Heard This Morning

Asked by a female correspondent on BBC World Radio of three women at the Republican National Convention: “Don’t you think, that with five kids, and one who will need a great deal of care through life, that Sarah Palin has too many responsibilities to be taking on such a big job as Vice President?”

I about choked on my Egg McMuffin. I think, maybe, she was asking the question to make the point, much heralded in the last few days, that Republicans would have exactly the same criticisms of a Democratic candidate should one have these kinds of issues at home… but boy did she do it poorly. I think it’s sufficient to observe that Republicans would have made much of the Palin family situation where the Democrats have refrained, and leave it be otherwise. No need to sound like them in order to make the point to them, not that I think the BBC should be in the business of scoring political points anyway. If they’d like to report on a situation where James Dobson (fer instance) lambasted a Democratic candidate for family issues, when he’s given a pass to Palin, that would be cool.

This other thing? Silly and unprofessional.

Also heard on the BBC this morning: Iraq plans to reopen Abu Ghraib as a working prison, but they also have plans to add on a museum commemorating the legacy of atrocities there (seeming unclear what role those fucking moron MPs are going to have in the museum). And I have no idea how I feel about that. On the one hand, I’ve said repeatedly that if things settle down enough in Baghdad and other things improve enough that it could actually be considered a travel destination, I would love to go back and do all the looking around I couldn’t do when I was there the first time. But I really wonder how I would feel going back to the Ghraib.

I think my fondest wish at the time, the fondest wish of a lot of us, was that the thing would be bulldozed into the ground and a park built on the ruins.

Crossposted with klech.net