Good Grief

That's all I can say.

Sarah Palin's (big) mouth (a.k.a. Meghan Stapleton) is at it again, releasing a statement today that can only be considered more stupid than her last statement - and that one was pretty dumb. I did not do a blog post here on the statement released several days ago, but several other bloggers did, for example, here, so I recommend you take a gander.

However, today's statement was so ridiculous that I cannot let it pass. I just can't. I'm helpless in the face of the sheer stupidity. (And remember - this person gets paid for saying things like this. She probably sits around and thinks and after, oh, two or three hours of thinking she comes up with something profound. Like this one.)

Several days ago this caricature appeared on the Internet.

The original source for this apparently was a blog called "Crooks and Liars." Now this looks like David Letterman to me, and the tags on the what I *think* is the original posting of the cartoon SAY "David Letterman." However, according to numerous people this is NOT David Letterman cradled tenderly in Gov. Palin's arms, but Eddie Burke, a conservative Alaska radio talk "personality."

It doesn't matter who it is supposed to be. The fact is that it's a political cartoon and it's damn funny.

(Update: I have just figured out the sequence here. The original posting was this cartoon shown above. No objections or comments came from the Palin camp at that time. Then, an Alaskan Blogger, Celtic Diva, as part of a fundraiser, created a spoof of the cartoon, in which she did used a photoshopped photo in which the face of Eddie Burke was used. The original image was David Letterman and it was a cartoon; the image that Miss Meg issued a statement regarding was the photo.)

But not to Meghan the Mouth. She posted the following statement to Sarah Palin's Facebook page:

Recently we learned of a malicious desecration of a photo of the Governor and baby Trig that has become an iconic representation of a mother's love for a special needs child.

The mere idea of someone doctoring the photo of a special needs baby is appalling. To learn that two Alaskans did it is absolutely sickening. Linda Kellen Biegel, the official Democrat Party blogger for Alaska, should be ashamed of herself and the Democratic National Committee should be ashamed for promoting this website and encouraging this atrocious behavior.

Babies and children are off limits. It is past time to restore decency in politics and real tolerance for all Americans. The Obama Administration sets the moral compass for its party. We ask that special needs children be loved, respected and accepted and that this type of degeneracy be condemned.

Now, we digress to a bit of etymology. "Desecration" comes to us from Latin, as so many of our best words do. It comes from "de," which means to do the opposite of, and "secrare," which means to make holy. (Sacred comes from this same Latin word, of course, though that word comes to English via a slightly different path.)

ONLY a religiously recognized holy image or place can be desecrated. Surely she misspoke. Surely in the heat of the moment she said "desecrate" when she really meant "change" or "photoshopped," right? But no, because Ms. Stapleton actually continues this analogy of holiness when, in the same paragraph, she uses the word "iconic." An icon is also a religious picture of a holy person.

So there we have it: an iconic representation of "mother and child" has been desecrated. Don't they burn people at the stake for that? Maybe in Alaska.

If this weren't all so sad, it would be hilarious. Obviously, having failed to keep herself in the public's eye any longer via the Willow/Bristol/David Letterman brouhaha, Sarah Palin is turning to another "offense," this one involving another child, Trig.

Oh, excuse me. The special needs child Trig. And we know that he is special needs child Trig because they tell us he is special needs child Trig three times in three paragraphs.

"The idea of someone doctoring the photo of a special needs baby is appalling." No it's not. This is a political spoof and a funny one. Trig is not in the cartoon or the photo. Trig's clothes might be, but Trig is not. Whether you are talking about the original cartoon or the subsequent photo, someone else's head is on a baby's body being held by a Sarah Palin.

But again we have the pious stand: Babies and children are off limits.

Well, they might be now, but they weren't when Sarah Palin needed to use her seventeen year old daughter to prove that she, Sarah, had to be Trig's mother, instead of, oh, releasing a birth certificate. They weren't the countless times Sarah Palin trit-trotted onto a stage in spike heels, carrying a five month old (oh, excuse me, special needs five month old) like a sack of (special needs) potatoes then passing him off like a (special needs) football.

But that, I guess, was then and this is now. And now, given the opportunity to rile the rabble with yet another imagined slur to yet another Palin child, (this one special needs - Did we mention that?) into the fray they go.

Good Grief.