Sophomoric PhotoShop Mess from Vanity Fair

It's sad to see the depths to which Vanity Fair has fallen.  Who knew they could fall any further?

Posting an entire, ridiculous, offensive series of PhotoShop images of Governor Rick Perry, Vanity Fair also links to a Mother Jones (of course) article filled with anti-Perry rants by Molly Ivins (who died in 2007).

Meanwhile, Perry seems to be holding up pretty well despite Vanity Fair's sophomoric slurs.

He's polling pretty well in Florida, even after the debate which was supposed to reveal his Social Security vulnerability.

He's not looking too bad in Virginia, either.

But, while I'm still tentatively on the Perry train, I'm not willing to commit just yet.  It still feels early to me. 

Over at Hot Air, Karl is tentatively calling him the nominee (barring Sarah Palin's entry and mucking things up).

And as Perry's star rises, Obama's seems to burn out.

Obama Just Needs a Nicotine Fix

In what must surely be a bit of comic relief, Vanity Fair offers the proposition that all Obama needs to become the Paragon of Hope and Change again is a nicotine fix. 

Apparently his irritability, petulance, and indecisiveness have nothing to do with an arrogant nature and being in a job well over his means and experience.  It's a lack of nicotine.  Who knew?

Meanwhile, John Boehner and his nicotine habit are so in control that they've hijacked Washington:

House Speaker John Boehner, who has no interest in quitting smoking, successfully hijacked the legislative process for weeks and secured an agreement that was far more appealing to his ranks. For the sake of the country, can someone get the president a pack of Parliaments?

And all along I just thought he was an amateur politician with a thin resume and an ego problem.

Sarah Palin, Andrew Sullivan and Todd Purdum

I started reading the Vanity Fair hit piece on Sarah Palin yesterday. I printed the thing out and carried it around, reading whenever I could catch a few moments.

Like Pundette, I've stayed out of the Palin fray. I've been reluctant to confront the many Palin bashers out there, and there ARE so many of them. Andrew Sullivan is simply delusional about her and Stacy McCain does a great job smacking him down when needed. And there were plenty of people available to smack down the nasty blogger who distored pictures of Trig Palin with her Photoshop "skills".

Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan blasted the MSM for failing to get the details on Trig Palin's birth. He concluded his post with "I believed then and I believe now that the MSM is too concerened with their own reputations and too deferent to power to even ask the questions. Which is another betrayal of their core purpose. And why they are dying. And deserve to."

"Too concerned with their own reputations"? Really!? Wow. I haven't noticed the MSM displaying a lot of concern with their reputation as they fawn and slobber over every move Obama makes. That doesn't do much, in my eyes, for their reputation as serious journalists, but as Sullivan sees it, maybe if they asked Sarah Palin about her uterus they'd be more professional.

As for Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair piece, I'm still trudging through it. What I've read so far is vapid and adds nothing new to the Palin story. Purdum holds off until paragraph three before his first nasty jab, "What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life?" I could be mistaken, but I thought being governor of a state indicated some level of achievement.

The double standard is most obvious when he says, in the same paragraph, that John McCain was crazy in picking "a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his". I believe she had as many qualifications for the job she was seeking as Obama had for the job he was seeking. But, that's just a rehash of what we all talked about during the campaign which is all this article really is.

By paragraphs six and seven (page 3), Palin is described as an "indisputably fertile female" and shows "deep ignorance" about foreign and domestic policy. We only paid attention to her on the national stage because she's good looking. Purdum tells us this is a "pheromonal reality."

That's when I had to take a break. I'll keep plodding through it until I can't take any more. Why are people so delusional about Sarah Palin? Is it because she's threatening? Interesting? Intimidating? If she's so insignificant and ignorant, why are people still writing about her in this way rather than just letting her "go home, keep her head down" and do her job?

Thoughts?

Unsavory Politics

I was trying to sort of drift away from politics a little bit; last night I was too exhausted to post anything of relevance, politics or not. I'd had a couple of comments that my blog was more interesting when it was funny and not about politics but I really just write what is on my mind at the time.

At any rate, the campaign is sort of on my mind a little bit tonight. I'm thinking Peggy Noonan was right about the campaign getting ugly (not that it wasn't already). Case in point: the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Democrats have "airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers" into Alaska in search of information on Sarah Palin. I suspect it is dirt they are trying to dig up, but I'll withhold judgment on that one for now. It is certainly fair that we are well informed about our candidates.

Another case in point: I watched Part 3 of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Obama (I did not watch the first two parts). I find Bill OReilly bombastic a lot of the time and overbearing. However, he asked Obama tonight about his associations with Wright, Resko and Ayers, making the point that there are a lot of unsavory folks in his circle of friends. Despite Obama's disclaimers, I find it just hard to swallow that he never heard Wright say anything that inflamatory in TWENTY years. With regard to Ayers, Obama is sticking to his talking points that he was 8 when Ayers bombed the Pentagon and therefore it has nothing to do with him. He said that Ayers was working with Mayor Daly at the time Obama met him and doing some good work in the community. In other words, I don't care what he did in his past, he's not doing it now. As if the amount of time between bombing the Pentagon and now makes it a less reprehensable act. It does not. What bothers me most about that is that Obama is, by this explanation, sticking by his association with Ayers, which I still find disturbing.

I'm not even going to touch his quote today: "You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig." I heard his explanation, dismissing it as a reference to McCain's statement about Hillary's health care plan, and I find that explanation paper thin. It's clearly an insulting reference to Palin and a comment which I find to be beneath him.

And finally, in Vanity Fair this week they priced out the outfits of Laura and Cindy from the convention. Give me a break. I cancelled my VF subscription ages ago because of their blatant liberalism and their hatred and disrespect for the President, but certainly they can find something more worthwhile to report than how much Cindy spent on her watch. WHY do they care if she inherited money from her father? How is that her fault and a reason to disparage her? Hasn't she done enough humanitarian work to atone for her sins of inheritance? If you are interested, here's what they spent:

Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600–$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

Of course, those are just estimates. From a liberal rag. But anyway.

As I said, I think Noonan was right earlier this week in her WSJ column and I really wish folks would just stick to the issues. And before you get all defensive on me, I mean BOTH sides. Just stick to the issues. The American people deserve that.