Community service and organization

I've been avoiding this post. I don't want my emotions to lead me into posting something totally outrageous ("But Sagacious One," you might say, "you're never outrageous").

I am totally outraged by the remarks that have been made by the McBush campaign that disparage "community organizers" and generally show a gross lack of respect for in-the-trenches public service. I guess it's easy for the husband of an heiress to buy himself a congressional seat and then claim to be some sort of public service super hero. I guess when you've been mayor of a town of 5000 that employed a city manager and governor of a state with less than 700k inhabitants for a year, during which time you made no important decisions and with no community service other than that, you can claim to be some sort of super star. Wow, the bullshit that the proles will swallow. . .

But my outrage goes beyond the shear audacity of the remarks by themselves in consideration of who made them. My outrage is personal. The source of my outrage strikes at the very core of who I am.

Both of my children went to college and got great degrees. They both did extremely well in their chosen field of study. Nothing made me proud than seeing them accept their college degrees.

Both my children could be making two, three maybe four times what they are currently making monetarily, but instead they have chosen to work in jobs where they can be of benefit to their fellow human beings.

My son is 26 yrs old. He graduated a major university sommathinga cum laude and phi beta kappa. He's one of those guys who can do whatever he decides he wants to do. Academics have never in any way been a road black for him. When he graduated college, I figured MS, PhD in short order, but he had other plans. He dedicated his life to community service and organizing on the most basic level. I look at him today and the experience he has as a community organizer and political operative and I can't imagine where he'll be in 20 years. Will he be qualified to be president of the United States. Oh yea, if he wants to be. His heartfelt dedication to community service gives him qualifications that some fundamentalist right wing mythology believing housewife from some small Alaskan outback could never begin to understand.

My daughter graduated with a degree in performing arts. Her talents are broad and well honed in many areas. Instead of selfishly pursuing a career in just about anything, she decided to go to work in the area of human services for the state and federal gov't. At 30 yrs old, she is making about the same (maybe less) amount of money that I was making over 25 years ago when I was 30 yrs old. Why? Because she believes in community service. She believes that she will be a better person if she does what she is doing and she believes that by doing her work, the people she is serving will be better off. . . yes, I said "the people she is serving." That is the attitude that both of my children have toward those they help. They don't look down upon anyone in their efforts to assist them in lifting up their lives. They serve with kindness, humility and a great deal of talent.

So Ms. Palin, I could really get ugly here and lash out creatively against your pompous right wing bullshit. I could lay it out and call you for what you are in terms that would cause my mother to gasp and disown me. But I won't, because what you really are is insignificant. You are simply a talking parrot that sounds good and can deliver an ugly brutal message that appeals to the most primal and unsophisticated minds in Amurkkka. You are no more enlightened than the desperate proles you try to convinced with your Rovian hatred and mean verbiage. So I'll cut you some slack, wish you the best and hope that in Nov. you get to retreat quietly back to your little backwoods religious fundamentalist existence happy in the fact that you were able to grab your 15 minutes of fame and run with it for a couple months. . . propelled of course by a giant machine filling your mouth with the most vile of rhetorical spew and contempt for real Americans doing real service for their country.