“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” – Sarah Palin, September 3, 2008

Yes. Community organizers are entirely without responsibilities. Like Martin Luther King Jr. He didn’t have responsibilities, just dreams.

Like the community organizers repairing New Orleans, after the Republican White House and administration neglected to protect the city and its people from Hurricane Katrina. Who had responsibilities then?

(picture from www.solidarity-us.org)

I don’t remember seeing Sarah Palin in American communities like this one… maybe they’re too big for her?

Palin’s crowd-warmer, failed presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani also felt the need to berate community organizers–and Chicago, but we won’t get into that because it’s personal, for me.

“On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? He worked — I said — I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.” – Rudy Giuliani, September 3

Sally Kohn at the Huffington Post addressed this unprovoked, unneccessary attack in her piece this morning:

“I have the privilege of working everyday with community organizers across the country who wake up everyday burdened by the very real responsibilities of the people in the communities around them for whom our economy and our government isn’t working, and hasn’t worked, for a very long time. This election, the ranks of poor people, communities of color, factory workers, single moms, elderly Americans, janitors is swelling to include the vast majority of Americans who now realize that our economy and our democracy just is designed to benefit an elite few rather than all of us. The change voters are talking about this year builds on the shared problems community organizers have been helping people identify for decades. The change voters want builds on the solutions community organizers have been nurturing and putting into place, building the leadership of everyday Americans all across our country to demand that America work for everyone.”

I couldn’t say it better myself.

I will NOT be printing any of Palin’s direct attacks on Obama and Biden, as the majority of them were 100% false, flat-out lies, and I’m not fueling the fire. But it wasn’t just Biden and Obama and community organizers under attack, though; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada got punched around a bit too. Repeating an anecdote shared by Joe Lieberman, the turncoat former Republican now boring people to tears at a convention near you, Sarah Palin pointed out that Reid said he “couldn’t stand McCain” (ditto).

“Clearly what the majority leader was driving at is that he can’t stand up to John McCain,” she said, in that nasty, sarcastic tone. Harry Reid’s office responded swiftly.

“Anyone who knows Sen. Reid knows he never backs down when he’s fighting for what’s right and that he always stands up to John McCain when he is wrong,” Jim Manley [Reid's spokesman] said. “Shrill and sarcastic political attacks may fire up the Republican base, but they don’t change the fact that a McCain-Palin administration would mean four more years of failed Bush-Cheney policies.”

I usually shy away from the word “shrill,” as many women of my mother’s generation find it demeaning and sexist; but I applaud Harry Reid’s office choice of words. They are fitting.

A number of journalists have come out to defend the media against allegations of sexism and bias. I personally think Time Magazine’s Joe Klein summarized it well in his 2 a.m. editorial, “Angry Amateurs.”

“So what’s going on here? Two things. McCain is just plain angry at us. By the evidence presented in the utterly revealing Time interview, he’s ballistic. This is a politician who needs to see himself as the man on the white horse, boldly traversing a muddy field…any intimations that he’s gotten muddied in the process, or has decided to throw mud, are intolerable.

The second thing is more insidious: Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair–sexist (you gotta love it)–personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media–about the substance of Palin’s record as mayor and governor. Sure, there are a few outliers–and the tabloid press–who have fixed on baby stories. That was inevitable….the flip side of the personal stories that the McCain team thought would work to their advantage–Palin’s moose-hunting and wolf-shooting, and her admirable decision to have a Down Syndrome baby. And yes, when we all fix on the same story, whether it’s a hurricane or a little-known politician, a zoo ensues. But the media coverage of the Palin story has been well within the bounds of responsibility. Schmidt is trying to make it seem otherwise, a desperate tactic.”

Politico’s Roger Simon had a humorous take on things, in his op-ed, “Why the Media Should Apologize.”

“We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.”

Sarah Palin conveniently left out the following talking points in her little performance:
- That she actually SUPPORTED the Bridge to Nowhere before she got elected Governor
- That she fired a state trooper for refusing to fire her estranged-ex-brother-in-law
- That she may have gotten rid of a chef and an airplane, but she took $27 million in federal earmarks as mayor of Wasilla, at the time population ~ 6,000
- That there are 42 METH LABS in Wasilla, one for every 142 residents Palin “served” as Mayor
- Why it’s not okay to talk about her pregnant, unwed 17-year-old, but it is okay that John McCain called Chelsea Clinton ugly in 1998, when she was only 17.

I encourage the media, Democrats, community organizers, people who live in cities and not small towns, and everyone else to continue exposing Sarah Palin for the corrupt, fundamentalist criminal she is. Unrelentingly question every decision that she has made. Unrelentingly question John McCain’s decision to choose her as his running mate. The Republicans made it clear that they are only seeking the votes of the small town, registered-Republican Christians.

You made one big mistake, Sarah. You may have been elected Governor by around 150,000 Alaskans, but there aren’t nearly as many hockey moms in the rest of the United States. Thank God.