Monday, November 30

Sarah Palin on the Dinosaur Train?

I try best I can to get the kids to watch PBS, especially in the morning. And right before it's time to go the show "Dinosaur Train" comes on. The first time I saw the opening to this show I actually cried:

Dinosaur eggs are hatching, but there's a "different" child from a strange egg. In a nest full of winged Pteranodon chicklets is hatched an orange T-Rex.

Mrs. Pteranodon shakes her head to her "different" child: "This is your family, and I'm your mom."



The parent's guide to the show pretends that the family dynamic is about adoption. Yeah, right. Part of every show I've seen resolves in the opening minutes, the problem of how to get little "Buddy" (their T-Rex differently-chromosomed child) from one place to another given that he can't fly. Anyone who has ever strapped a child into a wheelchair...these moments are about us. (I should mention there is a Mr. Pteranodon who coaches and helps the kids with their science experiments, even though he's absent from their hatching.)

Buddy's differently-abled-ness not only includes lack of wings, he's also preternaturally obsessed with making scientific hypotheses and proving them. Don't get me started.

It's a cute and lovely family dynamic, but anyone with even a cursory knowledge of evolutionary biology knows that a real Pteranodon would kick a strange egg out of her nest, let it crash and break on the rocks below, and eat the contents before any little Buddy could be adopted and taken on science field trips. I keep silence when my daughters watch this show, that as soon as sullen teen Buddy has a growth spurt, he is going to kill and eat his own mother.

All of which brings me to the 80 percent of pregnancies in America that are "unplanned," and the 90 percent of parents who, discovering they are carrying a Down's Syndrome Baby, decide to terminate the pregnancy.

And of course Sarah Palin was trapped into making a different choice with her unplanned Down's Syndrome child, not just because of her religion, but because of her fame and desire for more of it.

She actually considered aborting her unplanned pregnancy out of town, while speaking at an Oil and Gas conference?

"There, just for a fleeting moment, I thought, I knew, nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, wow, it is easy. It could be easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances. No one would know. No one would ever know."

No wonder the really fringe anti-abortion loons don't think she's one of them. She actually figured out on her own that since the morning after pill does nothing if you're already pregnant, it can't be an abortion pill.

I also wonder with a real liberal sneer on my face whether Sarah Palin's pre-Stupak private health insurance covered an out-of-state secret abortion to "change the circumstances." "It is easy" she says...

Sure Sarah, and life is a shit sandwich.

And hey, if the out-of-state clinic doesn't take Blue Cross, Sarah Palin and bread-rich women like her can charge the "changing the circumstances" to their Oil and Gas Conference per diem. No one will ever know.

Still, I feel sorry for Sarah Palin on so many levels, not the least of which because she is blind, or at least feels the need to be publicly blind, to the needs of women who are Not Her.

11 comments:

  1. Dinosaur Train was great, but one does not envy Sarah Palin.

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  2. Where the hell is Mommy Dearest when someone who has a Child because some pro-lifer guilt ed her into it, can't afford to feed and clothe said child?
    Nowhere to be seen?
    Charity?
    Do you know how hard it is to even apply anymore and then they tell you your too late or don't meet their qualifications?
    No. Palin and her ilk are not really pro-life just like they are not real Christians.
    Pro-lifers would help out the ones who end up having the baby without any kind of support system. The so-called pro-lifers now do not.
    Real Christians would want to help people who are "the least among us". You know, like how Jesus went around healing the sick and didn't charge any kind of monies or favours. He would be FOR a Strong Public Option.
    Palin is the biggest hypocrite of them all. And the MSM is right there next to her for not calling her out on her lies.

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  3. great post. and great comment mary. rich pro-lifers should be financially supporting women during unwanted pregnancies and adopting the children.

    but i guess that would require them to put their money where their big stupid mouths are.

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  4. It's my frank opinion that the entire trip back from Texas to Alaska for Palin was a 'considered abortion', given the haphazard and completely inappropriate methodology used by her to transport herself and her unborn child home when her water broke.

    So many self-inflicted opportunities for something to go awry, and yet it all went horribly 'right'.

    For these evangelicals indulging themselves at the expense of others when they're not selectively reading their holy texts and breaking commandments that they find inconvenient - If they think God really cares about how they treat other people in their quest for purity, perhaps they should begin to dread the possibility of a final judgment that deems their haughty pretenses at odds with the letter and spirit of their faith.

    ;>)

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  5. she makes me wanna scream- truly, scream.

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  6. George Carlin said it best: Pro-life conservatives aren't really pro-life, they're anti-woman. They think a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state.

    -Doug in Oakland

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  7. Darkblack - Susie Bright agrees with you completely re the trip back from Texas...she did a very good podcast on that and the Mark Sanford story a while back.

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  8. I agree with darkblack. I wondered whether she took unprecedented risks because she hoped things would go seriously wrong. Didn't work out. Guess Sarah doesn't get everything she wants after all.

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  9. The GOP needs to watch Dinosaur train!

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  10. poor baby!
    http://www.tmz.com/2009/12/01/hugh-laurie-took-a-shot-to-the-face/

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  11. taylorbad9:25 AM

    Expressing empathy for the anguish of those with whom we disagree: so rare. Too rare. On all sides.
    I often wonder about the discussion if all who waded into the public debates of a woman's choice channeled what Jesus taught: love, forgiveness and compassion.
    As a man, I have deep aversion to telling any woman what to do with her body. I can empathize with a woman who has an unwanted pregnancy, but I cannot share that experience.
    It is harder, though, for me to empathize with those men and women who would tell that woman what to do. And yet, as a member of the human family, I know I am called to empathize with those with whom I disagree. It frustrates me to know that my disagreement and my hope of prevailing in the debate are diminished if I fail to empathize with them.

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