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Scorpion Tongues

Posted by Dennis Howard on Friday, July 10, 2009 5:56:13 PM
By Dennis Howard

What is there deep down in the belly of a bitchy Boomer that sparks such hatred and resentment of Sarah Palin? Palin can't even resign gracefully without having Gail Collins, a feminist columnist for the NY Times, descend on Palin like a vulture in search of road kill. And Sarah isn't even dead yet.

What is it? It must be something very primitive and visceral, yet far more powerful than ordinary feminist envy that might be directed toward a male.

Here we are talking about two women, one of them post-menopausal and old enough to be the other's mother. Yet it is the younger of the two, Sarah Palin, who wears the battle ribbons of motherhood -- one still in her arms and another old enough to have a child of her own. She also earned the honor of having served as a governor of a great state and as a candidate for Vice President of the United States.
But why would an elite media columnist like Gail Collins so deeply resent her?

The resentment is right there to see in her venom-dripping prose. "Sarah Barracuda ... smiling manically ... like a parody of the woman who knocked the Republicans dead at their convention." So Collins wrote in last Saturday's NY Times.

She went on from there to complain that Palin "babbled about her parents' refrigerator magnet, which apparently had a lot of sage advice . . . 'Life is about choices!' declared the nation's most anti-choice politician."

Now we're getting close. Abortion may well be the issue that has gotten under Collins' skin. Perhaps she suffers a form of baby envy that the barren often feel toward those blessed with children and success. (Collins has no reported children of her own.)

It wasn't supposed to be that way. Feminists loved to talk about women "having it all," but they quickly found that choice is either/or. (In the case of abortion, it's not chocolate or vanilla. It's life or death for someone with half your genes.) So it's downright unfair to see someone else enjoying both children and success. Congress should pass a law.

But why the intensity of the hate? Evidently, it is as intense in this case as it was in days when racism ran rampant across the land. Palin is lucky that lynching is no longer in style; Collins has to string her up with words.

She spits out her barbs like a pro, calling Palin's timing "extremely peculiar."

"Not only did she interrupt the plans of TV newscasters to spend the entire weekend pointing out that Michael Jackson is still dead, she delivered her big news just as the nation was settling into Fourth of July celebrations. You'd have thought she didn't want us to notice."

How the heck was Palin supposed to know that Michael Jackson had a date with death? Or that she might interrupt the plans of Katie Couric and other network mucky-mucks to spend the next few days talking about it? Otherwise, I thought Palin's timing was superb.

It was just in time for all those Tea Parties . . . and Palin certainly took full advantage of a slow news day when her surprise announcement would get bigger play. Her story was all over the place, yet the elite media wasn't even there. Making the Op Ed page of the NY Times (not once, but three times), and cornering the conversation among the Sunday morning talking heads isn't bad timing for a slouch. Who needs a publicist with timing like that?

Morning Joe, Pat Buchanan, Karl Rove, William Crystal, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Greta van Sustern, Rush Limbaugh. The top talk shows are still buzzing about it days later.

But if barbs don't work, try snide. Collins insinuated: "Perhaps there is some new and interesting scandal that Palin has yet to let us in on. (If so, I hope it involves a soul mate.)" Dream on, Gail. Sarah already has one.

Then Collins then tried prophetic. "If she's starting to run, it will be as the same reporter-avoiding, generalization-spouting underachiever that she was last time around."

How lame! How sophomoric! At least she won't have the tired, old McCain handlers to stifle her any more. We might even get an honest campaign for a change.

But what can you expect of a columnist who, like Palin, once took time off from her job at the Times to finish a book. She took leave to do a rewrite of her earlier work, "America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines."

Then she went back to demeaning a real American heroine -- one who is a doll, but not a drudge -- one of those women who had her children and met her country's challenges, too. Sarah Palin.

That's what you get from Gail Collins, author of "Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics," Her titles advertise that trashing people is Collins' stock in trade. Perhaps she can persuade the Times to change its slogan to "All the trash that fits we print."

Meanwhile, it is interesting to compare the career time line of these two women.

At 42, Palin was already governor of Alaska and within a couple of years, was selected as a vice presidential nominee. At 42, Collins had finally gained her foothold in elite big city journalism. But at 64, Collins is clearly headed over the hill, while Palin still has her best 20 years or more ahead of her.

Okay, so maybe the whole thing is about career envy.

By the way, Collins' first book "Millennium," co-written with her husband Dan Collins of CBS, is advertised on Amazon for "ten cents plus $3.99 for shipping and handling."

Sounds like a bargain. Better grab it before it goes to a nickel.

Dennis Howard is a veteran Catholic journalist and creative marketing consultant. He currently serves as president of the Movement for a Better America, Inc., a non-profit educational organization located in Mt. Freedom, NJ. For more of his writing, visit the MBA website. http://www.movementforabetteramerica.org
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Welcome to the Viagra Generation

Posted by Dennis Howard on Friday, July 10, 2009 5:33:41 PM
By Dennis Howard

The Viagra Generation has arrived. That's the "me generation" on steroids. And there is no sadder example than South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

Thanks to his hormone-driven affairs, Sanford betrayed more than his wife and family. He betrayed a great many people who once viewed him as a credible conservative leader as well as the values he once claimed to stand for. In the process, he betrayed himself.

He also proved to be another in a long line of hamartic heroes brought down by human failings. That part is fairly easily forgiven, but the prerequisite for forgiveness is genuine contrition and repentance, not waffling denial and rationalization.

His initial apologies had a tinny lack of credibility as details kept emerging. There were more unaccounted trysts at government expense. There were more women. There was more everything. Letting things out one drip at a time is water torture, not contrition.

The dripping sentimentality of his emails sounded like something lifted from an over-heated romance novel. Was he practicing for a new career as a romance novelist? (Don't hold your breath, Danielle Steele!)

Sanford also gave Dave Letterman a chance to recover from his pathetic foray into gutter-level jokes about Sarah Palin. For Letterman, it meant a comeback of sorts. For Sanford, it sealed his fate.

Sadly, he failed to do the one thing he had to do. And that is to show himself convincingly repentant for the damage he had done to his wife and sons. Instead, he sought refuge in the most adolescent excuse in the world, "I don't love her anymore."

That excuse, of course, is one the pillars of the "New Morality," which came of age in the steaming '60's. But its roots go way back to the "free love" movement of the early 1920's when Margaret Sanger launched the long, slow decay of our national morals.

That was the birth of "If it feels good, do it" . . . regardless of the moral, spiritual, sociaI and economic costs. They include the horrendous cost of family breakdown, drug and alcohol addiction, exploding jail populations, the STD and AIDS epidemics, and the awesome $35 trillion cost of 51+ million abortions since 1970.

The modus operandi of the New Morality is: "If you can't deny it, rationalize it as best you can." And that's pretty much what Sanford was initially trying to do. He acted as if his personal crisis was some kind of peak experience. In fact, it is the second oldest sin in the world -- right after "the pride that goeth before the fall."

Romantic love is truly a many-splendored thing, but it probably gets human beings into more trouble than anything else. God meant sexual attraction as a way of getting people into marriage, not out of it. Sanford had it backwards.

Romantic love rarely survives unchanged in the ordinary course of family life. Changing diapers and wiping noses don't have the same effect on human dopamine as midnight trysts on a boat off Buenes Aires. We make up for the humdrum of domestic life by jumping at any excuse for a holiday that can rekindle warm and tender feelings. Monkeys don't send their mates flowers, cards and candy on their birthdays and anniversaries. Men do.

But far more often, relationships are deepened by shared trials, sorrows, joys, sickness and sometimes even tragedy.

Love achieves new dimensions as couples experience the caring each partner brings to their relationship, to their children and to others, including friends and neighbors in need. No one admired Mark Sanford more for his service to the people of South Carolina than his wife and sons. That's what made him their hero.

He is hardly the first man to fall prey to human weakness in this, the Viagra generation. Even old Bob Dole bragged about having E.D. (The disease, not the horse.) But now I see that MSNBC has a new show called "ED." Confusing to say the least.

It's also an era when women like Carrie Prejean are seduced into stripping down to a bikini in the hope of winning fame and fortune.
We've forgotten that God made women that beautiful so that one lucky guy would throw himself at her feet for the rest of his life. It is God's way of domesticating the human male.

Repentance and forgiveness remain central to marriage and to life. Healing comes not from denial, but from the redemptive experience of honestly admitting one's faults, experiencing genuine remorse, and seeking healing and forgiveness.

Sanford should be old enough to know that. We can only hope and pray that the effort at reconciliation between him and his wife and children is successful. Not so that he can keep his job as governor, but his more important one as husband and Dad.

Mark Sanford needs to put aside the deceptive illusion of romantic love and get off the pity pot. He needs to open his heart and soul to what real love is all about. He needs to honestly admit his failings and resolve to honor his commitments to his family one day at a time . . . for the rest of his life.

Sooner or later, we must all stand on our own two feet before God and take responsibility for what we have done and what we have failed to do. Better to do it sooner rather than risk waking one day and finding out that we are already too late.

Dennis Howard is a veteran Catholic journalist and creative marketing consultant. He currently serves as president of the Movement for a Better America, Inc., a non-profit educational organization located in Mt. Freedom, NJ. For more of his writing, visit the MBA website
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