Irony is not a mineral rights issue

From CNN's "Political Ticker":

"[Sarah] Palin herself has said that Hillary Clinton had been 'whining' about sexism during the primary season. 'When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism, or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, "Man, that doesn't do us any good, women in politics, or women in general, trying to progress in this country, " ' she said at a media forum earlier this year."

I'm beginning to get a faint whiff of hope again, after a week of near-despair over the effectiveness of McCain/Palin's "the sky is orange, and if you say it's blue, you're disrespecting women and shitting on the flag" strategy. The media, after spending a year as McCain's lapdog despite every Republican talking head around pissing on their collective leg, is finally lumbering around to the fact -- not the "spin," not the "debate," but the fucking fact -- that almost every selling point about Sarah Palin is a crass equivocation.

McCain can't even go on The View -- the TV journalism equivalent of a pillow fight with Elmo -- without getting nailed to the wall about the mudslinging and lies he's dishing out, and the shrill, hypocritical bleating of the right over a "smear campaign" that exists either on the utter fringes of lefty blogdom, or in Karl Rove's shriveled, unspeakable imagination. That's progress. That's sanity reasserting itself.

I have no doubt that Palin is going to continue to insist that she's being picked on. I also have no doubt that the li(n)es about "we sold the jet on eBay!" and "I fired the chef!" are going to keep getting thrown out to the knuckle-draggin'est crowds (whose numbers the campaign has been exaggerating!!! It just gets better and better!) on their whistles-stop tours of guns-and-bitter country. After all, the McCain/Palin ticket will always have one great unspoken selling point -- if you squint hard enough, and make enough ridiculous justifications, you can pretend you're avoiding Obama for reasons other than race.

But I'm starting to believe again, for the first time in a little while now, that reason and sanity may just take the upper hand. We can maybe, possibly, elect the guy who went to Harvard and wants to fix our educational system, and not the batshit hockey mom and the magical philandering flip-flopping granddad who wants the world to get off America's goddamn lawn.