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Sarah Palin on a motorcycle

Waiting for tonight’s vice presidential debate is like being passed by a motorcycle on the freeway. I’m going 70 and the motorcycle is going 90. This is very aggravating because nobody should be going 90 on four wheels, much less two, and if this guy cracks up right in front of me, I am going to be stuck with a dreadful nightmare for the rest of my life.

You can say jeez, that guy gets killed, and you are worrying about yourself? Well, yeah. That’s the way it is. I don’t want to see him get killed, particularly the way a person going 90 on a motorcycle down a freeway is likely to get killed. I do not want to see that. He sure won’t have to live with it, but I will.

In fact that is exactly what my brain is yelling at him when he goes by. Do you have a brain? Don’t you have parents? Who told you it was all right to go 90 on a motorcycle in front of other people on a busy freeway? Yes, he is an moron, but I hold my breath for him, and for me, until he is out of sight.

I am holding my breath for Sarah Palin today. When John McCain rolled a huge red motorcycle into her driveway that day in August, she should have said right then, “No way am I getting on that thing.” I know I would feel a lot better today, and so would John McCain, in spades no doubt. McCain isn’t just another driver on the freeway today, he’s on Palin’s buddy seat.

I don’t feel sorry for him because he should have known better. He wanted Joe Lieberman. No, said the party managers, if you want to be president you need this red motorcycle. Today, squirming on the buddy seat with Palin’s hair in his face, he might be thinking about Lieberman and feeling like he turned his back on Gandhi.

Am I sorry? No, but it still makes my hair stand on end. This GOP ticket looks just like another motorcycle I saw once, hauling through freeway traffic in San Diego, populated by the operator, who was a man; a woman, on the buddy seat behind him; a baby, facing backward, in a carrier on the woman’s back, and a rangy white dog, his hind feet wedged in the man’s crotch and his front feet on the handlebars. Does anybody that stupid deserve to crash? Yes. Does anybody want to watch it? No.

It’s only noon and I am in a flinch. I can’t get my eyes more than halfway open. She has to go 90 minutes with millions of people watching. She couldn’t go five minutes with Katie Couric without having to lean on her training wheels. Tina Fey, who after this debate may launch a second career playing Palin, was so funny on SNL when she said, “Katie, can I take a life line?”

I am worried that tonight it will be funny for five minutes and then we will have 85 minutes to go. Somebody, I think it was Judith Warner in the Times, wrote that McCain picking Palin was not only insulting, it was cruelty. I know, I could turn it off, not watch at all. But damn it, she is a candidate for the vice presidency of the United States of America. I am stuck on this freeway with 304 million people and I can’t get off.

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Mike, I am leaving this comment after the fact but I think she did better than we expected. Not great by any means but better. At least it's not Hillary but of course it wouldn't be a problem since I probably wouldn't vote democrat anyway. Spencer Taylor
PS: I heard one of the past flat top pick champions this summer in Durango, CO and he was great. Your son must be fantastic. Congradulations

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  • I am a journalist, educator, writing consultant and author, living in La Mesa, CA. I am a native of Texas, which shows in most of my work. I believe that anything is possible. When I was 35, I realized that the ideal life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the wisdom of a 65-year-old. I can still get to the imagination (as you can, simply by cutting away all the data you’ve learned from first grade on) and I now possess the wisdom of a 65-year-old. Being 65 can be unsettling – too late to plant trees and enjoy the shade – but the wisdom that comes with it is terrific compensation. I learned in 50th grade that, no matter how bad things get, there is always compensation. Now I am in the 60th grade, and I am learning things that I didn’t know in 59th. This September, I’ll start 61st grade, and learn things I don’t know now. To find what grade you’re in, start with the year you started 12th grade, and count up. My newest book is “Warbirds – How They Played the Game.” My new company is The Write Outsource, quality media writing on deadline, at www.writeoutsource.com. I am working on a book about the media, and I am about to revise my cookbook about home cooking on a tight budget, such as so many of us face at this time.
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