Ahh ... so much has happened, but it feels like nothing at all has

In mid-September, I took a business trip to New Jersey for a couple of days. In the airport, waiting for my flight home, as I watched Sarah Palin on the terminal TV, I mentioned to my traveling companion that despite my serious disagreements with this woman's politics, I thought she had very nice clothes. An elderly man sitting nearby heard me, pointed at the screen, and said, "that's our next president." I responded, "Let's hope not!"

Well, now we all know why her clothes were so admirable. This whole story irritates me for so many reasons. Yes, she probably needed clothes for the campaign trail. I suppose the RNC thought it was permissible for them to use their donors' money to buy such clothes. If I were a donor to the RNC, I would not agree. But, seriously, if you know you're going to have to disclose these purchases, why would you have made them with campaign money? AND, why would you have made them so conspicuous? $150,000 is a LOT of money for clothes, whether they end up going to charity or not. (I can see it now — a charity accepting a Valentino jacket that cost $2,500, and then doing what with it? If they're smart, they'll sell it on eBay, and use the proceeds to buy at least fifteen nice jackets for the people they're trying to help.)

Aside from the RNC's stupidity, there were so many other ways to have solved Ms. Palin's "problem". First, even if we assume the Palins couldn't afford the $150K, I am fairly certain they could have afforded something say, one-tenth the cost. This amount would have had them nicely outfitted from stores like Nordstrom or Ann Taylor, where you can buy very nice silk and wool suits for women for about $300 - $500 each. Second, if the campaign cared so much about designer labels, couldn't the McCains have paid for this stuff? According to one estimate, Cindy McCain's outfit for the night John McCain gave his acceptance speech was worth approximately $300,000 ($280,000 of that was for her diamond earrings). Oh, wait, maybe someone suggested the idea of paying for the clothes to the McCains, but the McCains decided it was socialism.

Two things that cannot get donated to charity are the services of Ms. Palin's makeup artist and Ms. Palin's hairstylist, which cost about $30,000 for the first two weeks of October alone. How the HELL do a makeup artist and hair stylist cost that much? Ms. Palin looks naturally attractive enough to me to not need much makeup in the first place. Uggghh, this part really really irritates me because I see absolutely zero justification for it. And again, using campaign money for it?

No matter what people make of this clothing/hair/makeup mess, I wonder seriously what is going on within the Republican party. Some people see Palin as a future "star" of the party, but so many conservative columnists/pundits/whatever have come out against her. David Brooks called her a "fatal cancer". Prominent Republicans are bailing on the McCain campaign, in large part because of the choice of Palin.

The only way this election doesn't leave the Republican party in shambles is if McCain somehow wins. If he can win despite all the ridiculousness of this campaign, and despite the ridiculousness of his VP choice, it will be either the strangest mandate for an ideology I've ever seen, or the saddest comment on the state of the American people's ability to think critically about important issues I've ever seen.

The thing that really gets me, though, is that the Republican Convention railed against the "angry left", but which of the two tickets comes off as angry when you watch? If you watch Obama rallies, he discourages even booing of McCain. ("We don't need that," he says. "What we need to do is vote.") It took the press to remind McCain/Palin that they were tacitly approving of hate speech by not saying anything to the people who yelled out "kill him" when they brought up Obama.

This was the same convention that spent its time insulting "community organizers". Yeah, people who try to improve their communities, they deserve to be despised. Keeping kids off drugs should be left to the markets!

Alas, though, we still have a little more than a week to go. Who knows what might happen before the fourth of November. I've already voted, so I am more than ready for this to be over with. It'll be nice to take a deep breath again.

In other, completely unrelated news, my paper shredder tipped over last Sunday night and landed on the top of my left foot. Arrgghh, it hurt, but the doctor doesn't think it's broken. He gave me a cane, which I have learned is absolutely no fun to try and use. It was my first-ever trip to an ER, and despite the fact that the one I went to was clean and modern and the people were all very nice, I hope I don't have to go back anytime soon.