Calling in handy

No rant today - I'm helping my father-in-law install a new tub surround in my house. And by "helping," I mean in the sense that I'm standing there looking vaguely confused while he does all the work, and occasionally lifting something.

Real quick, though, I wanted to point out how much I enjoy the letters to the editor in the Toledo Blade decrying the vicious, hateful, hurtful, and totally unfounded attacks on Sarah Palin. Funny, none of these righteously indignant dickweeds seemed too upset over the last nineteen months of baseless bullshit thrown at Obama -- or the treatment Hillary Clinton got in the media.

There's no one more fervent than the recently converted, though, and since the Republicans seem to have invented women's suffrage a week and a half ago, we should forgive them for being so passionate about it right now.

It could be that I don't pay enough attention to the news (although lately, that and diaper-changing seem like my only hobbies), but isn't it a little queer that the swell of "how dare you?" Palin defense is not only louder and greater than, but seems to have started before, anyone else in the media actually "attacked" her?

It's brilliant in its own stunted, depraved, Karl-Rove's-bondage-basement way: whip the base up into a froth about these imagined slights against poor, poor folk-hero Sarah, and then when someone says "what about abuse of power?" or "what about lying about earmarks?" or "what about the fact that she doesn't know what the Bush doctrine is?" no reply is necessary. You're just "attacking" Our Sarah, so you and your questions are beneath contempt.

Lastly, watching Charlie Gibson quiz her yesterday was like watching someone in an interview for a job. One they have no hope of getting. Stalling for time, dancing around the lack of answers... And this was Charlie fucking Gibson. I'd give a limb to see her up against Cronkite in his prime -- or hell, now.

I guess I'm ranting after all. Time to go fix the tub.

Texas, stay safe.