By Wendell P. Simpson
“They never taste who always drink; they always talk who never think.”
– Matthew Prior, English poet and diplomat (1664-1721)
King Solomon famously said that there’s nothing new under the sun; and so it goes with former Alaska Governor and failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Whenever Palin opens her mouth, it becomes a font of ridiculousness—like the time during the 2008 campaign when she couldn’t answer a 3rd grader’s question regarding the role of the vice-president; or her reference to ‘the Department of Law’, a federal agency that doesn’t exist; or the time she accused candidate Obama of “palling around with terrorists;” or, my personal favorite, “Africa is a country, isn’t it?”
The Rouge is constantly being ridiculed over her incessant and ignorant bombast, and yet, she just can’t seem to keep her bloody trap closed. Last weekend, however, the fabulous idiot delivered the foot-in-mouth coup de grace. During a speaking event in Calgary, Palin admitted that her family had used Canada’s socialized medical system to get treatment.
“We used to hustle over the border for health care,” Palin said. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic?”
Yeah, and the irony is, socialized medicine was apparently good enough for her family, but not good enough for yours or mine. Palin has railed apoplectic against President Obama’s health care reform proposals. She’s lambasted them as ‘socialist’; prattled on about ‘death panels’, and characterized the President’s efforts as a fascist attempt to rob the American people of health care options.
Yet, when faced with a calamity, Palin’s family didn’t hesitate to use the best and most affordable health care option available. And to top it all off, her son, a victim of Down’s Syndrome, currently receives treatment paid for out of public coffers—in other words, on the taxpayers dime.
On Monday, Huffington Post blogger Lincoln Mitchell quipped, “Sarah Palin’s recent statement that she and her family used to cross the border to take advantage of Canada’s health car system is not so much a gaffe as an interesting insight into a politician.”
Agreed—but it is also a peep into the looking glass that is Republican hypocrisy.
Now let me say this: in no way do I have a problem with Palin’s son being availed the public option. In fact, this writer believes that everyone in America should have such a choice—but Republicans like Palin, to use an old ghetto colloquialism, talk out of the side of their necks.
What is it with the GOP that they feel the shoe only fits the other guy’s foot? Their’s is a litany of duplicity and dissembling. It’s everywhere: they voted constantly to raise the debt ceiling under Bush, but Obama can’t get the same reach around; They hedge on tort reform; they slammed the President on stimulus spending, yet took the credit for it when new jobs opened up in their districts; they climbed all over deficit spending, yet approved borrowing a trillion dollars from a communist country to launch an illegal war against Iraq; they cut taxes on the wealthy, yet can’t figure out why they can’t pay for a racketeered $400 billion Medicare proscription drug bill that should never have been passed in the first place. And let’s not ever forget Karl Rove and his Machiavellian machinations.
Oh, how deep the waters of sham and deceit run! The fact that Sarah Palin, or any of her party for that matter, has any credibility left is a stunning study in how you can fool some of the people all of the time. Palin’s casual, laissez faire attitude about using a service that she would deny to others should be an insult to every American who struggles with health care costs or a lack of access to services.
Her absence of principles should render everything she says moot, and her arrogance and stupidity should scare the crap out of anyone within earshot of her inane and impertinent utterances. But alas, Palin remains a popular figure and a legitimate political personality.
We can only hope that the masses of the great unwashed out there will awake from their slumber and rise above their banality to censure Sarah Palin for her hypocrisy.
And here’s another upside to health care reform: Rush Limbaugh, the king of rapid fire verbal BS, claims he will leave the country should health care reform pass. I’m praying for the passage of this legislation just for that. Besides, and this is a health care issue, Limbaugh leaving will result in a steep decline in the amount of pollution being spewed into the atmosphere and take some of the pressure of our already overtaxed auditory senses.
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