls character and the "braided rope" of common sense and understanding of the law. I haven't seen that demonstrated from Sarah Palin yet.

And if this is a preview of how a President McCain will make vitally important decisions, I'm scared sh*tless right now.

Fingers crossed...

The New York Times has an editorial today about President Bush's plan to protect thousands of square miles of the Pacific Ocean, despite the objections of the commercial fishing industry in the area.

I've been accused of knee-jerk criticism of the president's every move, which isn't true...it's just that his administration does so many stupid things that piss me off. But this is a really good move. This plan to create sanctuaries around the Marianas Trench and other areas takes the long view. President Bush's record on the environment has been deplorable, but I applaud him for taking a stand here.

Right now the president's intention is merely a memo. Let's hope it goes farther than that.

A hodgepodge of thoughts...

My new biggest nightmare as a PR person: defending a charge that a client (say, just as a for instance, a VP candidate) pretended to have a baby that was actually her teenage daughter's by pointing out that said daughter couldn't possibly be the mother, becase by the time the baby was born, she was pregnant with a baby of her own. Yikes.

So, if you should ever find yourself having to data dump some really bad news, try to do it just as a hurricane's making landfall. That should provide you with at least some cover. Next, shake your finger at the "liberal blogosphere" that forced you into disclosing what you would have had to disclose anyway - that's the thing about pregnant women, they don't get any smaller.

Seriously, I think the Palin and McCain folks handled this as well as they posibly could have under the circumstances. They're going to piss me off sometime in the next few days, attacking anyone who brings up the obvious irony of an abstinence-only governor becoming a grandma at age 44, or what McCain's, um, interesting decision-making process might indicate about the kind of person he is. But we'll see how it goes.

I also want to watch how the Democrats handle it. Someone has already asked Obama to comment, and he said in no uncertain terms that candidate's kids are off-limits. (He also reminded the press that his mother had him when she was 18.) His campaign really shouldn't say anything other than that. (The aforementioned "liberal blogosphere" is already doing that for him.)

Other thoughts...
- Gov. Palin obviously knew that her daughter was pregnant when she accepted McCain's nomination. She had to know that the spotlight was going to hit her family pretty hard. In fact, she's already used her family to score political points (son with Down syndrome, other son going to Iraq, etc.). Isn't dealing with an unplanned pregnancy hard enough on a family without the added drama?

- The "WTF was McCain thinking?" factor just grows more every day. I still can't decide if I believe him when he says he knew all about the pregnancy and picked her anyway.

- Did you watch any of the Sunday talk shows, where much of the focus was on McCain-Palin and the upcoming convention? Some of the talking points were a little straw-graspy. To wit: Cindy McCain says Palin is so totally ready to take on Vladimir Putin because Alaska is the closest state to Russia. (Juneau's actually only about 20 miles closer to Moscow than Boston.) I can't remember which talking head said Palin's executive experience supervising five children should count. And my favorite sniveling windbag, Lindsey Graham, pointed out to George Stephan-howeverthef*ckyouspellit that, as governer of Alaska, Palin was "commander in chief" of the state's 4,000-strong National Guard. (Which means she manages about as many people as my boss.)

- Another talking point was that Palin may be light on experience, but hey, it's executive experience. I'll buy that an executive (like president or governor) does different stuff than a legislator. But still, if two years as governor, folowing a stint as mayor, wasn't good enough when Karl Rove was talking about Tim Kaine, then why is it okay now? All told, Palin's been in politics for 12 years, going back to her time directing moose-sh*t cleaning crews on the Wasilla City Council. Barack Obama joined the U.S. Senate in January, 2005, after eight years in the Illinois state legislature (which I think has more members than Wasilla has people). My math's a little rusty, help me out here.....?

Let's not forget that Obama made it through some 20 debates against the likes of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd and his own running mate, Joe Biden. He went through 50-some caucuses and primaries, with more than 18 million Americans deciding that they liked what they saw. (Again with the math...that's like, what, 20 times the number of people who even live in Alaska, let alone voted for Gov. Palin?) He's been vetted and, with the exception of a small number of camera-hogging "PUMAs," he's been approved.

- All throughout the day Friday, I could hear little whispers floating above the walls of my cubicle - all the middle-aged and older women who work in my office buzzing because, Did you hear? McCain picked a woman! (Something the Dems did when I was in pre-school. Wanna cookie?) They knew nothing else about her, except that she has a vagina. This makes me both incredibly sad and insanely eager to punch something.

- Speaking of sexism, and getting back to BristolBabyGate...Check out the comments on CNN.com's Ticker post on the news. It really pisses me off how many of them are basically either "She wants to run the country, but she can't run her own household!" or "How's she going to care for a special-needs infant, a pregnant daughter and a grandchild with such a demanding job?" Oh, I dunno...maybe she should ask advice from the GAJILLIONS OF MEN WHO DO IT EVERY DAY. Sorry about that. It's just that those comments - to me - are nicer versions of "Who told that Mommy to get a high-powered job anyway? It's all her fault!" It's 2008, and that idea that raising the kids is still primarily Mom's job, no matter how demanding her job job, is still deeply ingrained.

One final thought........In some bizarro alternate universe, Barack Obama is about to announce that he smoked pot back in the day, his wife got a DUI in 1984 (possibly driving home from a "Geraldine Ferraro Just Broke the Glass Ceiling" celebration party) and now their daughter (humor me) is pregnant, getting married and they're just thrilled to pieces about it. Does Focus on the Family's James Dobson still feel the same way?

Another win for abstinence-only sex ed

This is really sad. Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. McCain's choice for his running mate, announced today that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant. Bristol, a high school senior, will marry the baby's father, they said also.

To paraphrase Barack Obama in his acceptance speech last week - we may disagree on lots of issues related to reproductive rights, but can we at least agree that a child having another child is never a good thing? Bristol Palin is fortunate to have an apparently loving, supportive family with her in this life-changing situation. She's also more fortunate than many teens who get pregnant because of her family's affluence. But her young pregnancy and marriage will still dramatically alter thte course of her life, the child's life and the life of the baby's father.

I've always believed that a candidate's children (especiaaly minors) should be off-limits, and that a child's actions don't necessarily reflect on the quality of their parenting. But it's not cheap-shotting to point out that Gov. Palin is herself militantly anti-choice and strongly supports abstinence-only sex education in public schools. I can't help but wonder how differently Bristol's life might look right now if her mother had tempered her idealism with a shot of reality -- teens who want to have sex will have sex, and they'd better know how to protect themselves.

Much has been made over Gov. Palin's strong Christian faith, as if that is the sole basis for her conservatism. Well, I'm a Christian, too. My Bible tells me not to judge the actions of other people, that that's God's job. My Bible also tells me to see to my own house before I start telling others how to live their lives.