A quick break between chapters

Julia and I watched the vice presidential debate last night. I thought the whole thing was a little on the ridiculous side. Biden could have easily eviscerated Palin in the debates, but if he had there would have been people all over him saying he was picking on her. Oh man, can you imagine if he had made her cry... You could see the points at which he was laughing at her responses. Responses, I might add, which were ludicrous had little to nothing to do with the questions that were being fielded to her. She even had the audacity to say, essentially, that she had no intention of answering the questions or addressing the issues. Pretty much she made it clear that she was there simply to regurgitate all of the bullshit her party had crammed down her throat. If I was the moderator I would have stopped her and asked her why she bothered to agree to come to the debate if she had no intention of, oh I don't know, actually debating.

Speaking of the moderator, I had been hearing in the news for several days that people were saying that she was going to be biased. Actually what I heard was that the moderator was publishing a book, and that somehow made them biased. When we were discussing it last night the fact that it was a book about the history of black politicians came up. I said I didn't see what that had to do with anything as far as the debate was concerned and asked which candidate she was supposedly biased towards, never making the connection that because the moderator was black and writing a book about the history of black politicians that she would be biased towards Obama. Silly me, I guess I was still confused from all these women, especially the ones from the democratic party, who are going on and on about wanting to see Palin do a good job and not make an embarrassment of herself because she is a woman, and apparently that will somehow reflect negatively on all of womankind. Where the hell does this logic come from?

I think saying that you want to see someone not make a fool of themself because they are a woman is sexist. It's the worst kind of sexism to me, the kind espoused by women. If you want equality you have to be willing to fail as big as the guys in the other group. Did anybody say, "gee, I hope Biden does well because he's a man on one of the biggest political stages in the world, and if he does that's good for men everywhere"? No, nobody said that because it's crazy talk. And pulling your punches because of a person's gender is as bad as attacking someone because of their gender. It's patronizing and undermines our equality.

Palin's success, or lack there of, should reflect on herself and her party, and probably her candidate (after all, he picked her out), but it shouldn't reflect on her gender. I don't think we should look at her as a stupid woman, we should look at her as a stupid person. I guess that's my point here: we have to stop lumping people together in these groups and take each person individually. To steal a line from George Carlin, women "...are like any other group of people: few winners, whole lot of losers."

And if I've missed these people's point, and it wasn't about her performance reflecting on all womankind, but rather just female politicians well, that's bullshit on a stick too. Take each person individually. You are going to have great female politicans (there are plenty all over the world) and you are going to have ones that are the laughingstocks, same as every other type of group you can divide people into. That's the reality folks.