By Leonard Doyle in Washington
At the Republican Convention, Sarah Palin quoted the mid-20th-century columnist Westbrook Pegler: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity... I grew up with those people".
So who is this character who conjured up a romantic Normal Rockwell-like image of un-lovely Wasilla, which is really little more than an ugly strip mall strung along the highway, 50 miles North of Anchorage?
Just as Wasilla is no tight-knit community of trusty American frontiers people, the man who spoke those words is not the sort of person a vice presidential candidate would be expected to revere.
Here's Robert F Kennedy Jr, writing in the Huffington Post about Westbrook Pegler:
"Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that 'some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies.'
"It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list."
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Posted by: kvotzjl ezog | 22 March 2009 at 04:38 PM
The argument is simple: all the good lines were written for her by someone else. She was just an empty vessel, mouthing what would work. All the bad lines were endorsed by her and betray her true beliefs through the reputation of the source, as revealed in the historical record. The problem is the Dems have lost the argument, and for good reason.
Posted by: Phil | 18 September 2008 at 12:28 PM
"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity... I grew up with those people".
You can agree with that perfectly good quote without supporting the writer's fascist views. Plenty of writers with differing political opinions have extolled the virtues of small towns.
Trust the metro know-it-all elite to look down upon them. Leonard Doyle and Robert Kennedy Jnr have very closed minds so wrapped up are they in their superiority to all other human beings.
Makes you wonder why so many burnt-out town dwellers are rushing to live in small towns and live the rural life.
Posted by: Janet | 18 September 2008 at 10:53 AM
Yes, and Thomas Jefferson held slaves and racist views but that doesn't mean he isn't quotable or admirable in many other ways.
Posted by: Charlie | 18 September 2008 at 09:21 AM
"subhuman dolt"? This sounds the sort of language that would emit from the mouth of a Goebbels.
Posted by: Trofim | 18 September 2008 at 08:02 AM
Craig, she might not have written the speech, but she certainly will have approved every last detail - that's how these things work. By approving it and speaking the words, she endorsed the sentiment.
Posted by: Gavin | 17 September 2008 at 11:01 PM
Thank you for this.
Apart from being the single worst VP pick in U.S. history, this cut-rate small-town Goebbels is surely one of the foulest and most self-serving specimen of the American citizenry to stalk the earth. It is astoninshing that this hayseed Savanarola should be seriously posited as a possible occupant of the second-highest office in the USA, as well as being indicative of exactly how far the collective intelligence of the U.S. citizenry has declined.
This subhuman dolt wouldn't make a qualified dogcatcher, let alone VP. If America elects her and her war-hungry senile sidekick, it will receive exactly the ruin it deserves.
Posted by: David B Livingstone | 17 September 2008 at 08:22 PM
Hilarious, but you do know that she didn't write the speech ...
Posted by: Craig | 17 September 2008 at 07:55 PM
Get a life.
Posted by: dude | 17 September 2008 at 04:01 PM