The Geezer's Temperamental Journey

Navy Commander (ret.) Phillip Butler is a one-man Swift Boat. Commander Butler will not vote for The Geezer for reasons stated as well as unstated. It is the belief of this blog that The Geezer was shot down over North Vietnam because (McNasty-style) he disobeyed his flight orders and flew at lower altitude than his orders specified. McCain survived the SAM hit, but The Geezer's wingman, who accompanied him to that lower altitude, did not survive. This is the unspoken reason why Phillip Butler will not vote for his fellow Naval Academy classmate and fellow POW, John S. McCain III. Instead of John the Third, The Geezer really is John the Turd. Forget the cheap imitation of "Northern Exposure" that passes for the trials and tribulations of The Mighty Quinnette. None of that matters at the end of the day. The real verdict on McNasty (as he was known at the Naval Academy) is provided by Commander Butler. If this is (fair & balanced) truth to power, so be it.

[x Brave New Films]
The Real John McCain
By Robert Greenwald

[Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merit medals, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals. After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Commander (ret.) Butler is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.]

Copyright © 2008 Brave New Films

Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.

Holy Bat Guano! Independence & Secessionist Movements: Alaska—The Tip O'The Iceberg?

We have a house divided in a number of states. A Google-search of "U.S. independence and secessionist movements" produced an incredible list of such groups in state after state. Here in Texas, we experienced a moment with the secessionist movement in the 1990s. A wacko, named Richard L. McLaren, is serving 99 years for crimes ranging from kidnapping to fraud while he proclaimed himself leader of the Republic of Texas movement. The last states to join the Union, Hawai'i (August 1959) and Alaska (January 1959), both have active secessionist movements. The Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement wants to restore the monarchy that was overthrown in 1893. The Alaskan Independence Party traces its origins to 1973 when its organizer, Joe Vogler (1913-1993), proclaimed: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." All of these independence and secessionist groups have ties to the militia movement and the militia movement has ties to white supremacist movements. The Mighty Quinnette has strong ties to the Alaskan Independence Party. Is she an Alaskan or an American? That ought to be Question 1 during the VP debate later this fall. Then, Question 2 would ask The Mighty Q if she is a white supremacist. All of this is more germane to the survival of the land of the Free and the Home of the Brave than The Mighty Quinnette's messy domestic problems. If this is a (fair & balanced) accusation of treason, so be it.

[x ABC News Blog: Political Punch]
Members of 'Fringe' Alaskan Independence Party Say Palin Was a Member in 90s; McCain Camp Denies Charge
By Jake Tapper

The campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., likes to herald the independence of its new running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

And while McCain's motto — as seen in a new TV ad — is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite — "Alaska First — Alaska Always."

After refraining from commenting on the charge for a day, the McCain campaign on Tuesday asserted that Palin was never a member of the AIP.

But Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, tells ABC News that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time.

"We are a state's rights party," says Clark, a self-employed goldminer. The AIP has "a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law."

She says it's not accurate to describe the party as secessionist — they just want a vote, she says, adding that the members of the AIP hold different opinions on what Alaska should be.

"My own separate opinion as an individual is that we should be an independent nation," Clark says. Others in the AIP "believe that being a commonwealth would be a good avenue to follow." Some advocate statehood — but a fuller statehood than exists now.

She doesn't know what Palin's position was.

"It never came up in conversation," Clark recalls. "But when she joined the party, our platform was right under her nose." Clark says that Palin left the party and became a Republican in 1996, when she first ran for mayor of Wasilla.

Earlier this year, Palin sent a video message to the AIP for its annual convention, where AIP vice chair George Clark told the small crowd that Palin "was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town — that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along — she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that. She also had about an 80 percent approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership."

A day after ABC News requested a response from Palin as to whether she was ever a member of the AIP, McCain campain spox Brian Rogers told ABC News that Clark's "allegations are false."

"Governor Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982," Rogers says, providing some voter registration documentation showing her to be a Republican. "As you know, if she changed her registration, there would have been some record of it. There isn’t."

Rogers says the McCain campaign provided ABC News with all the voter registration information that exists. Rogers says that Palin didn’t attend the AIP convention in 1994, "but she visited them when they had their convention in Wasilla in 2000 as a courtesy since she was mayor."

He would not comment as to why AIP officials are so convinced Palin was a member of their party. When asked if Palin ever identified herself as a member of the AIP, Rogers said, "No, she's a lifelong Republican."

The AIP platform states that the purpose of the party is to "seek the complete repatriation of the public lands, held by the federal government, to the state and people of Alaska in conformance with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the federal constitution
...
To prohibit all bureaucratic regulations and judicial rulings purporting to have the effect of law, except that which shall be approved by the elected legislature ... To support the privatization of government services ...”

Walter Hickel, a former Republican governor, was elected to the governorship in 1990 as an AIP member — the third-largest party in Alaska — with a plurality vote of 38.8%. A Seattle Post-Intelligencer story that year said that "Hickel is running with the Alaska Independence Party, a fringe group advocating that the 49th state declare itself a sovereign nation. But he's not a separatist; he's an opportunist: the Independence Party was the only 11th-hour ticket to the general election."

Hickel returned to the Republican Party in 1994; he endorsed Palin in her gubernatorial run in 2006. Subsequent AIP gubernatorial candidates did not fare as well as did Hickel, garnering less than 2 percent of the vote.

Lynette Clark says that Palin is "a fine individual. She's forthright and she puts Alaska first."

She is not a fan of McCain.

"I can't understand why in God's name she has aligned herself with a candidate who opposes the development of our republic and Alaska's resource wealth," Clark says.

[Jake Tapper has been ABC News' senior national correspondent since May 2006. Tapper graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in history modified by visual studies (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa). He briefly attended graduate school at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television. Tapper is the author of Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency, a look at the Florida recount and Body Slam: The Jesse Ventura Story.]

Copyright © 2008 ABCNews Internet Ventures

Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.

The Newest Target In The Mommy Wars: The Mighty Quinnette

The Geezer's VP choice, The Mighty Quinnette, presents the Dumbos (and PUMAs) with a conundrum. The Mighty Quinnette is going to take a lot of heat for her bat guano background on the secession of Alaska, earmarks for her hometown of Wasilla, Troopergate, and her ability to govern the 49th state. The Geezer picked a go-go girl with a LOT of baggage. If this is a (fair & balanced) case of chickens coming home to roost, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
A New Twist in the Long-Running Debate on Mothers
By Jodi Kantor and Rachel L. Swarns

When Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska was introduced as a vice-presidential pick, she was presented as a magnet for female voters, the epitome of everymom appeal.

But since then, as mothers across the country supervise the season’s final water fights and pack book bags, some have voiced the kind of doubts that few male pundits have dared raise on television. With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as the country learned Monday, a pregnant 17-year-old, Ms. Palin has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try.

It’s the Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition. But this time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending her, while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much.

“How is this really going to work?” said Karen Shopoff Rooff, an independent voter, personal trainer and mother of two in Austin, Tex. “I don’t care whether she’s the mother or the father; it’s a lot to handle,” she said, adding that Ms. Palin’s lack of national experience would only make her road more difficult.

“When I first heard about Palin, I was impressed,” said Pamela Moore, a mother of two from Birmingham, Ala. But upon reading that Ms. Palin’s special-needs child was three days old when she went back to work, Ms. Moore began questioning the governor’s judgment. Partly as a result, she plans to vote for Senator Barack Obama.

But Lori Viars, a mother of two and evangelical Christian from Lebanon, Ohio, cheered the candidacy as well as the decision of both Palin women to keep their babies. “The whole family is pro-life, and they put that into practice even when it’s not easy,” Ms. Viars said.

Ms. Palin was selected by Senator John McCain in part to draw female voters, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro did before her. But Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Ferraro ran for president and vice president when their children were grown, meaning they were survivors of — not combatants in — the bitter debates over whether and how to combine work with motherhood.

Mrs. Clinton’s recent candidacy was a moment of reckoning for women of her generation, who treated her run as a mirror in which to examine their own lives. With Ms. Palin’s entry into the field, a younger generation of women have picked up that mirror, using her candidacy to address the question of just how demanding a job a mother with such intense family obligations should tackle.

Within minutes of Friday’s announcement that Ms. Palin was joining the Republican ticket, women across the country started flooding blogs devoted to motherhood issues. Administrators of one Web site, D.C. Urban Moms, said they had received hundreds of postings, more than on any other political issue this year. All throughout the holiday weekend, at scrapbooking sessions, on hikes and at barbecues, women talked over the candidacy and the issues it raised.

In interviews, many women, citing their own difficulties with less demanding jobs, said it would be impossible for Ms. Palin to succeed both at motherhood and in the nation’s second-highest elected position at once.

“You can juggle a BlackBerry and a breast pump in a lot of jobs, but not in the vice presidency,” said Christina Henry de Tessan, a mother of two in Portland, Ore., who supports Mr. Obama.

Her thoughts were echoed by some Republicans, including Anne Faircloth, daughter of former Senator Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina. Being a governor is one thing, Ms. Faircloth said, and Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, seems like a supportive spouse. “But running for the second-highest office in the land is a very different kettle of fish,” she said.

Many women expressed incredulity — some of it polite, some angry — that Ms. Palin would pursue the vice presidency given her younger son’s age and condition. Infants with Down syndrome often need special care in the first years of life: extra tests, physical therapy, even surgery.

Sarah Robertson, a mother of four from Kennebunk, Me., who was one of the few evangelical Christians interviewed to criticize Ms. Palin, said: “A mother of a 4-month-old infant with Down syndrome taking up full-time campaigning? Not my value set.”

One detail of Ms. Palin’s biography jumped out to many mothers, becoming a subject of instant fixation. “She went back to work as governor of Alaska three days after giving birth,” a poster named cafemama marveled on another blog, urbanmamas.com.

And upon hearing Monday that Ms. Palin had known of the pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, before accepting the vice-presidential slot, some wondered why she had not bypassed the offer in order to spare her daughter the scrutiny.

Many of the worriers talked about the effect of Ms. Palin’s candidacy not only on her children and the country but also on their own careers. Since she is relatively inexperienced, they feared campaign stumbles that could hold consequences for other working mothers.

“There’s nervousness among working moms of both parties that how she does in this race will reflect on the overall ability of working moms,” said Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour magazine and a mother of two, who said she was trading phone calls with friends on the topic.

Ms. Leive cited the cautionary tale of Jane Swift, a Republican who gave birth to twin girls in 2001 while acting governor of Massachusetts and then, her popularity ratings low in part because of her prior use of aides as baby sitters, dropped out of the 2002 primary race for election in her own right. Later she attributed her struggles to the difficulties of balancing work and family.

“I know now that it was virtually impossible for me to take advice and make decisions when I was responding emotionally as a mother, not thinking rationally as a public official,” she wrote in an essay in Boston magazine.

Ms. Palin’s defenders included mothers of all ideological shapes and sizes, from McCain voters to Obama voters, from mothers excited to see someone like them in the race to those who questioned whether a male candidate would be subject to similar scrutiny. But she received particular praise from religious conservatives, who voiced near-uniform confidence that her large and growing brood would enhance, not detract from, her performance as vice president.

“It changes your life and gives you a different perspective on the world,” said Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative organizer who helped defeat the equal rights amendment nearly three decades ago.

“People who don’t have children or who have only one or two are kind of overwhelmed at the notion of five children,” Ms. Schlafly continued, mentioning that she had raised six children and run for Congress as well. “I think a hard-working, well-organized C.E.O. type can handle it very well.”

For decades the anti-abortion movement has brought together a broad alliance of conservatives concerned about both the moral value of a fetus and traditional gender roles. Ms. Palin rejects both abortion and stay-at-home motherhood, and most conservatives have praised her choices. The news that she would be a grandmother only enhanced their enthusiasm, with many describing themselves as thrilled to see so prominent a display of pro-life commitment.

At a reception for educators at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Sandra Ross, a special-needs high school teacher from Orlando, Fla, said, “She’s going to be a good role model for the country.” Of Bristol’s pregnancy, Ms. Ross added, “Everybody makes mistakes.”

In all of Washington, there is perhaps one person whose life most resembles the one that Ms. Palin is pursuing: Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington and mother of an infant son with Down syndrome. Ms. Rodgers cheered Ms. Palin’s entry into the race, saying it would draw attention to the policy needs of children and families.

But Ms. Rodgers acknowledges that on some days, like the one when she had to run to the Capitol for a vote without taking a shower first, she wonders if she is doing the right thing. She feels then like many working mothers: caught between her job and “wanting to be the best mom and best wife you can possibly be.”

“You’re torn,” she said, sounding perfectly matter-of-fact.

[Jodi Kantor writes for The New York Times on cultural phenomena and politics, among other topics. Kantor graduated from Columbia University in 1996 and briefly attended Harvard Law School before landing a job as an editor of Slate. After corresponding with New York Times columnist Frank Rich about how that paper could improve its arts coverage, she was brought on as editor of the Arts and Leisure section by Howell Raines, executive editor. It was a watershed moment in journalism, as she had begun her career online, and was only 27 at the time (her predecessor, John Rockwell, had been in his late 50's when appointed to the post). As arts editor, Kantor worked to make the Times' arts coverage more aggressive, expanding its focus to cover the stories behind, and the social conditions surrounding, the arts. She also made coverage more contemporary, focusing on new art forms. Her role as editor occasionally controversial, however; while some charged that she hired many writers with limited experience in traditional journalism, and assigned pieces on trivial pop culture subjects, others believed she helped the paper connect with audiences. Kantor eventually stepped down from her editorship to pursue reporting once more.

Rachel L. Swarns became a Washington correspondent for The New York Times in March 2003. Previously she had been the chief of The Times bureau in Johannesburg since September 1999. She served on the metro desk covering social services, including welfare reform and foster care in New York City since February 1997. Before joining The Times, Ms. Swarns was a reporter at The Miami Herald from 1991 until 1995 covering immigration, housing, federal courts and general assignment. Before that she was with The St. Petersburg Times from 1989 until 1991 covering criminal courts. Swarns received a B.A. degree in Spanish, graduating (Summa Cum Laude) and Phi Beta Kappa, from Howard University and an M.A. degree (with distinction) in International Relations from the University of Kent.

David D. Kirkpatrick (formerly a contributing editor at New York magazine for business and finance) and Christina Capecchi (an award-winning freelance writer from St. Paul, Minnesota who earned her master's degree at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism) contributed reporting from St. Paul.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.

Bringing Up Baby: The Geezer Picks A Winner! (Or, A Whiner?)

Say what you will about The Mighty Quinnette's family problems and there are a lot of skeletons rattling in her closet, the real problem is The Geezer's judgment in placing a woman with all of the problems and skeletons in the white, hot light of the 2008 campaign as the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States. The Mighty Quinnette has her plate full back home in the Great White North. The Geezer's cynical pitch at the PUMAs who will vote for him because of the "betrayal" of The Hillster betrays his lack of commitment to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. The Geezer has forsaken his country to place a bat guano woman a heartbeat away from the presidency. The Mighty Quinnette is anti-science, pro-gun, and product of Alaskan fringe politics. Just stop and think about a reversal of these circumstances. Let's pretend that The Hopester's elder daughter was 17, rather than 10, and pregnant. What would the Righties do? Limbaugh, Hannity, the Malkin, and Coulter would be baying at the moon with indignation and outrage. Or, they would snigger and make racist and sexist jokes in the Dumbo tradition of Earl Butz and The Geezer. Finally, Rebecca Traister gets right to the heart of The Geezer's choice of The Mighty Quinnette. If this is a (fair & balanced) case of strange bedfellows, so be it.

[x Salon]
Broadsheet: Palin, Pregnancy, And The Presidency
By Rebecca Traister

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin waves in front of her daughter Bristol and son Trig at a campaign event in Dayton, Ohio, Friday. (Reuters/Matt Sullivan)














News today that Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter Bristol is "about five months" pregnant means that it only took 48 hours after the announcement that the second woman in American history was joining a presidential ticket for her nomination to devolve into a sudsy soap-operatic scandal.

Some surely think it's great news that the Republicans may be about to hang by their own family-values noose; others may deem the whole thing tawdry and so unrelated to the issues that it should be off limits. Megan Carpentier at Jezebel is justifiably horrified by the Schadenfreude-laced glee expressed by her peers in the media, while Ann Friedman at Feministing writes smartly about the hypocrisy of the McCain camp's role in the situation.

Me, I'm just hanging my head about the sorry set of events that led us to be having this conversation this year about a candidate, who, no matter how repugnant her political beliefs, is a history maker who will forever be known as the second woman ever on an American presidential ticket. After a year in which Geraldine Ferraro's historical stock (never sky-high to begin after mini-scandals about her husband and son) plummeted thanks to her often unhelpful involvement in the Clinton campaign, this election cycle could turn from one that was electrifying and energizing for women into one that situates their political prospects firmly back in the feminized territory of sex scandals, babies and mothering.

How we got from the dispiriting political and ideological record of Sarah Palin — that she is adamantly pro-life and anti-gay marriage, that she is a lifetime member of the NRA, that she has no foreign policy experience and supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in schools — to the uterine activity of her family, makes perfect, human sense: Who wants to talk about boring policy when we can talk about teens and sex and pregnancy?

Of course, there are indeed some very real, very serious issues raised by the revelation of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, which Palin and the McCain camp made public today in response to rampant Internet rumors that Palin had faked her pregnancy with infant Trig to cover up an earlier Bristol gestation period. (Study questions: Why, in refuting those original rumors, did Palin present as evidence the news that her daughter was pregnant, rather than simply handing over hospital documents and a birth certificate for Trig? Answer: It's a mystery! Why did she get on a long plane ride to Alaska after her water broke a month early in Texas? Answer: It's a mystery! Why was her staff surprised to learn that the governor was pregnant one month before she gave birth? Answer: It's a mystery!)

But no matter. The first, and most serious issue raised by today's official story is that the language used in the public statement about Bristol is at odds with the McCain-Palin line on reproductive rights. According to the New York Times story, "Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said." That's just peachy in its presumption that Bristol had a choice about whether or not to continue her pregnancy. It's true that in 2008, she certainly does have a legal choice. But she wouldn't under the proposed administration of her mother and John McCain, both of whom oppose abortion rights and tell us they would work to overturn Roe. Palin is a member of Feminists for Life, and once called herself, during her failed 2002 run for Alaska's lieutenant governor, as "pro-life as any candidate can be." To celebrate the decision-making freedoms of her daughter was an irrational, unproductive choice.

It's a logic loophole through which McCain himself has traveled in the past. As Kate Sheppard has reported in In These Times, McCain, who supports the overturning of Roe v. Wade, said during his 2000 run for president that if his daughter got pregnant, "The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel." When reporters pointed out to him that he had just described a pro-choice situation, McCain replied, "I don't think it is the pro-choice position to say that my daughter and my wife and I will discuss something that is a family matter that we have to decide." Yes. It is the pro-choice position, or at least part of it. So McCain has already been caught in the same goof made today.

The Bristol baby is also likely to get McCain all wound up in talk of his support for abstinence-only education. The Arizona senator has a record of voting against programs that use federal money to distribute condoms; he has voted against federal funding for programs that teach medically accurate, comprehensive sex education; and he has voted down programs that would make birth control more widely available. In March 2007, he stumbled when asked about his position on contraception in HIV prevention, asking an aid to "find out what my position is on contraception — I'm sure I'm opposed to government spending on it, I'm sure I support the president's policies on it."

As for Palin's stand on abstinence-only education, it's not great, but she hasn't been a particularly disruptive advocate of Alaska's sex-ed programs, which says something (a very little something) about her lack of enthusiasm for abstinence-only programs during George Bush's eight year roll-back of reproductive rights and his worldwide propagation of abstinence-only reprogramming. Based on early reporting, Palin has only once weighed in on the topic. When asked a confusingly worded question about whether she would "support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools," she replied, "Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support." She is a member of Feminists for Life, an anti-choice group that does not take a prohibitive stand on birth control.

For the right, the story of Palin's daughter's pregnancy will also become fodder to move their ball along. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has already hopped into the conversation with this helpful statement, that teen pregnancy "is problem that we remain committed to reducing through encouraging young people to practice abstinence." Perkins also congratulated Bristol on "following her mother and father's example of choosing life in the midst of a difficult situation."

It's certainly tempting to fall into the trap of attacking back, of making Bristol Palin and her boyfriend and her fetus the football we kick around for the next two months, four years, or however long Palin survives on the Republican ticket.

But how far can that take us? The news that many politicians are hypocrites should not blow many minds. This rhetorical game — asking politicians who make the laws to apply them to themselves or their own kin — is an old American favorite. It happens when Michael Moore accosts congresspeople on the street asking why their kids aren't in the Iraq war they voted for; it happens when Michael Dukakis is asked in a debate how he would respond if his own wife were raped; it even happens when Barack Obama talks about getting the rest of the country the same kind of healthcare packages he and his fellow members of Congress have given themselves.

It's a strategy that can be useful, like when it comes to healthcare arguments. But when applied to personal turmoil, the unearthing of stuff that few families could survive unscathed, it becomes more troubling. It is a game that ignores the fact that there's a real person, a real family, a real kid about to have another real kid, all of whom are being used as political punching bags. When it suits us, we bypass the fact that many of us believe that what happens within the families and bedrooms of our politicians — while diverting, even titillating — shouldn't cloud our perceptions of how they do their jobs. It's what we believed when Clinton was witch-hunted out of his second term, when we talk about Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy, when we fete Ted Kennedy.

And while his campaign may or may not be hooting and hollering about this story line in private, in public, Barack Obama drew a very firm line on the Palin revelation, noting that if anyone in his campaign was pushing the story forward they would be fired. Bristol Palin's pregnancy, Obama said, "has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president." He also pointed out that his own mother had been 18 when she gave birth to him. "How family deals with issues and teen-age children — that shouldn't be the topic of our politics," Obama said.

The issue here isn't why Sarah Palin's daughter got pregnant or is choosing to stay pregnant, though the narrative (and gotcha) appeals of both plotlines are evident. It's why the hell John McCain, in his attempt to pick a chick to woo Democratic woman, picked one who had a family drama that he reportedly knew about. If he understands the first thing about the American people and their thirst for scandal, he must have realized it would be all anyone could talk about.

Why, when he had women like Kay Bailey Hutchison, Liddy Dole, Condoleezza Rice, Christine Todd Whitman or Meg Whitman to choose from did he select a running mate with a pre-made family drama for voters and the media to latch onto?

Women — the same women who may or may not have supported Hillary, and who are applauding McCain's supposedly go-girl choice of Palin as his veep — should be furious at the Republican nominee for ensuring that the history-making woman he tapped will be considered not on her intellectual or political merits, but on her reproductive ones.

In his callous, superficial and ill-judged attempt to woo women voters with the presence of mammary glands on his ticket — hot, young ones to boot — McCain has committed a sickening grievance against both voters and those female politicians whom he purports to respect and support. What a failure by McCain to have this woman — with her pregnancies and progeny and sex life and child-rearing prowess now being inspected instead of her policy and voting history — stand in for, and someday, possibly emblemize the political progress of American women, especially at a moment at which women had, temporarily it seems, risen far enough above our gestational capabilities to be taken seriously in the race for the White House.

[Rebecca Traister is a senior writer for Salon, where she covers women in media, politics and entertainment. Traister also has written for The New York Observer, Elle, Vogue, New York magazine, and The New York Times. Traister is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.]

Salon Media Group, Inc.

Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.