Like many Americans I was surprised and something like pleased when I first heard that John McCain had chosen a woman for a running mate. But that didn’t last for long. There is so much that Sarah Palin represents that goes against my grain as a woman and as an American. Now that I’m seeing her being hailed as someone very much like the character I created, Roseanne Connor, I really have to speak up. I’m very aware that lots of Americans are almost in love with this woman they’d never heard of just a couple of weeks ago. So, speaking of going against the grain, what I’m compelled by my conscience to say may not be what a lot of Americans want to hear. But as our brave and esteemed Vice President said awhile back when told that our disastrous policy in Iraq was strongly opposed by three out of four Americans: “So?” Sometimes you have to stand against the crowd and say what you know in your heart is right and true.
As to the Roseanne Connor Sarah Palin comparison: for starters, In nine years of The Roseanne Show, you didn’t hear much of anything about Religion per se, or Roseanne’s family’s faith. You just saw a very unglamorous mom doing her best to make ends meet and help her family deal with the ups and downs of life and to nag and joke and push and pull her kids into being decent human beings. She may have had a big mouth and a short fuse, but she was always there for her kids and her husband. Those were her Family values. The Connors sure weren’t the most picture perfect family on the block. Unlike Sarah Palin, Roseanne Connor wasn’t anyone’s idea of a beauty queen, that’s for sure. She was an unrepentant fat woman in a calorie-counting, jazzercizing treadmill-pounding world. Now THAT’S a maverick. I mention Religion first and use the word maverick because in real life I grew up in the State of Utah and I’m Jewish. Let that sink in for a second, would you, Dear reader? Then, and even now it’s always made me wince a little when folks loudly and proudly proclaim, over and over that America is “…first and foremost, a Christian nation!” That bold statement full of intense pride, which as I understand it isn’t exactly supposed to be at the top of the list of Christian virtues, actually caused us to hide the fact that my family’s faith wasn’t on the sanctioned list in our Mormon State and neighborhood. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the term dirty Jew! or someone told me in anger that “You killed my Jesus,” I could have retired before I was out of High School. My little brother, who was gay, had his nose broken nine times by the time he was nine years old. He would be routinely beaten every day on the way home from school, called a dirty jew and a faggot. My brother put himself through school and is working on getting his PHD degree (he is the first person in my family ever to graduate from college, and will be its first doctor). He worked as a community organizer to get through college! How dare you snicker at that!
PART TWO:
My brother studies the data on how tax money can be more effectively used to help people improve their lives. Palin should look into that for her constituents, instead of working to squander their tax dollars for entitlements for her rich friends!! She was telling the people in her church how to vote! That is completely disrespectful to those troops who are out there fighting to defend America, who happens to guarantee her people a seperation between God and Mammon!
Have you ever actually prayed for the separation of Church and State? I have and do, because without that right, this country will be no better than a Taliban State!! Most Americans are with The Founding Fathers on this one.
Oh, by the way, speaking of school, I was fat and unpopular, then and there, too. Pile on the Jewish thing and, again, the word Maverick comes to mind. I wasn’t on the basketball team or any other team, for that matter.
Maybe one of the similarities between Conner and Palin is that they’re both cutting and sarcastic. I saw plenty of that at The Republican Convention from Palin and everyone else. Funny how poor people (especially minorities) are always told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and how it’s all about Family, but when an African American kid, with an arab name is raised and supported by his single mom with some help from his grandparents graduates from a world class university and goes into public service and succeeds at it…in short does every single thing the republican party always tells minorities, working folks and women that they SHOULD do, he’s called an “elitist”!
Sarah Palin has sort of come out of nowhere and is instantly “wildly popular” on the strength of one speech, but Obama, at the end of a longer climb is called, with a sneer, a “rock star” and a celebrity. To quote an actual rock star, these are “…strange days, indeed!”
She wants to deny her own daughters a choice, and that says everything there is to say about her as a feminist to me!!
People are allowed to say anything they want; after all, it’s still a free country, but I really wish they’d stop saying that Sarah Palin is a whole lot like Roseanne Connor. I created Roseanne Conner and with all due respect, Sarah Palin is no Roseanne Connor.
Here, as we face together September 11, the anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history I want to say, “God bless America and ALL of her people, regardless of race, color, or Religion, economic class, age, gender, gayness, place of birth or native born. Let’s put the “US” back in USA and remember to stress the sisterhood and brotherhood of Human Family values. We’re told, after all, that God is watching us. I know our children are and so is the rest of the World. Shouldn’t we act accordingly?
