Some reactions to Palin: blackfolk, my mother, my godmother, etc.

I have been doing my most to tell blackfolk I know or bump into about Sarah Palin's calling Aleuts and other native Alaskans "snow Arabs' and her comment "So Sambo beat the bitch" when she found out that Obama beat Clinton in the Democratic primary.

Most recently, when I was waiting to board an Amtrak train on Friday morning, there was this college-age black guy ahead of me in line, and ahead of him a short and kind of fat 30-year old black woman, and when the overhead tv started showing clips of Sarah Palin's one ABC interview from the previous night, the lady started shaking her head all critically, and when I was like, "Not a fan?", she was like, "Nuh-uh, not really," and the college-age black guy shrugged and was like, "Who is this woman," so I took that cue and got all fervent and was like, "Want to hear some bullshit?".

First, I told them about the Palin-supported Wasilla policy on billing raped women for their forensic kits - "So, I was like, not only do you get raped, but you get charged $1200 if your insurance doesn't cover it, and of course everyone has insurance!" - but that didn't get much effect, so I went on to topic number two and told them about Sarah Palin calling native Alaskans "snow arabs", and when the black woman started shaking her head and being like "my", I was like, "And that's not all," and told them about her "So Sambo beat the bitch" comment. The woman was like, "Where did you read that?", so I told her, and since by that time we were boarding the train and she had to get on a different car since she was going to a different town, she squeeze my arm and was like, "Thank you."

Also, my one older black lady friend who works at the library sent me a forward about how Palin is a weird VP pick and guarantees victory to Obama.

Anyhow, when I my mom met me at the train station outside Detroit, we started talking politics, and I was like, "You know, black people don't seem to like Sarah Palin."

"Good for black people," my mom was like,

"Why?", I was like.

"Because that means black people have a handle on it, Palin's a joke," my mom was like.

My godmother who is really erratic - she's more of a dem, but really did not like Obama since she's averse to a lot of black Detroit politicians who she thinks are race-baiters; she's also a little questionable on race sometimes herself, I remember her being once like, "Oh I always knew there was something a little off with that woman, then I found out she had married an Arab" -- got going on Palin during our visit, too, which both me and my mom found surprising.

First, though, my godmother had talked about this farewell party for a spacey teacher from her school, this choir teacher was leaving her job to go to Phoenix for sunlight and to write songs.

("I'm already cold," she told my godmother, who wondered what the fuck was up with this girl since she didn't have a job to go to and really needed health insurance.)

"She has that one condition, you know," my godmother was like, "They had to do all these surgeries and took out her brain and realigned her skull since she was born with that one thing where, you know, her face is all effed up, her face looks slanted and you just want to go up and adjust it."

After that, when Palin got brought up, my godmother was like, "That woman could not run a fucking nothing! And did you see that poor retarded baby at that convention, up on stage so late at night in such a noisy hall with all those people around? It broke my heart, what was that woman thinking?", and my mom said she had thought the exact same thing right away too when she saw a video clip of Palin's speech and the camera had panned to her family. Then both my godmother and my mom said that how could the family manage when Palin's husband works too, and that the Obamas had it arranged better where Michelle is staying home now and her mom comes to help too when Michelle has to be on the campaign trail, and that that family seemed to have it a lot more together with figuring out child care arrangements around campaigning.

My mom's other friend is on the liberal side but occasionally votes Republican (her husband makes a lot of money), and she's never been hugely pro-choice, but Sarah Palin's not being for abortion in cases of rape and incest makes her completely question her sanity.