Those Pesky Big Words

Question of the day: What is a "field dress"? People keep marveling over the fact that apparently, Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin can do something called a "field dress" to a moose. It sounds pretty awful, whatever it is (do they have to put on lipstick, too?), especially when there are so many hunting men and women who think it qualifies her as being "tough." The last time I checked, intestinal fortitude and true grit didn't require the ability to attack defenseless animals for sport.

If Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama is an elitist, with his Harvard education and his correct use of the English language, then Palin seems to be the anti-elitist, with her backwoods jargon that most normal people can't understand. I personally don't know and don't care what a "field dress" is. What I do find puzzling, though, is how someone who claims to be "pro-life," as Palin so adamantly does, can so zealously and callously go out and kill, kill, kill wild animals. No doubt, her supporters will point to the Bible and try to rationalize it from a literal perspective, saying that God put these animals on earth solely for our disposal. But you know something? God also gave us more evolved brains (Oops! Evolution is another Palin no-no. She thinks we were just dropped here) than other creatures so that we could reason out our actions. He also gave us feelings and compassion, so that we could look to our fellow inhabitants of this earth as real, breathing companions. Sure, we are omnivores and crave meat from time to time. But that doesn't mean we are to be indifferent to the dignity of other animals. Those who so embrace hunting as "sport" seem to lack sensitivity. Someone who can get an adrenaline rush from shooting at wolves from the air is just plain sick. Does Sarah Palin actually feed her family everything she kills? I hope so. That would make this information somewhat more palatable.

I'm really becoming tired of hearing from people who accuse the "liberal media" of being so "mean" to Sarah Palin. It's rather the opposite in my view. The media has been shockingly and inappropriately hands-off in their dealings with her. If she were a man, there would be no question that she would be taken to task for her qualifications to the Nth degree. Instead, we are all to treat her with kid gloves because she's a woman and it would be sexist to do otherwise. Well, I'm a woman and I want the gloves to be taken off. Enough is enough with the simpering and tip toeing. Where is the toughness I keep hearing about? Showing up on Charlie Gibson is nothing. How about a meeting with Keith Olbermann? How about allowing the press to ask some real questions on behalf of the American people? Doesn't it bother anybody that she had to be sequestered and tutored before her interview with Gibson? And if she doesn't want her family to be discussed, if she truly wants privacy for her pregnant teenaged daughter, then why did she trot them all out on stage at the Republican National Convention? Why did she announce to the world that her daughter wasn't practicing abstinence? If this were Obama or Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden's kids who were pregnant, Republicans (and the media) would have been all over it. The difference is that Obama and Biden don't judge others that way and they don't tout themselves to be religious zealots for "family values." Republicans do. And now they don't want to have to taste their own medicine.

I may be an elitist (someone who has standards) and I don't know anything about moose field dresses or lipsticks on pigs but I do know when I smell an R-A-T.