Culture Check

Not-Alaska's Favorite Governor

Yesterday's Anchorage Daily News published a searing editorial about Palin and the Troopergate report. Um... I don't think she's America's Favorite Governor anymore... "Sarah Palin's reaction to the Legislature's Troopergate report is an embarrassment to Alaskans and the nation. She claims the report 'vindicates' her. She said that the investigation found 'no unlawful or unethical activity on my part.' Her response is either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian....In plain English, she did something 'unlawful.' She broke the state ethics law. Perhaps Gov. Palin has been too busy to actually read the Troopergate report. Perhaps she is relying on briefings from McCain campaign spinmeisters. That's the charitable interpretation. Because if she had actually read it, she couldn't claim 'vindication' with a straight face."

The Culture Check

Campbell Brown continues to be our national gadfly. On Monday, Brown "issued a sharp indictment of the underlying prejudices of Arabs and Muslims that give rise to such toxic rhetoric in the first place: "So what if he was? So what if Obama was Arab or Muslim? So what if John McCain was Arab or Muslim? Would it matter? When did that become a disqualifier for higher office in our country? When did Arab and Muslim being dirty words, the equivalent of dishonorable or radical?... Of course he's not an Arab. Of course he's not a Muslim, but, honestly, it shouldn't matter."

Good thing Campbell's not a conservative. Those pundits who lean in the conservative direction, but who have come into the light and endorsed Obama find that there's been ...blowback. William F. Buckley's son Christopher writes that "within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there...While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of "conservative" government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case. So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven't left the Republican Party. It left me."

On the other side of things, Obama picks up an endorsement from the AFL-CIO. I guess the union's statement on 2nd Amendment rights is where we have to be on this...? Just keep saying to yourself, "Coalition-building, coalition-building...": "I want to protect two things: my job and my gun. That's why I'm supporting Barack Obama."

And on his new Chocolate News show on Comedy Central, comedian David Allen Grier points out to anyone who doesn't want to vote for a black President, that Obama is only half-black--so "for the white folks who still can't bring themselves to pull that lever, just vote for the white half."