“Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, and Mean”

We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton St. Paul and another way in San Francisco Anchorage.

Charley James in The LA Progressive:

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Racial and ethnic slurs may be “just Alaska” and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin.

The right has three responses to this so far:

1. Todd Palin is part Eskimo, so it’s not possible that his wife would make a racist remark.
2. The Democrats do it, too.
3. The quote comes from a single, and anonymous, source.

Of these, only the last has any validity. The article gives only her first name (of course, it may not be her real first name). I would be much happier, obviously, if this waitress was named and her accusation backed up by others. That said, given what Sarah Palin said about Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer, and her divisive and nasty tone in general, I don’t find it completely beyond belief that she would have used racist language in her home environment in Alaska, and when there was no one to hear but an Aboriginal waitress whose feelings, needless to say, if Palin feels such contempt for non-white people, would have been of no concern to her.

I also don’t find it hard to believe that Alaska is a very small place (politically and socially in my meaning here), that lines of class and caste would be drawn very sharply, and that, for those who are outside of the charmed circle, drawing negative attention to yourself via this kind of criticism might be quite dangerous.

There is a larger point here, however — and that is that stories like this, whether true or false, thrive in an atmosphere of secrecy and enforced silence. Far be it from me to try to persuade the Republicans of this — I’m perfectly content for them to remain unpersuaded — but whether true or false, the more McCain and his advisers dig in their heels, refuse to allow Palin to be interviewed and keep her isolated in Alaska away from the media, the more credence stories like these are going to take on, and the more damage they will do to McCain’s chances of becoming president.

Works for me.

5 Responses to ““Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, and Mean””

1. cfpete says:

   September 6, 2008 at 6:21 pm

   Kathy,
   Just to clarify, you are stating that Sarah Palin is Racist.
   Thank You for a quick response.

   Reply
2. gcotharn says:

   September 6, 2008 at 6:31 pm

   Lucy ~ Lucille? LA Progressive has a sense of humor. USA Today:

   In earlier conversations with USA TODAY, Burkett had identified the source of the documents as George Conn, a former Texas National Guard colleague who works for the U.S. Army in Europe. Burkett now says he made up the story about Conn’s involvement to divert attention from himself and the woman he now says provided him with the documents. He told USA TODAY that he also lied to CBS.

   Burkett now maintains that the source of the papers was Lucy Ramirez, who he says phoned him from Houston in March to offer the documents.
   […]
   Burkett said he arranged to get the documents during a trip to Houston for a livestock show in March. But instead of being met at the show by Ramirez, he was approached by a man who asked for Burkett, handed him an envelope and quickly left, Burkett recounted.

   “I didn’t even ask any questions,” Burkett said. “Should I have? Yes. Maybe I was duped. I never really even considered that.”
   […]
   After he received the documents in Houston, Burkett said, he drove home, stopping on the way at a Kinko’s shop in Waco to copy the six memos. In the parking lot outside, he said, he burned the ones he had been given and the envelope they were in. Ramirez was worried about leaving forensic evidence on them that might lead back to her, Burkett said, acknowledging that the story sounded fantastic. “This is going to sound like some damn sci-fi movie,” he said.

   After keeping the copies for a couple of days, he said he drove to a location he would not specify, about 100 miles from his ranch, to put them “in cold storage.” Burkett said he took the action because he believed the papers were politically explosive and made him nervous. “I treated them like absolute TNT,” he said. “They looked to me like they were devastating.”
   […]
   Ultimately, Burkett decided to turn over the documents to one of the most persistent journalists, CBS producer Mary Mapes, sometime in August. He and his wife met Mapes and CBS reporter Mike Smith at a pizza restaurant a few miles from their ranch. At first he gave them only two of the six documents, which Mapes said she planned to have analyzed for authenticity, according to Burkett.

   Burkett said he passed the rest of the documents to Smith around Sept. 5, at a drive-in restaurant near Baird.

   Reply
3. Kathy says:

   September 6, 2008 at 9:47 pm

   Just to clarify, you are stating that Sarah Palin is Racist.

   Only if the story is true.

   Thank You for a quick response.

   You’re welcome.

   Reply
4. Macswain says:

   September 7, 2008 at 12:44 am

   A single, anonymous source isn’t sufficient to drop a bomb like this. Also, it looks like this author has some other pieces out there that make incredible leaps to “report” negatives about McCain.

   The problem with Palin are her extreme stances on the issues and her inability to exercise good judgment. The Republicans don’t want us talking about those issues and will use this kind of stuff to portray Palin as a victim and to distract the public from the issues.

   Reply
5. radical_Moderate says:

   September 7, 2008 at 6:32 pm

   What I think is that we on the left is spending too much time on Palin. McCain’s handlers probably realized that, in addition to the extreme right bona fides that Palin would bring to the ticket , that she, due to her thin resume, and unusual story (the Media would smell blood), could also be used to obfuscate the fact that McCain’s promise of “change” is in fact bullshit, and that any close examination of his so called “economic plan,” not to mention his military ambitions, would bring this fact into sharp relief. While the blogosphere and MSM “vetts” the intriguing and more telegenic Palin, McCain remains Johnny Freeride. The fact that some pundits, even some Progressive pundits, thought that McCain gave much of a speech Thursday night, it was all “smoke and mirrors” to this listener, is astonishing. On the other hand, most of these same pundits declared Palin’s so called “speech” which was expertly telepromptered, and heavy on the self-congratulatory snark, as “great” indicates how far the threshold for truly substantive Political Oratory has fallen….

   Ultimately I think that the left too heavily concentrates on Palin, especially at the level of innuendo, at their, and Barack Obama’s, peril.

   Reply