American Views Abroad

As one friend wrote from the US, this had to be one of the weirdest weeks on record as far as politics is concerned. Stomach turning and nauseating are two words repeated over and over again.

Does anyone remember a scene that occurred in St Patrick's Cathedral when Robert Kennedy was lying in state in June 1968? The TV lights were constantly on as thousands of citizens came to pay their respect. At the end of the day his widow came to his casket and knelt there. One by one the TV lights were turned off to leave her alone in her prayers and thoughts. It was a stunning, moving tribute to common decency. These days as Judith Warner points out in her blog and as we have seen on front pages of newspapers around the world infants and children are used mercilessly in pursuit of personal ambition and fame.

Warner in The Mirrored Ceiling: Why does this woman (Palin) --- who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes --- deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so 'real'? Because Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they've cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs the Elite.

.....One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can 'relate' to. This need isn't limited to women; it brought us after all, two terms of George W. Bush.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/the-mirrored-ceiling/index.html