Unless you have been living under a rock, you must know that McCain chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Recently, she gave an interview with Katie Couric that has been panned, especially on SNL with Tina Fey doing a dead ringer of her in the interview. I am going to reserve judgement on this, but please watch these and let me know what you think. Here is the actual interview and here is the SNL sketch. Lord, I can’t wait to watch the VP debate.

Another note on Palin: my sister emailed me this excellent article and I have to share its brilliance:

Sarah Palin and the Assault on Merit
by Jonathan Zimmerman — September 22, 2008

This commentary argues that the nomination of Sarah Palin represents a direct attack on long-standing ideals of merit in American history.

In the 1990s, the Chicago Bulls won six NBA championships. Their formula was simple: Michael Jordan plus a decent supporting cast equals victory. At the end of every game, the ball was in Jordan’s hands. And the Bulls almost always came out on top.

Were the Bulls being "elitist" by channeling their entire offense through Michael Jordan? Of course they were. Jordan was the best basketball player on earth, plain and simple. He had won the right to carry the Bulls, and–even more–the Bulls needed him to do it. Anything less would have weakened their chances.

So there’s nothing wrong with "elitism," per se, so long as it’s based on merit. The problem arises when people become elites without earning it, by the luck of birth and wealth. Your station in life should reflect your skill and effort, not your inherited status.

Unless, of course, you want to be our vice president.

The nomination of Sarah Palin represents a direct and unprecedented assault on the American ideal of merit. Of course, Palin’s handlers insist that she has the experience, talent, and ability to serve as the nation’s second-in-command. Clearly, though, Palin was nominated because of who she is—a hockey mom, a hunter, and so on—rather than what she has done.

Would you select an accountant because his son plays hockey? Would you choose a doctor because she can kill a moose? I doubt it. But plenty of voters seem ready to make Sarah Palin their vice-president, simply because she seems to be like them.

To be sure, Americans have always wanted their leaders to possess a common touch. Abraham Lincoln split rails, after all, and Theodore Roosevelt went all the way to Africa to shoot lions. Heck, even President Bush wears cowboy boots and clears brush.

Most of this was political theater, of course, as Ivy-educated patricians like Roosevelt and Bush tried to affect a regular-guy demeanor. Americans have always suspected inherited wealth, and rightly so: it runs counter to the self-made ideal, whereby each of us rises or falls depending on individual ability, dedication, and persistence.

That’s why Thomas Jefferson hoped that America would develop a "natural aristocracy," a new generation of talent to lead the new nation. Otherwise, he warned, we would be governed by "an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth." Better to be ruled by the gifted few, Jefferson wrote, than by the fortunate rich.

Since then, Americans have been arguing about which is which. How can you pick out the natural aristocrats among us? How many of them simply appear talented, because of their social advantages? And how many poorer folk have the ability to rise to the top, if only they get a little break?

Writing in the midst of the Great Depression, Harvard president James B. Conant thought he found the answer: standardized testing. As Conant well realized, many Harvard students got into the college solely because of their wealth or last name. The trick was to devise examinations that would separate people with true merit from those who simply had privilege. And so the Standardized Achievement Test was born.

We’ve had plenty of debate about that, too. What does this test really measure? How should it be weighed next to grades and other accomplishments? Does it discriminate against minorities?

The last question raises the specter of affirmative action, which has polarized our country for the past forty years. If a given group has suffered prejudice, some Americans argued, it should receive a special advantage in college admissions, job hires, and so on. Nonsense, said the other side: no matter what happened in the past, your future in life should never rest on the color of your skin.

But here’s the larger point: in all of these debates, both sides embraced the idea of merit itself. The dispute lay in the measurement of ability, not in its significance. Nobody questioned whether skill matters, or whether society should recognize and reward it.

Nobody, that is, until this election cycle. In the smiling face of Sarah Palin, we see something fresh and truly remarkable in American history: the anti-merit candidate.

Some people have gamely tried to depict Palin as a kind of Jeffersonian natural aristocrat, a sharp diamond plucked out of the Alaskan rough. More commonly, though, they have embraced her for her lack of special talent, ability, or knowledge. There’s nothing special about Sarah Palin, and that’s precisely what is so new–and so special–about her.

And that brings us back to "elitism," which Palin’s defenders inevitably invoke whenever anyone questions her qualifications. The very charge shows how far we have strayed from the meritocratic ideal. It ignores the difference between deserved and undeserved elitism, suggesting that any claim to high status is somehow suspect. And it makes a mockery of our entire government, implying that anyone among us is good enough to lead it.

In one of his best-known quips, the conservative icon William F. Buckley said he would rather be governed by the first 300 names in the Boston phonebook than by the faculty of Harvard University. In the end, though, Buckley didn’t want either group in charge. He rejected the faculty’s left-liberal politics, of course, but he also recoiled at the notion of any average Joe at the helm.

He was, in short, an elitist. And so am I. In a time of economic turmoil at home and enormous peril overseas, we need extraordinary—not ordinary–leaders. Woe to America if we fall victim to the seduction of Sarah Palin, who tricks us into thinking that Everyman—or Everywoman—is good enough for us all.

Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record, Date Published: September 22, 2008
http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 15383, Date Accessed: 9/29/2008 10:08:50 AM

Ben & Jerry’s, please cover your ears. Don’t go changing no matter what PETA asks you to do!! That’s right, B&J have been pleaded upon by the animal rights organization to replace the cow’s milk in their ice cream with… human breast milk. 

Let that sink in for a minute…

PETA sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of ice cream icon Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc., urging them to replace the cow’s milk in their products with human breast milk. PETA’s request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow’s milk in the food he serves.(Uh, is he telling his customers that?) PETA points out that such a move on their part would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health at the same time.

Here is PETA’s letter to Ben & Jerry:

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I’d like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry’s. Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry’s replaced the cow’s milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers–and cows–would reap the benefits.

Using cow’s milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer’s health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America’s leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow’s milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease–America’s number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can’t produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to 17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can’t even turn around.

The breast is best! Won’t you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow’s milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President

Now, personally, I’m one for soy milk in my cappuccino, but, my friends, breast milk in my little tub of Cherry Garcia is going too far. PETA, who often do good things-if not in a zealotly, raging laser beam eyeball sort of way– insists that using human milk instead of milk from cows will decrease the suffering of dairy cows. I don’t like to think of the cows suffering just for our lactose-filled pleasure, but I am addicted to dairy. So, I try to combat this by purchasing organic, farm raised dairy products whenever I can. I could see a reasonable request might be to have B&J use soy, rice, or tofu to make their ice creams, but this is just ridiculous.

Tee hee.

Don’t let anyone say that it’s just a game
For I’ve seen other teams, and it’s never the same
When you’re born in Chicago, you’re blessed and you’re healed
The first time you walk into Wrigley Field

Our heroes wear pinstripes, heroes in blue
They give us the chance to feel like heroes too
Whether we’ll win, and if we should lose

We know someday we’ll go all the way
Yeah! Someday we’ll go all the way

We are one with the Cubs, with the Cubs we’re in love
Yeah, hold our head high as the underdog
We are not fair weather but fall weather fans
We’re like brothers in arms in the streets and the stands

There’s magic in the ivy and the old scoreboard
The same one I stared at as a kid keeping score
A world full of greed I could never want more

Someday we’ll go all the way
Yeah! Someday we’ll go all the way

And here’s to the men and the legends we’ve known
Teaching us faith and giving us hope

United we stand and united we’ll fall
Down to our knees the day we win it all

Yeah, Ernie Banks said, "Oh, let’s play two"
Or did he mean 200 years?
In the same ballpark, our diamond, our jewel
The home of our joy and our tears

Keeping traditions and wishes made new
The place where our grandfathers’ fathers they grew
A spiritual feeling if I ever knew
And if you ain’t been, I am sorry for you

And when the day comes, when that last winning run
And I’m crying and covered in beer
I’ll look to the sky and know I was right

To think someday we’ll go all the way
Yeah! Someday we’ll go all the way
Yeah! Someday we’ll go all the way…