I don’t think I’ve ever been so repulsed by the shameless liberal media as I am today, watching and reading the purely “hate-hate-hate-!!” rhetoric blaming Sarah Palin’s “targeting” of Gabrielle Giffords’ Arizona district for Saturday’s tragedy.
When a mentally unbalanced young person commits a violent act, it is nothing but a horrible tragedy. It is human nature to try to make sense of a senseless act, to try to place blame and make all the circumstances add up to some sort of false-security “solution” to block similar tragedies in the future. But none of that excuses those who indulge their human bent without restraint. Restraint in matters such as this is the function of reason.
Commentators, who have indulged in political finger-pointing in the aftermath of tragedy, using familial and national grief as a leftist revolutionary tool, ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
And just to set the rhetorical record straight, many conservative bloggers have already dug up the violence-laden political speech of many well-known liberals, including most famously, the president himself.
Howard Kurtz has a great column today on the Daily Beast, refuting most of the liberal commentators’ charges against Palin.
I have one bone to pick with Kurtz’ assertions, however. Kurtz labeled Palin’s use of the “crosshairs” political target map as both “unfortunate” and “dumb.”
It still amazes me that so-called enlightened people fail to see the obvious when it comes to the obstacles women actually do face in seeking powerful positions.
If Sarah Palin does intend to run for the presidency — ever — then she faces a built-in obstacle to her aspirations that no man faces. She must overcome deeply embedded psychic archetypes which tend to discount a woman’s ability to be firm and tough, especially in foreign policy and military matters. Our reluctance to trust a woman in the role of commander in chief is no small thing. And this reluctance is firmly positioned in the thinking of both men and women.
There is indeed a glass ceiling and nowhere is that ceiling thicker or more feminist bullet-proof than the presidency of the United States. The barrier to women as national leaders has been broken elsewhere, but elsewhere is not the United States — the world’s lone superpower.
Palin is no dummy. Not by a long shot. And she has political instincts that literally defy comparison to anyone in memory. Though none of her “mannish” hobbies and military/hunting jargon is fakery (Palin is the real deal), she has foisted this tough-woman image into every one of her political thrusts with pure aplomb. Is there anyone in any enemy country at the moment who does not dread a possible Palin presidency? I don’t think so.
No, Palin would have presidential photographs that more resembled Putin’s manly public persona. A President Palin would take photographers to the wilds of Alaska, where she would be photographed downing a ferocious grizzly, wearing lipstick and a pony tail, and never breaking a nail.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that foreign leaders continually size up their enemies. It doesn’t take a genius either to know who is getting the better of whom at this particular moment on the world stage. Obama has been sized up as a wimp. He can pull out thuggish-sounding rhetoric about kicking someone’s *ss or going into “hand-to-hand combat” with congressional Republicans all he wants, but everyone past the third grade sees through all that to the guy whose “empathy” outshines his genuine toughness in every arena.
No one would ever need to ask whether Palin was up to the task of getting tough with rogue regimes, terrorists, or treaty negotiations. At the very least, Palin has made it abundantly clear that she would never be photographed in flip-flops with a slurpee or all shriveled up and bony in an oversized Nike get-up or on a pansy bike in a helmet. Impressions count and Palin knows that full well. Nowhere do impressions count more than with enemies who would do us harm in a heartbeat whenever they feel emboldened by demonstrated weakness.
Being a beautiful woman, Palin also must deal with the long-held false belief that physical beauty belies intelligence. She is still working on that one and hasn’t been quite as successful in projecting her intelligence as she has been in touting her toughness. But she is still young and has plenty of time to rev up her brainy side.
As for all the purely shameless left-wing jabs at the Palin piñata in the wake of a horrible tragedy, this outrageous display ought to be enough to convince millions more Americans of the complete moral vacuity of the “progressive” community.
To the Giffords family and to the families of all the Arizona victims, let me personally add my sincerest sympathies. A nation holds all of you in our thoughts and prayers.
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