From the Notebook

From Palin to Prejean

blogqz01 | 23 November, 2009 18:35

Sarah Palin is on a book tour now, and she just complained about a Newsweek cover for being sexist. I did not see why. It is true that she looks good, even sexy, and she posted like a model. So, she is simply worried that she is being portrayed as being too sexy to be taken seriously.

But it is a photo that she posted for (and must have approved of). To me, this seems to be one of the problems with Sarah Palin, focusing too much on what others do to her, than what she should do. For this matter, another former beauty queen Carrie Prejean has the same problem.

It is true that sometimes Palin was treated unfairly because she is a woman, but the fact she became the vice presidential nominee for the Republican party is also at least partially because she is a woman, and an attractive woman. Some conservative commentators mentioned the fact that about all public figures for the Republican Party that are women are attractive, and it not necessarily true in the Democrat Party. As I think about it, it does seem to be the case, and it seems to suggest that looking good might be a requirement, or necessary condition for women for the Republican party to be visible, so that it might reflect some fundamental problems with the Republican party towards women.

Sarah Palin’s selection as Vice Present candidate of Republican Party seemed to be an attempt or gesture toward women, and with no exception here, she is an attractive woman. So, her problem is not that she is an attractive woman.

Her intention or future plan is quite obvious from her reaction about the magazine cover. Understandably, the cover photo would not be objected by her if she has no further political ambitions. By this objection, her intention for higher office is clear.

But she should not be worried about the cover photo, or it is the least she should be worried about. Regardless of her future plan, having been selected as the vice presidential candidate and being an author of a best seller, she is a role model for many women and men. She ought to be worried more about what message she delivers and the effects of her example on young people.

During the campaign, Governor Palin and Senator McCain had all claimed to be maverick. The title of her book is called “Going Rogue”. While being a maverick could mean independent and individual thinking, going rogue might suggest too unpredictable thus unreliable.

We cannot judge a person from her book title, but her action seems to support this suspicion. I was shocked when she resigned her position as the governor of Alaska. It is not a good reason that because she did not want to run for re-election, so she should resign then. The people of Alaska elected her to be Governor for four years, not for the next four years. Not running for re-election could gave her more time on the job. If she just believed she cannot do a good job as the governor of Alaska, what make her think she would do a good job as the President of the United States?

Now we know that the real reason is that it will conflict with her plan for the book tour. So, it is not just that she is unpredictable, it is that she is unpredictable based on her own interests. She will do what she likes based on her own interests, not on the interests of the people who elected her.

In fact, she is not as unpredictable as she suggested. After all, she is selected as candidate for vice president because of her “conservative values”. As far as I can tell, she did not go rogue with the “conservative values”.

The idea of “conservative values” is quite attractive based on the face value. There are many traditional values that are being ignored by many people in the modern society, so preserving traditional values should be a noble task. But the problems with many people of “conservative values” are about what they want to preserve, and how to do it.

They focused on the wrong things, so that not only did they lose the big picture, they also cannot accomplished their goal. Governor Palin would not be selected to represent the “conservative values” if she supports women’s right for abortion. In fact, her decision to give birth to a child with defect was hailed as victory of the “conservative values”, and all is forgiven for the pregnancy of her teenage daughter.

No matter what side you are on, you will agree that teenage pregnancy is a problem that needs to be addressed. But Palin through the life of daughter Bristol demonstrated that her way (which is the conservative way) of addressing the problem would not work Her way of addressing the problem is celibacy, which obviously she could not even convince her daughter.

Is it a surprise that she did not know that her daughter was having sex? I wonder if she had asked the question. She obviously was presented to the public as good mother figure. But having five children alone does not make one a good mother. What happen to Bristol did seem to suggest Palin is not a good mother (as either she did not care enough to ask, or she cannot communicate or gain the trust of her daughter, so that she did not know that her daughter was having sex), at least not a good role model.

But in dealing with the problems we should not focusing on individuals, because we might miss the big picture. What happened in the case of Bristol is a good example that the policy of educating teenager celibacy alone is not a good way to target teenage pregnancy.

This is the common problem with the “conservative values”. They are firm on preventing abortion and prevent homosexual marriage, but could not effectively address real issues such teenage pregnancies, problems related to home sexuality, marriage and family relationships, etc., and the even more important problems with moral values.

It is not a coincident that Palin who had work on preaching celibacy having a teenage daughter got pregnant. It is not a coincident that a prominent priest, a senator, and a congressmen that condemned homosexual behaviors would end up conducting unlawful homosexually acts of their own. And it is not a coincident that a faith based president that trust his gut feeling rather than facts and reasons will lead the country to two troubling wars, and a near financial break down.

Setting some arbitrary rules as “conservative values” without providing real moral justification certainly confuse people, thus is lack of moral authority. As people see the arbitrary rules are being vigorously preached against their rights and freedom, they often tend to lose the respect of the entire moral system, thus some may feel they could break all the rules without feeling guilty. If God could be arbitrary, cruel and unreasonable, some people would feel that it is their own right to do the same.

The harm is not just that many will choose to break the rules, is that in order to avoid trouble, they will conceal the truth, or even lie about it. This seems to be the case with Palin’s daughter Bristol at least in some degree. It might be difficult to argue with her mother about having sex, so she simply did it and not telling her. But this kind of behavior is exactly where moral corruption started, which could help us understand the behavior of Carrie Prejean.

What will you call a person who talks in one way, but acts in another way? A hypocrite. In my view, honesty is a very important virtue, if not the most important virtue. The society simply cannot function if no one is telling the truth. Being hypocrites is even worse, because unless you caught them, you will assume that you believe what they said. If the people who preach it cannot observe it, it obviously raise the question about how realistically can the preach be effective.

Humans are animals with incredible ability to learn. But how and what they will learn cannot always be predicted and controlled. This leads to the behavior of Carrie Prejean. She gained national notice due to her comment about gay marriage, but we knew a lot more about her since.

I think anyone could agree with me now that what we heard about her since cannot be simply explained as that people are portraying her negatively, it is obviously now that her behavior is out of line.

I believe we should take this as a lesson for the conservative moment. If we did not heard what Carrie Prejean did, we would imagine that she would likely lived an at least near flawless life. After all, she was selected as Miss California, and almost became Miss America.

So, what happened next became more and more bizarre. But obviously Prejean knew what she had done. When we heard that she was blaming the wind for her topless photos, it already became surreal. But when she still acted as victim when her tape productions are about to unload, it became more that embarrassment for her, but an embarrassment for all.

Putting aside the rules of Miss America pageant, what did this say about the “conservative values”? Shouldn’t honesty be an important conservative value? Shouldn’t taking responsibility for one’s own action be an important conservative value?

As a country with Protestant tradition, what did the Bible say about physical temptation, not to mention sexual temptation? In fact, physical beauty in itself would not be consider a virtue, so having beauty queens represent conservative values also raise the questions of the state of “conservative values”.

As more and more people with “conservative values” are discovered as talked the talk but not walk the walk, more the more the youth would take it that this is an acceptable behaviors, and that there is nothing wrong with it . As we can see from Carrie Prejean, she did not seem to realize that she did any thing wrong, which is the scary part.

But the real scary part is that we can see Prejean coming from Palin. The new book of Palin seems to have a focus blaming others for whatever happened to her that she does not like. If she could not even handle the campaign staff, how could she handle all the important things of the country if she is elected to the highest office?

The interesting thing is that the behavior of Palin and Prejean is not based on traditional value at all (at least not the good kind). The behavior of deflecting any criticism and finding excuses at all time for themselves clearly indicated that they are self centered. In the end, this type of behaviors is a reflection of the attitude to put self above all others, the same source as the moral problems in the modern society.

The fact that Palin and Prejean are chosen as the representatives of “conservative values” either indicate that people will be willing to find just anyone (as women and/or youth ) who claim to support the “conservative values” as representatives, or there is an identity crisis about what is the “conservative values”. Either way, it is not good news for the “conservative values”, and not for the country.