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The BIG Reason

Music, opinions, and portfolio of Mark Eagleton, musician and web developer in Northern CA.

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Why We Liberals Hate Sarah Palin

My dad got another opinion piece printed in the Daily Democrat. I wish they would hire him permanently. He’s good and always gets me thinking.

My dad contributes to an opinion column in the the local paper from time to time. It’s good. I love the way he writes. They published his retort to a silly article by Jim Smith on Sarah Palin’s new book yesterday. (The retort isn’t published to the website, and the aforelinked article will most likely rot in the future.)

My Dad is conservative. I’m what conservatives might call “a liberal” (“liberals” generally don’t use adjectives as nouns), but I don’t think of people those in those terms unless they blatantly fit the stereotype of one side or another. I don’t know what Jim Smith is, but this post is not about him.

In my dad’s piece (which I will attempt to reprint here in the near future), he questions why us liberally oriented folks hate Sarah Palin.

I thought that was a reasonable question that deserved an honest answer. Politics are polarizing, and it’s very easy to write someone off just by who they are associated with. To people with liberal values, Sarah Palin is so extremely unlikeable that to them, asking this question is like asking why someone might hate the smell of poop. They tend to get bent out of shape for you asking it. Why would you even have to ask why someone doesn’t like the smell of poop?! Isn’t it blatantly obvious?

I know that sounds like a cheap shot, but it isn’t. Honestly ask yourself why you hate the smell of poop. Can you explain it in rational terms? Can you pick apart which nuances of the smell are distasteful? Is it sulfur? Yeast? Do sulfur and yeast smell bad to you when poop isn’t present? Are there any parts of poop smell that might not be quite so bad if some of the other smells were absent?

Sara Palin is quite obviously much better than poop. Her likeness to Tina Fey alone at least puts her up there with roses in my book. There have to be specific reasons you don’t like something. To someone who does like that something, the reasons you don’t are not always apparent and therefore warrant explanation.

So why do we “liberals” hate Sarah Palin? I Googled it (look at me, using a noun as an verb) and came across this article that confusingly quotes Jim Geraghty (I think) that I believe sums it up precisely:

[...] she embodies a sort of comfort with ignorance that they think characterizes most/all conservatives.

For me, this is it exactly. Mostly exactly. I think the “characterizes most/all conservatives” part is a bit extreme. Indeed, she appears to be happily ignorant about a lot of important things. George W. Bush had the same annoying quality.

On a practical level, I didn’t believe her qualifications as Vice President of the United States were adequate. The Vice President usually gets stuck with lots of diplomatic duties with other government officials. Her conservative mindset is largely incompatible with the social democracies that make up most of the civilized world. And while I do like the idea of third world leaders being forced to deal with female leaders, she appears to be too ignorant on many global issues to be effective in this regard.

In the spirit of honest, civil discourse, these are the reasons I believe most “liberals” hate Sarah Palin. Now, to Google why so many conservatives think Obama is the third anti-Christ that will bring on the rapture ...