WELCOME TO THE PALINDROME

[Photo via Wonkette]

As you may have heard, America is totally obsessed with the Governor of Alaska (yet another sentence no one has ever had to type before). And while everyone argues and swears and rants and raves and dithers and whatnot over whether she’s the new Tom Eagleton (doubtful), and whether Hillary fans are really that gullible or shallow (some might be, most aren’t), and whether or not her daughter is fair game for the media (don’t get me started), the question that intrigues me the most is:

Seriously now, what was McCain REALLY thinking?

I mean, just for a moment, forget all the talk about trying to woo Hillary fans and competing with Obama’s non-trad hotness. That’s a given. But that can’t be all there is to it. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the GOP didn’t get where they are by picking names out of a hat at the last minute. So what specifically is Palin really bringing to the table that would appeal to the GOP’s sensibilities?

I think Politico may have have cracked the code.



The basic thesis is this: ever since the race narrowed down to McCain vs Obama and Hillary, the election topics have gelled around the economy, Iraq, gas prices and possibly healthcare. Now that Palin’s hit the scene, says Politico, suddenly everyone’s arguing over abortion, gay marriage and Creationism. Sure, those issues never really went away, but now they’re center-stage.

Any of this sound familiar?

I can’t say for sure that McCain and his people actively planned all this. On the other hand, it’s a Karl Rove classic, and Republicans tend to be in their element when they’re shouting about culture wars and wedge issues. It would also explain why they’re thrilled about Palin’s little after-school special episode. I’m sure they’re also thrilled that people at Daily Kos are frothing at the mouth and falling over each other to shake fingers at the Briscoe Bristol Palin story just to score a meaningless “See? They’re hypocrites about family values!” point.

“Let ‘em froth,” says Rove via conference call from an undersea bunker off the coast of Paraguay. “If they’re bagging on Sarah for not having a perfect Christian family, they’re not calling attention to the war or the economy. Half the country says they support conservative morals – that’s what you run on.”

Comic exaggeration? Maybe. And who knows if it will work? But it would explain an awful lot.

Still, it hasn’t even been a week since she was announced, so maybe once the shock wears off we’ll be back to real issues.

Ha ha. Just kidding.

Stop making sense,

This is dF

EDITED TO ADD [ten minutes later]: Correction on the name of Palin's daughter – which just goes to show how interested I am in that little soap opera.

BECAUSE YR NOT REALLY A DEVELOPED NATION UNTIL YOU HAVE A WAL-MART

Fresh from my inbox to yrs:



That’s from a press conference in Hong Kong yesterday announcing that Wal-mart is establishing its regional HQ in HK.

Which is an amazing coincidence, because just the other day, the Bridal Unit and I were walking through the Fu Tung shopping arcade, one of many publically-owned shopping arcades that were recently bought up by The Link for privatization, and is now undergoing renovations. We were talking about how one of the outcomes of the Link purchase was that all the rents had gone up, which meant small mom-and-pop stores were being forced out of business and were being replaced by local and international chain brands – which means all these shopping arcades will lose whatever individual character and local flavor they had.

Progress!

So there’s no better time for Wal-mart to turn up, really, though I don’t know if they’re going to actually open a store here. They’ve had one just across the border in Shenzhen for some time now, but I’ve never been in it.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m not 100% anti-Wal-mart. I admit they got a lot of my business in my starving college days simply because they really were the cheapest game in town, except for Big Lots, but you definitely get what you pay for there. I’m also not particularly against franchising as a business concept, though I do think there is such a thing as overdoing it, and I think it can make a good business less special or meaningful. (The idea of McDonald’s as a decent hamburger stand in San Berdoo is much cooler than what it’s evolved into.)

Anyway, I do think it’s fair comment to say that the economies of scale that the Wal-marts and Starbucks and other logos of the world have leveraged to get where they are has come at the expense of small businesses, and the local flavor they give a town. Maybe that doesn’t matter when yr on a tight budget, but I do think it’s one reason why retro/nostalgia trends keep popping up. We know we’ve lost something along the way, and we’re not sure how to get it back.

What would Horatio Alger do,

This is dF