Country first? Try women and children first.
It's hard to imagine a better definition of sexism, and dishonor, than a man under attack grabbing a woman to hold in front of him. (Doesn't have to be a man, doesn't have to be a woman, roles could be switched, they could even be grabbing a child, like in the movie The Dead Zone (pictured to the left) but you get the idea.) But that's exactly what John McCain has done with Sarah Palin over the past two weeks - John McCain has found his human shield, and her name is Sarah.
Take a look at the video of Obama yesterday making the "lipstick on a pig" reference. Obama wasn't talking about Palin - Palin wasn't even mentioned. Obama was clearly talking about John McCain. And John McCain got so angry that he grabbed the first woman he could find and held her in front of him so she could take the blows. And that woman's name is Sarah Palin. Here's the video of Obama, watch it, it's only 45 seconds long - the target was clearly McCain, and McCain knows it, and it really set off his temper:
McCain may be old and in somewhat precarious health, but he's not senile. He knows what he's doing. Following the Democratic convention, McCain was worried that Obama's rock-star status, and McCain's own now-frail appearance, would show him up at his own convention and beyond. So McCain decided that the best way to defend himself was to use Sarah Palin - and I mean "use" - to change the subject.
Remember, it was McCain who leaked news of Palin's daughter's pregnancy to Reuters. It was McCain who approved of Palin lying about earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere the first day he introduced her to the public. It is McCain who then had Palin lie about those issues each and every day since. It is McCain who has suddenly become such a sensitive Alan-Alda type of guy that he now sees sexism around every corner (except when he himself berates small girls, grown women, and even his own wife).
NBC analyst Chuck Todd just had this to say about McCain's use of Palin:
"John McCain has now put his entire campaign on Sarah Palin's shoulders... He doesn't get crowds without her. She was already supposed to be in Alaska getting ready to send her son off to war, getting sort of her house in order to start campaigning solo. Now there's a lot of question: Does McCain even bother campaigning solo, or are they campaigning in a tandem because they can get the real crowds... McCain-Palin events look like Obama events a month ago."Sarah Palin is simply one more excuse for John McCain not to have to face the press, not to have to explain why he voted with Bush 90% of the time, not to explain why, whenever faced with a difficult question about current events or his own actions, he resorts to shutting down all questioning by reminding us, again and again, that he was a POW 40 years ago. John McCain can no longer take the heat, so he's gotten a woman - grabbed a woman - to do it for him.
