Beneath the Facade of Sarah Palin

Images of Sarah Palin from the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

Vanity Fair has a big article this month on former Alaska Governor, former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. I'm not a fan of this publicity-seeking, clueless egomaniacal opportunist. I was interested to read the piece and see what the magazine had learned about her that hasn't already been in People magazine.

Unfortunately, author Michael Joseph Gross was unable to get anyone of substance to talk with him on the record and thus has nothing new to say about her.

Well there was one thing new: in addition to all those clothes she charged to the Republican National Committee, she also charged a bunch of Spanx girdles to them. I sat up in my chair when I read that. Sara Palin needs a girdle? Who knew?

Oh, and her husband Todd's emails are peppered with bad grammar and misspellings. Now there's a revelation. Todd Palin a dunce? I'm shocked. Shocked.

Beyond those little nuggets the pickings were pretty lean. Since she's become famous she doesn't go out much in Wasilla, not the way she used to. Wow. A woman who quit her job as governor of Alaska so she could hit the road and make millions of dollars on the speakers circuit is dissing the folks of Wasilla? There's a surprise. She shops incognito at Target right before closing to avoid discussing her Target purchases with fans. Hmm. Sounds pretty logical to me. She has a big No Trespassing sign on the fence around her house. I would do that too if people were reporting on my Spanx girdle purchases. (I'm going to have to try those things!)

What I would have liked to learn was: why does a brilliant conservative like William Kristol support her and apparently play a role in her inner circle? Why does Richard Lowry of the National Review defend her in the pages of William F. Buckley's iconic magazine? Did these guys refuse to talk with Michael Joseph Gross, or didn't he think to call them? That should have been mentioned in the piece.

It really gags me to think that intelligent conservatives can't do better than this ghastly paper doll of a candidate. That's why I would liked to have heard from some leading thinkers about her so-called phenomenon. Personally, I think her time in the sunlight will be very short. She's made out of air and sugar candy and she'll dissolve in the first rain.

Gross justified his lack of quotes by saying everyone was afraid to talk to him. Everyone? Leading thinkers at the Hoover Institute? Pepperdine University political science professors? Everyone? If that's true then "everyone" should be ashamed of themselves.

Buried in the article was the fact that McCain staffers learned during the '08 campaign that she didn't know who Margaret Thatcher was. If that is true, then someone of intelligence needs to write a real piece about her. Just talkin' trash about Sarah only feeds the phenomenon and simply lengthens the painful time in which we must watch this inept woman dance in the spotlight.

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Time for A Rant about Burning the Koran

This whole nonsense about that knucklehead in Florida who wants to burn the Koran on 9/11 has really been bothering me. No, I do not think it is a good idea, and yes I think he deserves a kick in the keister.

That having been said I want to make a few other points.

First: none of us was burning the Koran nor doing anything else incendiary on 9/10/01 that would have supplied the justification for Arab murderers to kill 3,000 innocent people in New York who were just going about their business on that sunny September day. So let's be honest: people in America can burn the Koran or not burn the Koran, but radical Islamists are going to hate us. Cowering before them is not a posture I support.

They have chosen to hate us just as anti-Semites have chosen to hate Jews. Loving your neighbor may have an impact in the long run--and will certainly help get you a seat at the right hand of God--but in the short term, no matter how nice we all are and no matter how deep our kowtow, a lot of Americans will continue to be targets of these bad guys.

You don't even have to be an American to be a target. Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was assassinated by a radical Islamist in Holland because he made a film that was critical of the way Islam treats women.

In a free society it is impossible to keep people from doing legal things that will offend. I didn't like that Neo Nazi march in Skokie a while back, but an ACLU lawyer--himself a Jew--made sure a judge didn't keep it from taking place. And by the way, Jews didn't send in a suicide bomber to kill a bunch of people at the march.

Where are all the American media giants yelling "Stop! Stop! Stop!" when people at foreign rallies burn our president in effigy? Burn our flag? Lynch our soldiers? Kill Western aid workers in Afghanistan who hike miles to bring eye glasses and medicine to the poor? Where is the world outrage to match the kind of outrage and scorn this stupid Koran burning pastor has received? I'm sorry but I haven't heard it.

Radical Islamists shoot hundreds of rockets into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon and Syria and I don't hear a peep out of the world. Why is that, I wonder?

Yes, we in American and the West should be better than those who blow up innocent people in response to some sort of political/religious insult, real or imagined. We should be better than those who assassinate filmmakers whose points of view they don't like. We should be better than those who threaten murder and mayhem against cartoonists out to produce satire. In fact: we are better than that.

Moslems aren't the only people who get their symbols trampled on and their feelings hurt. They are just the only people in the world today who are using violence to protest it and for whom the popular media has crafted a form of justification for it! And like destructive children who hold families hostage with their tantrums, the crazies of Islam now have the rest of the world afraid to do anything that might piss them off.

I would like to see a protest about that. Personally, I'm not going to start wearing a burka, and sitting on a separate side of McDonalds reserved for the lesser sex, and quit driving and voting, just to prove I'm liberal-minded about Moslems.

If we don't watch out, we're going to start looking like Neville Chamberlain. He believed the words of a zealot keen on temper tantrums and came home with "peace in our time" only to discover he had made a very unpleasant deal with the devil.

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Floor Sanding Begins: OSHA is on Standby

Through the looking glass to my living room as it is barricaded off in plastic wrap.

The Floor Sanders arrived early this morning and began putting plastic barriers all over the house (to keep the wood sand out of the nooks and crannies). Since the company touts its "Automatic Dust Free Sanding System," the plastic barriers must just be their belt-and-suspenders redundancy. As with almost all hard work done in California today, this work was done by Spanish-speaking immigrants.

And, like all the rest of the workers who have come to my house these past months, these young men were polite, quiet and resourceful. When I asked if I should cover the crystal chandelier in the bedroom, the crew chief said he would take care of it. The next I knew, Worker #2 was up on his toes, covering the chandelier. I'm so glad OSHA wasn't here to see that he did so standing on a wobbly plastic bucket.

When these guys get a union, that bucket thing is going to be history.

When the two men discovered my 220 power outlet was of the new four-pronged variety, and their sander had a three-pronged plug, they spoke softly together for a few minutes and then hand wired their sander into my fuse box outside. I believe this is how whole neighborhoods get their power in certain parts of the world. I'm not even going to show you a picture of what they did because I'm afraid the code enforcement guys might be reading my blog.

All this is really terra incognita for a woman who used to work with highly structured union crews in the television industry. You couldn't even change a bulb in a light unless you were from the right branch of the right union. When I worked at KRON-TV in San Francisco one of the unions had delayed the changeover from film to video for years because negotiators hadn't worked out all the details.

There were benefits to many of these union rules, and safety was among them. But market forces were pushing back and laborers who were eager to work began flooding in across our porous borders. The market, like a river, will find its path.

Meanwhile, assuming all my fuses don't blow and no one is electrocuted, my Pink Bedroom floor begins its transformation.

This was my parents' room near the end of their lives. I hope both would be pleased to see the damaged floor repaired. (This is the "before" photo).

The red oak floor after the first of the machine sanding work was completed.

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Tabula Rasa Next

The pink wallpaper looks better in pictures than it looked to me in person.

It was a happy day when Trish the Wallpaper Lady finished taking down the old wallpaper in the Pink Bedroom. More excitement begins tomorrow when the floor re finishers get here for their four-day spree.

The room is 16' x 13' 4" and it is now a big blank slate on which I can begin to paint my own picture.



I must have seen the room empty like this when we moved in long ago, but I don't remember it. Our mom papered the wall facing the window with a pink and silver stripe and painted the other walls shell pink. We found it as it once was, under the large pink print wallpaper we just removed.



The room has a real history in our family. My sister and I shared it when we were young, before she went away to college. Both of my grandmothers came to live here in the last years of their lives. Later, Mom redecorated and added new wallpaper and the room became the house's chief guest room. My sister's children stayed here every summer.

My niece Devon on a visit to her grandparents' house, one summer long ago.

Finally, in their last years, it became my parents' room. Early in the evening, my mother, in her funny nightshirt, retreated here with her crossword puzzle as Dad began to doze. The attached bath, which I have since repainted, was small and convenient.





The floor was damaged during those years by several plumbing crises--not mentioned to me at the time--but that is easily remedied and will be this week by the floor crew.



Lots of people, including my sister, have asked me about ghosts: whether this house has them and, if so, whether I am troubled by them. If there were going to be ghosts, this would be the room for them. Before I moved in, I did worry about this.

But now I don't believe in them. There aren't any here that have made themselves known to me. This may be because my parents were so happy here and lived here almost until the day they died--which was just the way they wanted it. I wish they hadn't left such a mess behind: but that is a small irritation. And as for my old bedroom ...



... the light is so pretty, drifting in, as it does, through the leaves of the Japanese maple on the patio. I'm looking forward to adding my own color and fabric and making it even more beautiful. I worked pretty hard on moving day all those eons ago: and now, I'm finally getting the chance to put my stuff just where I want it.

Moving Day, way back in the 20th century.

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Toby Tyler Reporting

by
Toby Tyler
Dog

I just want to say from the beginning that the main thing I'm thinking about these days are the negotiations going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We have to try to get that mess worked out and Give Peace a Chance. What a world you People have got going here!

I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Toby and I am six months old and I live across the street from that female Person called Robin. I like to run over and see her and talk a little international relations with her from time to time. Whooeee is that fun.

My owner Persons are called Mickey and Donna. But I spend most of the day watching CNN and the other cable news channels and trying to keep up with what is going on in the world and with who has the new prime time anchor seat today. It is dangerous in that part of the world! Kind of like Israel. And the Palestinian Territories.

I'm spending a lot of time trying to explain to my Person Mickey about things like: what would happen if we had a nuclear Iran, and how the bicameral legislature works. But he is mostly into trying to get me to do tricks. Who does he think I am? Hamid Karzai?

My Person is the kind of guy who thinks Larry King is a newsman! Larry King, whose skull is so empty he is entirely held up by his suspenders and by his ninth wife ... hang on just a second I see my Person coming over and I think I smell food in his pocket. Hey! I'm over here! What's the matter? You need glasses?



Man, I thought I was going to have to sit there doing that "sit-stay-shake" thing forever. Now. Where was I? Oh yes, about television news. What a lot of rot. Have you watched that guy Glenn Beck? He came to Fox News from Top Forty Morning Zoo radio! Next thing you know he'll be covering the Mid East Peace Talks and think he knows what he is doing. The good news is that last week he decided he was a Holy Man, so maybe he'll go off to Utah in a loin cloth and stop bothering us.

Hold it. I just saw a couple of female Dogs go by. Don't touch that dial!

Hey babes! I'm over here and I'm starting to think about you!

Now where was I? Pompous newscasters. You have to put Keith Olbermann of MSNBC right up there on the improbably high pomposity scale. His qualifications for pontificating are that he ... used ... to ... cover ... network ... SPORTS! Now there is job to end the Cold War with. "I think they are hitting the ball well today Keith. What do you think?" "Yes. They are also throwing and running the ball well today too." Geez. Even a Dog could do a job like that.

But even Keith the big O isn't as bad as that lady on there after him that Rachel Maddow. Ouch. Slightly tough to look at in addition to being a bossy know-it-all. But really: MSNBC could use some real BABES like they have over there at Fox. And they have all been to Harvard or practically all of them have and if they haven't who is checking? Certainly not that old lech Mr. Murdoch! His wife is younger than my sister!

I'm not allowed to say anything bad about that guy Chris Matthews because my across-the-street-neighbor Robin likes him from her days in Washington. But since he started this whole blabbing on TV thing I think we all ought to throw our shoes at him. I mean if I wore shoes.

That face just says Face the Nation, don't you think? Maybe I ought to try out?

Then there is that lady called Christian PouranAdMan. She's from Iran and I'm pretty sure she's a spy. Wasn't she supposed to be on one of those planes on 9/11 but was warned ahead of time by OBL? Something like that. All I know is that when bad things happen to the old US of A it sure brightens her day. Maybe she was really born in Kenya!

But wait: now they have Christian being an expert over at ABC News, and that will be the last we ever hear of her. I mean old Diane Sawyer always makes the other prominent women at her network Disappear the way they do with liberals in Chile. Poof. She'll be pushed out of the plane over the Pacific before she even knows she's had engine start. That former America's Junior Miss is one tough cookie.

Well, that's about all for today's program. Next time we will talk about Katie Couric and how we think that foxy cougar ought to let her hair grow back.

Courage!

Toby Tyler
Dog

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The Perversity of Dad's New Car And its Impact on the Porsche of Robin's Dreams

"PhotoShopping is too sophisticated for this dream. We will get to the Porsche in a minute ...

My father only ever purchased one new automobile. But I didn't know, until he grew very old and began to tell the unvarnished truth, why that Oldsmobile was so unusual.

It was a 1959 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight and he bought it the same year we bought our new house. The house I'm living in now.


Dad with his new car, in front of his new house.

It was a pretty car in its day. Long and lean, like my Dad, conservative, as he was, but with a dash of red around the whitewalls and a splash of red on the interior trim that gave it a certain panache.

Unfortunately, it was a beast to drive and a bear to ride in.

It had no radio, no heater, no automatic transmission and no power steering. With its size and tonnage, even Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney couldn't have turned it on a dime, even if she had thrown her entire body weight into it.

When we were children we just laughed about its eccentricities and shivered in the back seat on cold mornings. But, since he still owned the beast when we began learning to drive, we discovered, at nearly two tons and nineteen feet long, it was somewhat difficult to steer for a one-hundred pound girl with her mitts on the tiller.

When my father was almost ninety, he finally explained why he bought such a ridiculous car. He had seen an ad in the paper for a new Olds '88 with an advertised price of--I don't know, let's say, $2000. And when he went into the dealership he said that was what he wanted. The $2000 Olds '88 in gray and white with the red upholstery trim. He had the cash in his pocket (probably in his checkbook) and was ready to go.

Car salesmen being what they are, they showed him just what he wanted on the showroom floor. But the cost was--let's say $2799. "Why does it cost that?" asked my father. "The ad said $2000."

Well, it turns out the radio, the power steering, the heater and the automatic transmission were extras, hence the difference. The old "floor mat excuse" if you know what I mean.

My father did not brook fools lightly and said he would buy the $2000 model in gray and white with the red upholstery trim and nothing else would satisfy him. The discussion went on for some time with "neither mercy nor quarter," as Mr. Churchill said about the Battle of Britain.

Finally, the salesman ceded defeat. In order to fulfill my father's expectations, the dealership had to send to Detroit for a Special Order from the factory. The UAW guys on the production line are probably still laughing. I believe this is called Pyrrhic victory.

Later, on a trip home from Lake Tahoe, where we had driven for the day to "play in the snow," my toes didn't thaw out 'til Livermore. I was ten years old and can still feel the frostbite. When I was in television and did live reports in the snow my toes always froze first.

And then there was the time my older sister went to the store for our mother on the day after she had received her driver's license. About 1/2 mile from home, she remembered she had forgotten the list Mom had given her. She stopped the Olds and attempted to turn it around and head back for home.

When we next saw her, she was weeping. In attempting to turn the Olds, she had cranked the wheel and it had taken her about five passes to get the battleship going in the opposite direction. She had accidentally taken the neighbor's mailbox with her, post, flag, and all.

Dad was disgusted--any nick on a vehicle was grounds for a one-way trip to an orphanage--so, he and my sister apologized to the neighbor, dug him a new post hole, and erected a new mailbox for him. Neither my sister nor I ever drove the car again, preferring to use our Mother's little Chevy Impala which was slower and smaller but had less chance of causing us to be disinherited by our father and allowed one to listen to the Beach Boys as one drove. My sister, by the way, has never recovered from this trauma and cannot go near a mailbox, still, without breaking into a cold sweat.

Enter the dream car.

Eventually, my father rid himself of the Oldsmomonster and bought another dream car. This one was a genuine beauty. But, he bought it used and restored it, which kept any charges of conspicuous consumption at bay from his John Knoxian ethos. Once again, when he was very old and blabbing the truth all the time, he told me he really enjoyed driving the Jaguar XKE because it had so much power people looked at him when he pulled away from a stop sign. Vanity! I didn't know until he almost died that my father had any. Who would have known? He was so quiet most of his life. Unless you came home and told him you had just knocked over a mailbox with his Olds.

Friends who knew my parents late in their lives have mentioned to me several times that my father always wanted a new Cadillac but that Mom would not let him buy one. I have corrected them on this. Dad wanted a new Cadillac, but he would not allow himself to buy one. He just couldn't allow the car salesmen to "win."

What Mom often told him, especially if I were in the room was: "You might as well just buy yourself one, Ashley. When you die your daughter here [nod toward RC] is just going to buy herself a Porsche with your money!"

And Dad would look at me with an enigmatic smile.

I do hate proving my mother right: but don't you wonder what Dad would say if I did it?

I'm thinking of ordering one in Racing Green. You know. Special Order from the factory.

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Up Next: My Dad's New Car and How It Changed My View of the Automobile Forever (Not to Mention Froze My Toes)

The 1959 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight was almost as long as our garage and is the only new car my father ever allowed himself. But he ordered it from the factory and if the car salesman is still alive who took his order, I would bet he remembers it to this day.

I love this photo because the sky is gray and white as is my father's hair, as is the car--with that dash of red on the whitewalls.

My friend Steve-the-car-guy insists I tell you the tale and how it relates to my unfulfilled dream of owning a Porsche (for starters you could put a Porsche in the trunk of the Olds, so it is bound to be easier to drive.) So shift into neutral, put on your brakes, and check this space!