So, Sarah Palin was invited to drop the puck at Philadelphia Flyers’ first hockey game of the season. (I’d never heard of this, but apparently it’s something like throwing out the first baseball.) Philadelphia is a blue town and its fans have a reputation for being rowdy, so:
A carpet was laid down and Palin, dressed in a beige trench, walked on to the ice joined by her daughters Willow and Piper. The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee said at an earlier fundraiser that she would stop some of the booing from the rowdy Philadelphia fans by putting her seven year old daughter, Piper in a Flyers jersey. She said, “How dare they boo Piper!”
Well, they did. Fox reports “mixed reviews” but elsewhere you can read that the Piper shield didn’t work. A lot has already been written about Palin using the kids as political props, but I don’t have a problem with that – to one extent or another every politician does it. But letting your kid essentially be booed, as anticipated, by a entire stadium full of people —who does that? It would be a crushing experience even for an adult. Pols have to grow thick skins or they will never make it. But this baby is what, seven? Willow was there, too. But as everybody knows, teenagers have strong self-esteem, so something like this couldn’t hurt her. /sarcasm off
There’s been a lot of talk about The Manchurian Candidate lately, and I am reminded of that movie here, specifically the Angela Lansbury character. Also the wonderful scene at the end of The Dead Zone, when Martin Sheen grabs that baby. Okay, that’s excessive, but I am just furious about this. If Palin was chosen to “resonate” with women, then it worked, because boy am I resonated.
Sad. Just very sad.
I feel bad for a lot of these kids who grow up in politics. You have to wonder if ultimately that’s what happened to George W. and even his twins. Chelsea Clinton didn’t seem to have as hard a time with it, but then I do remember her being the subject of some rather nasty jokes, and I always felt badly for her.
Gosh, remember Amy Carter? I was just a kid, but we were the same age and I could really relate to her (okay, we kind of looked a lot alike, but I think I was cuter!) and even then I remember felling sorry for her–and I was about 9 or 10! People were always calling her homely and making fun of her gee whiz, Opie-ish self. It is not an easy life to choose for your family. Its like middle school on a national level–instead of there being 15 kids who don’t like you (and you usually have no idea why), there are 15 million who don’t like you for no good reason!
The Clintons made an effort to keep Chelsea out of the public eye. Even at that who can forget Rush Limbaugh saying that Socks was the White House cat and Chelsea was the White House dog. But then, would you expect anything else from the ” family-values” party?
The fact that Limbaugh thought a 13-year-old child was fair game tells us all we need to know about the substandard quality of his character.
I hadn’t heard that particular Rush story. How utterly disgusting.