Palin the Pathetic - Part I

For those of you are at least of average intelligence -- male or female -- despite your political leanings in one direction or another -- surely you must be as embarrassed as I about having this woman take the stage in a major political arena. She has energized the Republican Party. She is fresh. She is new. She's a hockey mom. What is the big deal with that? She is ill-read -- ill-informed -- in no way articulate -- an airhead. Okay -- each of those is a really big deal.

In my earlier years I worked with women like Palin. They had the look. The packaging was okay, but the product sucked. (You know how it is when you buy a hugh bag of potato chips and it's only a quarter full -- and there's a little message on the back of the bag: THIS PRODUCT IS SOLD BY WEIGHT, NOT BY VOLUME.)

When I was a purchasing agent in the late 1970s I requested a "temp" to help me overhaul what was supposed to be my files, which I inherited, of course, from some inept Palin-looking person. Who did they send me? Another Palin lookalike. The next day she did not show up, nor did she phone in. When I called the agency and expressed my disappointment, after an empty apology I was told that they had someone else but she was definitely "backroom" material. I asked: Can she type? Can she file? Does she speaking English? The answers: yes, yes, and yes. Well send her! The woman who came was not a Palin cutout; instead she was a plain-looking, middle-aged Asian, who followed my instructions precisely and left me with a set of organized files that brought me a added dimension of efficiency.


So what? Can you imagine the thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of woman and men -- who are denied opportunities for which they are well qualified -- because they are considered backroom material -- while the Palins of the world -- inept, unintelligent, inarticulate though they are -- get to be not just mayor of a tiny town, but governor of a state. And stupidly, rather than surround herself with folks who are intelligent, articulate, competent and capable of doing a job -- hands out perky positions to her high school buddies?



And folks wonder why I am supporting Mr. Obama.