Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Home and Away

I'm leaving Carleton this evening to return home to Maryland, but essentially turning back around immediately to go to Chicago.

So, to tide you over, here are a few links:

Italian prosecutors are trying to send a comedian to prison for insulting the Pope. State-sponsored censorship of religious parodies is so much better than the spontaneous, riot-inducing variety.

Tim Wise on what this election (and particularly Sarah Palin) is telling us about White privilege.

Sarah Palin had no Blacks on her staff in Alaska and said she had no obligation to hire any. In her defense, I'm she'd say she would hire a qualified Black staffer. Unfortunately, none possessed the relevant qualification of being her childhood pal.

Also, Governor Palin's approvals are starting to falter.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The prospect of Sarah Palin being one 72-year-old's heartbeat from the presidency scares me as much as anyone, but let's be fair: How many black people would there be in Alaska to choose from?

PG said...

24,792 black people in Alaska by the 2006 estimate. The more relevant question is, how many black people would there be among Sarah Palin's friends to choose from?

Incidentally, I thought the attempt to quote Carly Fiorina was v. silly on the Obama campaign's part, but I thought this was an unintentionally revealing remark she made:

"So of course to run a business you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that's not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe Biden or Barack Obama are doing."

Experience in your area is a good thing to have when you want the CEO slot, but experience in Washington is apparently a bad thing to have when you want the VP slot. Why is it good to know how HP works, but bad to know how our federal government works? (Or just to know what the VP does and that it's not particularly for the benefit of Alaskans.)

Also, I wonder how Fiorina feels about McCain's sudden rush to bashing executive compensation and advocating for *binding* Say on Pay (a position more extreme than the legislation Obama sponsored), considering that she got a severance payment from HP that violated the company's cap on such payments.