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Evangelical Christians and Sarah Palin – Excerpt from Peggy Noonan's Column (WSJ)
Peggy Noonan has some interesting thoughts on McCain's choice of running mate. Â It is certainly jumbling up categories – some liberals are making arguments that Palin should stay home with the kids while conservatives are making feminist arguments that if Palin was male, the media wouldn't be asking these questions. Â It has interesting implications in the culture war.
Here are some excerpts from Peggy Noonan's September 3, 2008 column in the Wall Street Journal –Â http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
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Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads. We know this and try to compensate for it by taking road trips through the continent — we're on one now, in Minneapolis — where we talk to normal people. But we soon forget the pithy, knowing thing the garage mechanic said in the diner, and anyway we weren't there long enough in the continent to KNOW, to absorb. We view through a prism of hyper-sophistication, and judge by the rules of Chevy Chase and Greenwich, of Cleveland Park and McLean, of Bronxville and Manhattan.
And again we know this, we know this is our limit, our lack.
But we also forget it.
And when you forget you're a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things. For one thing, you assume evangelical Christians will be appalled and left agitated by the circumstances of Mrs. Palin's daughter. But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who'd judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like. Religious conservatives know something's wrong with us, that man's a mess. They are not left dazed by the latest applications of this fact. "This just in – there's a lot of sinning going on out there" is not a headline they'd understand to be news.
So the media's going to wait for the Christian right to rise up and condemn Mrs. Palin, and they're not going to do it because it's not their way, and in any case her problems are their problems. Christians lived through the second half of the 20th century, and the first years of the 21st. They weren't immune from the culture, they just eventually broke from it, or came to hold themselves in some ways apart from it. I think the media will explain the lack of condemnation as "Republican loyalty" and "talking points." But that's not what it will be.
Another Bubblehead blind spot. I'm bumping into a lot of critics who do not buy the legitimacy of small town mayorship (Palin had two terms in Wasilla, Alaska, population 9,000 or so) and executive as opposed to legislative experience. But executives, even of small towns, run something. There are 262 cities in this country with a population of 100,000 or more. But there are close to a hundred thousand small towns with ten thousand people or less. "You do the math," the conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway told me. "We are a nation of Wasillas, not Chicagos."
Read the rest at  http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
8 Comments
Oh my… had this happened to the Clinton's daughter just think how outraged all these people would be!
The hypocrisy is so thick I just have to laugh!
Oh my… had this happened to the Clinton's daughter just think how outraged all these people would be!
The hypocrisy is so thick I just have to laugh!
You are so right, and even worse if Obama's daughters were older and it was one of them, the media, the republicans the country would be in an uproar, but because its one of their own, she is admired for keeping the child, NEWSFLASH, most minorities choose life over abortion almost 100% of the time, where is the praise for that.
You are so right, and even worse if Obama's daughters were older and it was one of them, the media, the republicans the country would be in an uproar, but because its one of their own, she is admired for keeping the child, NEWSFLASH, most minorities choose life over abortion almost 100% of the time, where is the praise for that.
First, I want to make clear, I am a liberal Democrat because of the principles of the party. Further, I would not be part of a party that brought us Nixon, Reagan (he was NOT a great president – remember the deal with the Iranians if he won that first election? He also killed the ERA., Iran-Contra, etc.), George H. Bush (the most do nothing president in recent history), and his son, the worst President in the history of our country, George W. Bush. The Republican party is the party of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales Jack Abramhoff, Tom DeLay, Kathleen Harris, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, and Jeff Gannon, etc., etc. Now we have Sarah Palin, the philosophical daughter of Phyllis Schlafly, played like a queen in a game of chess. However, if you come from the generation where The Art Of War and Machiavelli were required reading, this would make perfect sense. And for all those people who watched TBN for years and years she resonates because they are completely familiar with her style of delivery. She's a Sunday School teacher. However, Sarah Palin is a political disaster for a Democracy. We can speculate and extrapolate what she knows or appears to know by her belief systems. She believes the Iraq war is God's will. We all know there's bad things that happen that are not God's "Will". The Iraq war was George W. Bush's "Will". She sets the women's movement back at least 50 years. Her religious beliefs are based on faulty and primative theology. All personal accounts reveal a demanding and bossy woman who is not above bullying others to get her way, which is the exact same reputation McCain has. I cannot fathom how John McCain thought he could get along with her in the White House. It there are no problems between the two of them now, there will be soon. She's the kind of woman that if she can't take over, she'll be very unhappy. Nothing will get done. I'm writing in response to an article about Sarah Palin, but really, if you're happy with George W. Bush you'll love McCain, and it will be four more years of the same, or worse. Worst of all, he has betrayed the Veterans by taking the position that torture is acceptable. He'll end up bombing Iran, and the conflict in Georgia will escalate. How much more of this endless draining of American money and resources can America take? The next four years are about getting us out the Iraq occupation so that we can focus on our economy. The Republican party in its present form only knows how to increase prosperity through war profiteering and manipulating oil. It's time to take a good look in the mirror to check to see if it's personal prejudice that is directing who we support, or if it's an unbiased belief in what is ultimately best for America now, and America's future.
First, I want to make clear, I am a liberal Democrat because of the principles of the party. Further, I would not be part of a party that brought us Nixon, Reagan (he was NOT a great president – remember the deal with the Iranians if he won that first election? He also killed the ERA., Iran-Contra, etc.), George H. Bush (the most do nothing president in recent history), and his son, the worst President in the history of our country, George W. Bush. The Republican party is the party of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales Jack Abramhoff, Tom DeLay, Kathleen Harris, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, and Jeff Gannon, etc., etc. Now we have Sarah Palin, the philosophical daughter of Phyllis Schlafly, played like a queen in a game of chess. However, if you come from the generation where The Art Of War and Machiavelli were required reading, this would make perfect sense. And for all those people who watched TBN for years and years she resonates because they are completely familiar with her style of delivery. She's a Sunday School teacher. However, Sarah Palin is a political disaster for a Democracy. We can speculate and extrapolate what she knows or appears to know by her belief systems. She believes the Iraq war is God's will. We all know there's bad things that happen that are not God's "Will". The Iraq war was George W. Bush's "Will". She sets the women's movement back at least 50 years. Her religious beliefs are based on faulty and primative theology. All personal accounts reveal a demanding and bossy woman who is not above bullying others to get her way, which is the exact same reputation McCain has. I cannot fathom how John McCain thought he could get along with her in the White House. It there are no problems between the two of them now, there will be soon. She's the kind of woman that if she can't take over, she'll be very unhappy. Nothing will get done. I'm writing in response to an article about Sarah Palin, but really, if you're happy with George W. Bush you'll love McCain, and it will be four more years of the same, or worse. Worst of all, he has betrayed the Veterans by taking the position that torture is acceptable. He'll end up bombing Iran, and the conflict in Georgia will escalate. How much more of this endless draining of American money and resources can America take? The next four years are about getting us out the Iraq occupation so that we can focus on our economy. The Republican party in its present form only knows how to increase prosperity through war profiteering and manipulating oil. It's time to take a good look in the mirror to check to see if it's personal prejudice that is directing who we support, or if it's an unbiased belief in what is ultimately best for America now, and America's future.
Kellyann Conway said: "But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who’d judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like."
She has missed the point. And since she is most likely an evangelical or on the right, she would not understand why the progressives are all atwitter. It is not that they are at all judging. It is that we are astonished at the blatant hypocrisy. We have known that they are hypocritical but this is just so much chutzpah it takes your breath away!
Kellyann Conway said: "But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who’d judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like."
She has missed the point. And since she is most likely an evangelical or on the right, she would not understand why the progressives are all atwitter. It is not that they are at all judging. It is that we are astonished at the blatant hypocrisy. We have known that they are hypocritical but this is just so much chutzpah it takes your breath away!