Embossed.

I am embossed with the scar of your love,

longing,

Plated in desire.

Hold me as your vessel,

waiting.

Love me again

love me again

Sarah Palin reminds me of 35 year old newbie strippers.

She’s on the last end of her looks, flirting and winking her way to political gain, and not sure how long it will last.  In this she is similar to strippers over 30 who are working the remnants of their milf-ness in an environment where it pays off in more than an occasional compliment or whispered remark from guys around town. 

And much like many strippers over 30, she has the vibe of someone who’s figured out she can hustle her looks just this way a bit too late and is rushing to grab whatever access those looks can get her before they disappear completely. 

And yes, I am being a bit extravagant, but the high number of mostly male conservative Christian types who ‘just like’ her inspires this kind of post.  Of course such men think ’she could be sitting in the pew right next to me!’  Same kind of guys who dismiss their own sexual sins while loudly proclaiming teh gay is the worst sexual sin evar. 

And like an alarming proportion of strippers, she is cunning, grifter-fashion, rather than intelligent.  I leave the extrapolations to any readers that turn up.

Sarah Palin is a Tribal Fertility Totem

I am writing this on what is technically Election Day, partly because I am not sure Palin will hold national interest beyond that point.  But I think it’s a point that’s gone unrecognised consciously among many, including many conservatives who ‘just like her, darn it’. 

One of the tragedies of American Christianity is that the strains best known to the larger public tend to be focused on something akin to a cultural idea of Christianity, rather than sound Biblical doctrine.  It revolves around going to church with people who look like you and think the correct things, vote the correct way, and so forth.  There isn’t much Bible in this sort of culturally-derived pseudo-Christianity. 

Sarah Palin represents one of these tribes of cultural Christians– the (mostly) white Pentecostal tribe.   Her relative youth and remarkably extended fertility are beacons to members of this tribe.  McCain selected an enchanted symbol with layers of meaning to one modestly sized tribe. 

In some ways, pointing out her incompetence at governing or her greed for power or her flirting with powerful men and then turning on them is missing the point of her as an exercise in throwing bread to the masses.  If she were competent, adept at interviews and all that, she wouldn’t be serving out the entirety of her role as a totem of fertility– a white woman who can pump out the future white race while still looking good without surgical enhancements.

When your primary role is to be a marker and comfort, actually being able to do the job doesn’t matter.  She was fruitful and multiplied, while being married.  That makes her the right sort of white Christian lady.  Plus she bore a Down’s kid and didn’t abort, which grants her additional ‘authentic’ symbolism.  The men who like her feel that way because she’s the ‘right kind’ of Christian wife, fecund and still with a decent figure.  And since she looks good, she must be a good person at heart. 

Her presence on the ticket makes this white Pentecostal tribe of American Christians feel like their version of Christian culture is fertile, ripe, waiting to burst forth and shower the world with its awesome.  But it’s just a symbolic gesture.  The totem is hollow, and once again, the cultural (rather than Biblical) focus of their Christianity means that they fall before her as to an idol and will be shocked and hurt when the fertility totem can’t bring the crops…or win the election.