Super Sarah

Last night I announced to the most liberal of my small group that I had bought a Super Sarah t-shirt when I was in Alaska. I don't actually know how I feel about Sarah Palin. I have only heard her speech at the Republican Convention (yes, it's like I've been in a bubble for the last month. I missed the Katie Couric interview, I missed the SNL sketch -- you know the one where Tina Faye seems to have made Sarah look smarter-- and I missed last night's debates) I just really like the t-shirt, being a Sarah myself, I figure I'll get years of use out of it :).

Today on the train, there were three women vehemently discussing Ms. Palin. Clearly they were party line democrats. Clearly they'd seen all the speeches/interviews/parodies etc. Clearly they hate Sarah Palin. That's fine, as I say, I live in a bubble and don't know much. What galled me is the inaccuracy in their facts when they were talking about how uninformed Palin is. Yes, they were stupid facts that annoyed me, but I felt like it undermined their arguments.

One woman said, "she's clearly appealing to the rednecks, and really, how many rednecks can there be out there?" Much as the East Coast and parts of the Northwest would rather not admit it, there are a hell of a lot of rednecks out there. Country music is the second highest selling type of music out there (behind only Rock), pop music has half the following that country music has. Like it or not, rednecks are a significant part of the population.

Another woman was criticizing Palin's expertise. Saying "she's the governor of the state with the smallest population how can she make decisions for an entire country?" I couldn't stand it any more, I hissed at Sean at this point, Alaska is NOT the smallest state population-wise!!! Wyoming is! He was reading the paper and had no idea what I was talking about so I had to repeat it two more times and still he had no idea why I was yelling at him in a stage whisper about Wyoming. . . .It turns out, upon further research, that Alaska is actually fifth from being the smallest state (and that's not even counting all those crazy territories that are out there American Samoa etc).

I was annoyed with a friend once and I told my other friend, Chris, how angry I was with her because she'd said I didn't like anything. . . (oh, did I not mention it was petty?). I found the statement utterly galling. Chris asked if I was upset because she was making a negative comment about me or because I felt like it was an inaccurate statement. I had to admit that it was the inaccuracy that was the most aggravating, not the actual comment on my negativity.

So I am not sure what the point of this post was, it's clearly not to show that I am any closer to using anger in a Nooma type way, but I thought I would throw it out there.