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October 2-8, 2008editorial@boulderweekly.com
Gotcha!
On Saturday, Sept. 27, Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s choice for vice president of the United States, went out to grab a couple cheese steaks while she was in Philadelphia. And something incredible happened; she came in contact with actual voters. One of them, a real live constituent, asked Palin an honest question about her policies and thoughts regarding Pakistan. Her response to his question about whether or not to cross the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan was this: “If that’s what we have to do to stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely we should.” The whole thing was caught on tape.
Unfortunately for John McCain, Palin’s response appears to contradict McCain’s long-standing position of negotiating with Pakistan before carrying out attacks on terrorists within their borders. In fact, he had only the night before, during the first presidential debate, criticized Barack Obama for his positions about Pakistan — positions that are, apparently, remarkably similar to Palin’s.
In an attempt to fix Palin’s political blunder, she went on CBS Evening News for an interview with Katie Couric, chaperoned by McCain since she can’t be trusted to answer questions on her own. Their excuse: that the whole thing was a case of “gotcha journalism.”
We’re not really sure what “gotcha journalism” is, but we think that, whether it’s a voter, a reporter or the mayor of freaking Istanbul asking the questions, someone vying for the second highest position in our country should know what the fuck she’s talking about. And you’ve got to admit, we’ve gotcha on that one.
Not that we mind; her ineptitude only shines a light on McCain’s own failure to make intelligent decisions about the future of this country, making it easier for everyone to vote for the guy who’s actually got his act together.
Writer’s block
You can accuse the U.S. of a lot of things. We’ll give you that much.
International wars? Yup. Gluttonous and greedy behavior? Check. Arrogant attitudes? You betcha.
But give us a break; we’re not deficient in all arenas.
Writing, for one.
With the Nobel Prize for Literature on the verge of being announced, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary and a top award-jury member of the committee, announced some bad news for American authors: you’re not very good. Or, at least, Europeans are better.
Engdalh told the Associated Press that the United States is “too isolated, too insular” and “don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.” He went on to note “that ignorance is restraining.”
BW faves Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth were on this year’s speculative list, but after Engdahl’s comments it seems unlikely that they’ll make it to the top.
Despite this disappointment, we couldn’t help but think of how absurd and arrogant it is to disregard the U.S. in the literary world. After all, we’ve had leading figures in black literature, women’s literature and American Indian literature. There’s the Great American Novel and The Great Gatsby. And let’s not forget some pretty notable American authors: Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, John Steinbeck and Toni Morrison to name a few. We’re not sure what it’s going to take for our Swedish contemporaries to take our writers seriously. You’d think they would have to win a Nobel Prize for Literature or something… Oh, wait.
All about the jugs
In Martin County, Fla., an 18-year-old man was robbed on his way to work early in the morning on Sept. 27. But this wasn’t your typical mugging. Olmer Morales was riding his bike to work when he was stopped by a heavy-set blonde woman who grabbed his handlebars. She was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and overalls.
Once she had stopped Morales, she was joined by four thin, blonde women. Her accomplices were similarly dressed in overalls, but wore no shirts or even bras underneath. The topless blondes surrounded him and stole $100 out of his back pocket, then apparently left.
Though it was daylight when the robbery occurred, Morales says that he didn’t get a good look at any of the women’s faces, so police have been unable to locate them. Morales did say he thinks he’s seen one of the thin blondes walking up and down Southeast Driftwood Street. Police intend to investigate that lead, in hopes of getting a glimpse of what Morales saw.
We think there’s a lesson here for all the theives on Wall Street: If you’re going to take people’s money out of their pockets, you’ve at least got to distract them with a nice pair of jugs. Come on, banker people. If five dumb blondes in Florida can figure that out and you can’t, you just might be stupider than we thought.
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