That’s what someone on the midnight edition of “Hardball” said about Sarah Palin in the VP debate tonight. I don’t know who said it because my back was to the television as I typed out my previous post.
Sometimes you get a viral email that you wish were true.
Today I got one about someone who supposedly went on vacation and ran into John McCain. The email is falsely attributed thusly: “Mary Kay Gamel is a literature and classics professor at UC Santa Cruz.”
I emailed Mary Kay Garnel, and this is the response I got from her:
I have received thousands of emails and phone calls about the Turtle Island account.
I did NOT write that account, forward it under my name, or ask for it to be widely distributed.
I have never been to Turtle Island (which costs $2000/day), have never met Senator McCain, was a classics major, not an English Literature major, and never eat pancakes.
I regret the misinformation which is circulating, but it is not my doing, and I protest the misuse of my name.
How I think this happened: on 16 September I received this account 3rd-hand and forwarded it, with full email trail information and the name of the purported author (whom I don’t know), to several friends with whom I discuss politics. It was further forwarded, and at some point the trail was deleted and I was misidentified as the author. I suspect whoever did this thought that my name and contact information would make the story more credible.
Snopes.com is investigating the account; current status “undetermined.”
This is NOT an organized effort on the part of any political candidate.
I hope you will pass this information on to anyone interested in this story.
And finally, the story itself isn’t necessarily false. But we’ll never know unless the author herself comes forward.
MKG
I AM ENDING THIS POST WITH THE TEXT OF THE VIRAL EMAIL AND SEND OUT A CALL FOR THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR TO STAND UP, TAKE OWNERSHIP, AND VERIFY WHETHER OR NOT THE ACCOUNT IS TRUE.
I don’t know where you are, but, thanks to my (not so local) geek wizard I am on the verge of being good to go on my desktop; he will finish up his tweaking tomorrow. He has my wholehearted recommendation to anyone who has computer trouble. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a saint.
Where we all are is a little more than 30 days away from the decision of our lifetimes and a little more than an hour away from an event that is certain to affect that decision.
And we are a couple of weeks past an event that certainly should have been more publicized, as 1400 Alaskans held an anti-Palin demonstration in Anchorage. Be sure to look at the photos!
And we are about a month past the day when Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for “The Vagina Monologues”, wrote a Huffington Post article about Sarah Palin that ended as follows:
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
I have a feeling that the majority of the people voting for the McCain/Palin ticket will be male. Most women, I think, can see right through the perfumed smoke-screen of her informal (and uninformed) charm.
No, it’s not the stock market crash, it’s the crashing of both my desktop and laptop. I am typing this on my desktop in Safe Mode, which might disappear at any moment, as it has been doing over the past few days. I wind up with my desktop screen devoid of any icons. All I can do then is shut it down manually. And then wait and then try again. In Safe Mode.
My tech guy in Albany ran all kinds of diagnostics remotely. Three Trojans and a few other infections showed up and were deleted. I guess there’s still more that he can check out remotely, but only if the machine cooperates and displays the icon I need to click so that he can get in. We’ll try again tomorrow. After I take my car in for a long-overdue servicing. Keep your fingers crossed that the trip to the service station doesn’t result in a crash as well.
And now my laptop has decided to have a glitch in how it starts up — it just keeps shutting off and turning on and shutting off before anything can load up.
After making a terrible showing all summer, suddenly my tomato plants are budding like crazy — just in time for frost to shut them down.
Chances are I won’t be posting for a while, since I probably will have to take both computers in somewhere to be fixed on site.
I’m really in a bad, bad funk over this.
Now that we’re getting closer to election day, opponents of the Republican candidates are revving up their opposition. And bloggers are keeping up.
In this post by elderblogger doyen Ronni Bennett, there are a list of blog posts that are right out there in front. This one by Frank Paynter challenges us to donate to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin’s name. I love that one.
And then there’s this web site, The REAL John McCain to which I linked from one of those listed blogs.
The surge of videos on You Tube documenting McCains flip-flopping and speechifyiing mistakes are not funny
All of the disturbing information about the abilities of the Republican candidates are out there. I wonder if the voters who need to know all of that are paying attention.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are surging on.
That’s the possibility that I’m really worried about regarding Barack Obama’s electability. And it’s not just America’s blue collar workers who might not be comfortable with his ease and grace.
Obama is smooth. His movements are fluid; his manner polished. His communication is effortless, informed, fluent, and diplomatic. He is smart. And he is smooth.
And that’s what worries me. I’m worried that too many of us have come to expect — and even seek — much less from out leaders. I’m worried that we have become used to bumblers and bunglers, that we are suspect of anyone who does not have to struggle to be understood, who is able to explain complex issues simply and directly, who exudes a statesmanlike confidence in any situation.
Yet, that’s what we need as our leader. That’s what the world needs as leader of the United States. We need a statesman, a diplomat — an intelligent, informed, and smooth operator in the most positive sense.
We need to be done with confidence men and choose a leader who can both inspire and deserve our confidence.
We drove into the sun, with a pale moon still high in the sky, and we brought our father/grandfather/father-in-law/once-husband to the place he asked to be laid to rest.
The morning wind whipped around us, and the tide was beginning to flow, as we searched along the deserted beach for a place to leave him to the sea.
His daughter prepared the place.
His son placed him in.
Until that point, the small waves inching up the shoreline were a good ten feet away. Then suddenly, before he filled the hole, one wave reached and carried most of him away. Ah, we all thought — the sea is as eager for him as he was for the sea. It was odd, though, that none of the other waves had come up as far.
After they filled in the sand and were ready to place the flowers on the spot, another single wave obliterated all traces of where he had been placed. And so the flowers were left on the shore line and petals tossed into the spray.
And then we left him to the sea.
My photos of the trip are here.
Our daughter’s are here.
And our son’s are here
With b!X back in Portland, OR, who knows when we will be all together again as a family.
I found the link to what follows, at Women Against Sarah Palin.
Count me as a feminist who never believed that being PTA president meant you could be, well, President. The more time we spend on dippy ruminations–how does she do it? Queen Bee on steroids or the hockey mom next door? how hot is Todd, anyway?–the less focus there will be on the kind of queries that should come first with any vice presidential candidate, and certainly would if Palin were a man. Questions like:
Please do read the whole article by Katha Pollit, “Lipstick on a Wingnut,” in The Nation.
I got this in an email. I don’t know who wrote it, but it sure deserves to be widely posted: