Blogging and Me

I recently told a friend about my blog and after he had a look, he was like, "It would be nice if you wrote about something other than Sarah Palin all the time."

There are definitely other things in my life that are more important than Mrs. (failed VP candidate and former half-term Alaskan Governor) Palin. First comes my family, but details about them are strictly personal and I will never expose that part of my life to an Internet audience. Then there's my job, but that's not something I can blog about either, and still keep said job. Let's just say that what happens at work stays at work. Then there are my diversions: one is my long-standing participation in online role-playing games. I could blog about that, but it is a world apart from politics and would seem incongruous here at H&HT to talk about how one of my World of Warcraft characters happened across the Time-Lost Proto Drake and got the high-speed mount item that mob dropped. Equally incongruous would be a warning I'd like to issue about the ripoff that is Evony, or my background in coding for and administering MUDs. That would require a new blog title and a great deal of effort and I hardly have time for this blog as it is!

Another is gardening, and I've been known to insert a few pictures of cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and other produce from the lovely raised beds in my back yard.

But my other main diversion (or call it passion) is politics. Well, not exactly politics, but hypocritical people who are politicians or who are in public view, people who seem to capture attention and imagination and have an apparent impact on our national dialogue. That's what H&HT is devoted to, and that's why Mrs. Palin figures so heavily into the content here. She's not the only one who needs calling out. But she's the one that touches home with me because she is constantly "out there," thanks to someone who wants to keep her in the public eye. She's the one who is the biggest hypocrite of all, based on what I know about her. She's all over TV, the Internet, magazines, radio, and every sort of media out there. Her indiscretions are never-ending. Her lies are incessant. Her chutzpah is without parallel. Her phoniness is without par. And yet she keeps playing the victim while flaunting her ignorance and disparaging anyone who doesn't buy her schtick.

An aspect of Mrs. Palin's story that particularly grates on me is the lie that she "chose life" in order to give birth to Trig Palin. Her history as a Mayor of a town of about 6,000 pales in comparison. Nobody even mentions the consolation prize she won after her failed run for Lieutenant Governor, a position on the Oil and Gas Commission. And after she quit as Governor well before finishing even one term, she hangs her hat almost entirely on the fact that she is a mother (so?) and specially, a mother of a child with Down syndrome. In the absence of Trig, she'd still be in Alaska and out of the public eye. In the absence of Trig, she'd never have become McCain's chosen one. In the absence of Trig, even if McCain had picked her anyway, her star would have faded by December 2008.

Instead, you can find stories and videos and transcripts of her trademark "word salad" speech nearly every day in countless media outlets. But the Trig story is a lie, and so far she's gotten away with it. I know it, she knows it, and a good number of other people know it too. Mrs. Palin is giving women everywhere a bad name. That's what bugs me and as a woman, that is why I will point out her hypocrisies on H&HT as long as she keeps providing the ammunition. She is, as far as I'm concerned, the biggest hypocrite on the public scene today and therefore, a worthy target of most of my blog posts.