Send Sarah Back to Redneckia!

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Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

Send Sarah Back to Redneckia!

September 18, 2008

The West's Awake by Cormac MacConnell

I READ an article yesterday on the BBC website about redneck America and Sarah Palin. The writer said that in these PC days everybody went out of their way to avoid using the term “redneck,” and this, in his view, was wrong and dangerous.

He said he was a redneck, and there were many millions of American voters who were rednecks and proud of it. And he discussed the crucial power of the redneck vote in your upcoming election.

In his view it would have a negative effect and would likely elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.

We have a keen interest here in Ireland in what is happening during your incredibly long election campaign. It is a long time ago since I wrote here that your powerful country deserved a truly charismatic and gifted leader worthy of it.

Later, like most citizens here, I welcomed the arrival of Barack Obama on the scene. I favored him even over Hillary Clinton on the basis that he did represent the potential for fundamental change, that it was time your frightening Bush was ousted from office, and that it was wholesome and healthy that a black American could be selected to run for the highest office of a mighty superpower like America. That was surely a major change.

What has happened since with the explosive arrival of Palin on the scene has been, in my view, a dreadful development altogether. It seems to me that you are all heading for Redneck Country, and that has to be negative.

Here we have a Calamity Jane of a politician, a real, genuine, 100% nickel-plated, gun-toting redneck, whose impact has been such that Obama’s lead in the polls is gone (at time of writing) and the whole tide of events is running against his election in a few weeks.

From where I see it here, Obama made a major error in not selecting Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Whatever about her own political ambitions, in the longer term it would seem that she would scarcely have been able to refuse the offer once it was made.

And she would have brought with her most of the huge distaff constituency that he has been struggling so hard to reach since.

Joe Biden has scarcely registered on our scale at all. He may have great Washington experience, and there may be local geo/political reasons for the choice, but it was not a good one. Biden does not ring any of the bells that Palin has so resoundingly jangled since her arrival on stage.

He’s a gray shadow of a thing, whereas (in what is a TV campaign first and foremost) she brings a Grand Ole Opry cowgirl vividity to every corner of every screen in the world. Beauty, brashness, brains, a great pair of eyes, a great pair of legs, she’s got everything — except what America really needs.

I’ll explain that as I see it. The woman is extremely likeable, sexy, sassy, saucy. You could not help but like her. If she was running for Clare County Council I would cross party lines to vote for her because of that.

Were I living in Alaska (which seems to have more than its share of political corruption in the system) I’d probably vote for her too. Here is a genuine redneck with a brain who is such a good shot that she admits to killing 40 caribou out of a single herd, and she appears to shoot a moose or two before every breakfast.

She’s married to a cool dude with whom she eloped, a sportsman-fisherman with Eskimo blood, she has five kids, one of them a pregnant unmarried teenager (whose boyfriend is proud to be a f****** redneck), and her youngest child has Down syndrome.

The woman, for God’s sake, is as colorful as Dolly Parton. She’s the yellow ribbon around the old oak tree of Middle America. I’d swear she drinks her beer direct from the can, and when she smoked a joint in her college days she certainly inhaled.

Yes, I like her and I’d vote for her up to governor level or thereabouts, but I would certainly not vote to put her in a position where she is only a 72-year old’s heartbeat away from being the most powerful person in the world.

That is a promotion way above her, way, way, above her. I would be unhappy if a woman like that was even a junior minister in an Irish government! She’d make a holy show of us inside six months for sure.

And, God help us all, because of the impact your presidents have on us here, not alone could the Palin factor give victory to the Republicans by unleashing the redneck vote, there is now the increasingly stronger possibility that it actually will. And for all the wrong reasons.

Obama has had such high and favorable media attention for the past couple of years that it is simply not sustainable at that level exactly when he needs it most on the campaign proper.

He is already an old story. And Sassy Sarah is the new one.

And she is firing in all directions. McCain has almost become her sidekick since her arrival. The TV cameras love her and her family.

At the convention the cameras kept cutting to her youngest daughter licking the palm of her hand to flatten down the baby’s curls in her arms. That alone was worth about a million votes out in Redneckia!

I hope I’m wrong on this one. The world wants an Obama win and real change. International polls prove that.

But I would not like to bet on that now as the gloss moves away from his campaign and transfers to Sarah. And she keeps shaking her trigger finger in his direction, from Dangerous Dan McGrew territory. Redneck country.

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