Palin-induced rabies

What has been striking to me in the past couple of weeks is how the nomination of Sarah Palin to being McCain's running mate has driven some liberals absolutely nuts. I'm not talking just about those lurking at Democratic Underground or Daily Kos, but professional writers and analysts have just gone round the bend and they're not embarrassed to put their hatred out there for all to see. They just can't seem to be able to get over that she comes from a small town, has five children, hunts, and doesn't seem embarrassed about all this, but rather seems proud. And the fact that many Americans have responded to her positively is just making her critics even more ferociously angry.

Most recently, we saw one award-winning Canadian writer, Heather Mallick, unleash her hatred of America and Palin in this column.

She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

Juan Cole of Salon compares her to a Muslim fundamentalist. In a blog post that has since been taken down, movie critic Roger Ebert wrote,

Palin is a shallow, chirpy person with those vaguely alarming eyeglasses. Now her fans all want a pair. Remember back when women wore glasses that departed their ears in plastic swoops and swirls? My theory is, anyone who wears glasses that look weird is telling me something I don’t want to know.

In his newspaper column he expresses his contempt for any adult American who never traveled to Europe.

And how can a politician her age have never have gone to Europe? My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe. I had Arthur Frommer's $5 a Day under my arm, started in London, even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later, I was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.

You don't need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country once, on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin's travel record is that of a provincial, not someone who is equipped to deal with global issues.

The chairwoman of the South Carolina Democratic Party had to give a grudging apology to anyone who might have been offended by her crack, that the primary reason John McCain chose a woman "whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

A U.S. Congressman took to the House floor to repeat the silly saying that has been ricocheting around the internet since it was first posted on Daily Kos in response to the Republicans ridiculing the idea that being a community organizer was preparation for being president: "Jesus Christ was a community Organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor." Cute way to depress accusations that Obama and his followers see him as a new Messiah.

Wendy Doniger, a professor of religion at the University of Chicago, takes to the Newsweek site to tell us how much she despises Sarah Palin.

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.

She has triggered the type of hatred it took George W. Bush years to engender. It's only going to get worse. Can you imagine how angry Obama supporters will be if he should actually lose? The post-2000 election anger will be nothing compared to what will face McCain and Palin if they should win in November. We'll be told about how racist America is because it had the temerity not to vote for the first African-American candidate on a major party ticket. And what if, as seems quite possible, McCain wins the Electoral College vote and Obama wins the popular vote? The vitriol that will be unleashed will be something mighty depressing to observe. That's why I am skeptical of any promises that McCain is making about changing Washington. The environment there will be just too ugly for anything productive to get done.

Why do they hate her so much? Because she, undeserving hick that she is, may actually have provided the necessary excitement to defeat their guy, Barack Obama. And that they just can't forgive. And so, like rabid dogs, they go on the attack and they don't care what deranged things they say.