The Manchurian Candidate

I'll copy and paste Andrew Sullivan's entire post from his blog. This is really worrying, and we should all be alarmed. I think what worries me the most is that the Republicans are masters of propaganda. They sell the American public on so many horrible people and mask their true selves so very well. Sarah Palin is not a soccer mom who got lucky. She is not one of you. She is one of them.

This is precisely what the stormtroopers in St. Paul were guarding. And now we may be about to hand the keys of the White House to a complete unknown. What we already know is alarming and dangerous. If McCain/Palin emerge as victors, you may find yourself begging for the good ol' days of George W. Bush.

Anyway, enough of my silly alarmist warnings. It's probably getting old by now, so I'll let Andrew Sullivan explain why you should be worried:

This is incredible, totally incredible. A vice presidential candidate isn't going to be available to the press for two weeks? Two weeks? In September. We have this total unknown who could be president of the United States next January. And she's in hiding for two weeks. Chris Matthews on this clip says that this is fine. Has he lost his mind? She needs to be in front of the press now. The United States and the world cannot have this total unknown foisted on the presidency without any serious vetting and without any press interaction. This is absolutely third world. Since when is the governor of a state given two weeks in hiding?

The sexism that implies that someone cannot stand up to reporters because she is a woman is appalling. This entire pick, of course, is incredibly sexist, and the handling of her in the last week the most sexist double standard I have ever seen in American politics. Can you imagine Hillary Clinton saying she wasn't going to answer questions for two weeks? Or Margaret Thatcher? Or Kay Bailey Hutchison? Or Elizabeth Dole? And none of these women were ever as close to global power as Sarah Palin now is. This is getting to Manchurian Candidate levels of creepiness. It's deeply sinister and slightly terrifying.