Palin Comparison

So I watched most of the thing last night. Credit where due; she erased forever any doubts about whether she possesses the skills necessary to read a speech off a teleprompter. At one point she compared her hockey-mom persona to a pit bull, which I take to mean that hockey moms are feisty and scrappy. But it could also be meant to suggest that Palin equals the pit bull's command of policy and capacity for analytic thinking—it's as apt a comparison either way.

Frankly, the whole thing is kind of depressing. The sneering and mockery and outrageous lying and general unseriousness of it all. A passage from Michael Herr's Dispatches comes to mind: Some Marines in Vietnam are joking around, and one says, "What's the difference between the Marine Corps and the Boy Scouts?" And the punch line: "The Boy Scouts have adult leadership." I won't be labeled one way or another and I'm not going to tell anyone how to vote, but lately it seems to me that the Democratic candidates strike me as more interested in governing, in confronting the nation's problems in a serious. adult way. And not pandering to their own wingnuts. But like I said, the whole thing is depressing. Phooey!