WoLFi TaLEs

After watching the vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarh Palin I was struck by a very different war dividing America. It’s not the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, nor the war between Main Street and Wall Street that is dividing Americans, it’s a war of the words and image. Straight talkin Sarah with her folksy, straight talking, unwavering look ya in the eye gaze is selling some nostalgic, patriotic dream that sounds like it comes out of B grade Hollywood script. All it’s going to take to solve America’s financial woes according to Sarah, is for Joe Six Pack and his sidekick Hockey Mom to say ‘Never Again’. That simple. ‘Say it isn’t so, Joe’.

Of course Joe Biden in comparison sounded sensible (some have said boring) with his non-folksy,  non-hyped talk. His answers were detailed, not simple, not selling the American dream which has so obviously become a nightmare. Sadly, I think he may not win this debate because his image does not have the ‘wow’ factor. He’s not folksy, not cutesy, not young, not a salesman. But I say leave these attributes, including the ‘anti-intellectual’ straight talk that is fake talk to the B grade movies, what we need is a real leadership team to get America out of the mess that it’s in. Not simple at all, really.

When it comes to debating, this Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart is telling. But when Susan Maushart, compared the Palin phenomenom to her latest iPhone in ‘Byte of the Pitbull’, I think it won the debate, at least in my opinion.

The iPalin promises a new brand of freedom, too: a kind of WiFi feminism, with no strings (but plenty of offspring) attached. The iPalin makes it clear that a woman really can have it all. She can be pro-life and still go a-huntin’; a Family Firster who returns to work within 72 hours of the birth of her high-needs child; an “orator” who reads a ghosted script off a teleprompter; a fundamentalist Christian who believes God helps those who help themselves, especially when drilling for the Creator’s oil in protected Arctic reserves.