How Many Trees Are There in St. Paul?

Hey Ryan,

Tonight, I'm sitting here, typing and suffering through the RNC broadcast. It's hard because I want to call it right down the middle. I want to give both parties a fair listen. But I'm finding it hard to do. Are you? Sometimes, I wish I could just take it in and realize that it's politics...it's the way the game is played. But I have a hard time with that because I worry about the country. I'm not just interested in winning or losing in a sporting sense, like a lot of those muffler heads on the convention floor. Because they and the lobbyists standing next to them can cheer and vote for the ONE issue they've actually studied all they want, but we're the ones who'll end up suffering for it.

To me, John McCain and Sarah Palin look like a ventriloquist act that has been prematurely shoved into the spotlight. And I can't tell who's the dummy. Their calls for change are hollow. Their claims of being mavericks who buck against corruption are, at best, empty, if not outright lies.

And you know what kills me? The media pundits just let it all pass. For all the media persecution the Republicans claim for Palin, the media's "analysis" of her speech is awfully kind, centering solely on delivery and NOT content. Even PBS, a channel that usually has both the most civil discussions and the most integrity of the news channels, didn't even touch the core ideas in her speech. Rather, the various "experts" talked about who her presentation was directed at, and whether she hit the right notes with the "hockey moms".

Hockey moms? Are those like the fabled "security moms" of 2004? And where have the "security moms" gone? Are they satisfied now that the surge is finally starting to work? And...is the surge actually working?

That's the thing with Republicans: they hide behind all these trees and never consider the forest. And just when you think you've found them, they run to another tree, and then another, and then another, until you get too tired to keep searching. They bank on that...the fact that, sooner or later, EVERYONE gets tired of looking...even people who get paid to look.

Last night and tonight, they went back to a few old trees and found a new one. Bush trotted out 9/11 in his beamed in message last night. And then, of course, Giuliani dropped his bombs tonight. Good ol' "Noun, Verb, 9/11" Rudy. I swear, that guy could work 9/11 into his grocery list. But they know that one's starting to fall apart. From all the books and information that has come out since that day, it's obvious that Bush's government (and the Republicans, in general) viewed that tragedy and those thousands of casualties as useful. In a sense, it seems as though they were kind of hoping this would be yet another pocket issue they could put away every year the morning after election day, only to pull it out again when the next election cycle comes around.

They do that with gay marriage and abortion and guns. They flash them around like tin foil, hoping that the voters won't notice other issues that they can't put a terribly positive spin on...like wiretapping or torture, not to mention the true intentions and execution of their war.

But, God love them, they came up with another issue this past weekend: sexism. After all of the sexist comments their shills had for Hillary Clinton, they finally found a way to use it. This is a party who has never seen a working woman it wanted to get equal wages for and it has the nerve to brand the criticism of Palin this past weekend sexist?

Sure, the question of whether she could adequately care for her kids and run for VP was blatantly sexist. There's no denying that. But, the pregnancy stories have a few more gray areas than the media and the candidates are willing to admit. While I don't want to know the details of her daughter's pregnancy, I do think that more people should be talking about the fact that Palin preaches an abstinence-only, education- and contraception-free approach to sex for teens, and yet, there is an example in her own family that points to the failure of such a policy. The first (and best) article I've seen about this is by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, and I hope more people follow her lead, especially the TV news media. I know that kind of nuance is hard for them to squeeze ratings out of, but maybe they'll start, I don't know, DOING their job.


Charles