A day or two ago we learned that the 17-year old daughter of the GOP's new vice presidential candidate is in a family way. Almost immediately the campaign announced -- mark that, the campaign announced -- that the daughter would soon be marrying the child's father.
How's that for throwing your kid under a train? Other "pro-life" families might have allowed the expectant mother to decide whether to keep the child or put it up for adoption, and surely nobody with an ounce of horse sense would have decreed an old-fashioned "forced marriage." But that's just what we're going to see -- the mother of all shotgun weddings.
Never mind that the marriage doesn't have an Alaska snowball's chance in hell. There's a campaign to be won and "values" voters to be wooed. If they fall for this stunt, which I fully expect them to do, we will see depicted in this one episode the whole sorry tragedy of current electoral politics: The cynically hypocritical pandering to the willfully ignorant by harping about sizzle while throwing the steak to the dogs.
There is some hope that this might yet blow up in their faces. The supposed husband-to-be appears (from his MySpace page) to be a foulmouthed shallow thug whose favorite pastime, other than hockey, is to "hang out with the boys." Maybe he'll just say no. But you know what? The folks who want McCain to win have more money in their front pockets than it takes to buy some high-school aged punk -- and, if need be, his whole family. In the end, the victim will be the girl -- another poster child for Republican "values."
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