[lbo-talk] Betty Bowers on the Sarah Palin story

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Sep 3 09:52:49 PDT 2008


[Interesting links in original]

http://bettybowers.com/betty4president/?p=118

2nd September 2008

THE NO SIN ZONE [her blog]

Evangelicals Give Sarah Palin a "Get Out of Values Free" Card

<snip>

But it is not this shared (and profitable) vision of a mercantile God

that has evangelicals verbally petting Palin like a pack of Emo youths

whose ecstasy has just kicked in. No, their ardor springs solely from a

rather discrete source revealed rather indiscreetly: She's fixated on

bringing every embryo she comes near to term. And she has created an

"abstinence only from condoms" family that recklessly makes it its

mission to ensure that there will be plenty of them, wanted or, as in

the case of the last two, not.

Apparently, according to many of my fellow evangelicals, Palin could

hold up a liquor store naked on a meth-binge just as long as she and

her underage daughter keep pushing out the young'uns! According to

Dobson, "The media are already trying to spin this as evidence Gov.

Palin is a `hypocrite,' but all it really means is that she and her

family are human."

But perhaps the biggest hypocrite in this story is Dobson. Is he now

casting the issues of unwed pregnancy and teenage sex as

inconsequential trifles, to be carelessly thrown under John McCain's

Straight Jacket Express? After all, he has quickly scolded unwed

mothers in the past, showing a far less happy-go-lucky, "stuff happens"

insouciance to "values." [And speaking of scolding unwed teenage

mothers: What, exactly, is the holdup on setting a date, Bristol, dear?

Is it a busy-as-bee caterer -- or an election, after which the

boyfriend who doesn't want kids can go back to college?]

Imagine the horror and tut-tutting if Barack Obama had a pregnant

daughter (well, that and the probable interest by the New England

Journal of Medicine). Do you think Dobson would fawn over the news --

perhaps, encourage Miss Obama to have a few more? Probably not.

Remember how he famously lit into Mary Cheney for having a child

without being married to a man? Now, wait. Does that mean that this

isn't partisan pandering after all, just saying whatever claptrap is

needed to get a Republican to pick some more wild-about-fetuses Supreme

Court justices? Oh, how foolish! What was I thinking? Mary -- while a

Republican -- is, moreover, a homo. And, in evangelical circles, being

a homosexual is about the only thing as potent as being pro-fetus:

The former condemns with the ease the latter absolves.

<end entry>

<full at: http://bettybowers.com/betty4president/?p=118>



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