Letter to Chicago Tribune on Sarah Palin

Sunday, September 14, 2008 9:36 PM

Chicago Tribune Voice of the People

Gentlepeople

In her Monday, September 8, 2008 OpEd Katha Pollitt says John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is a "blatant pander for the women's vote."

What a wonder someone still uses the cliched phrase "pander for the women's vote" after eight years of non-stop women's vote pandering by an up-to-now prominent Democrat woman.

Then Pollitt says "After a stint as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of fewer than 8,500, and barely two years as governor of a state with more grizzly bears than people.... She makes Barack Obama's résumé look as thick as Winston Churchill's.

Ms. Pollitt, how long is a stint? Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla for six years, and worked up to that job with four years on the City Council. And why do you use the fuzzy guess of Wasilla having "fewer" that 8,500 population. You're too busy to take two minutes to look on page 605 of the 2008 World Almanac and see the town's 2006 population as 9,236?

You ignore Palin's two years between mayor and governor as chairman of somthing called the "Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission" which must be important in the state that supplies 15% of our oil.

You say Palin is "governor of a state with more grizzly bears than people." The world Almanac comes thru again showing an Alaska population of 670,000 humans, but an easy computer search finds that there are about 60,000 wild grizzly bears in all of North America, with 35,000-45,000 in Alaska. Why would you make such and outlandish, easily checked claim?

And that resume that looks as thick as Winston Churchill's? Well, there is all that international experience from four crucial pre-teen years slogging through the mud of Indonesia. And then there's two pages thick of 8 years in the Illinois state senate, a job requiring less skill than a third string Chicago Bears jock strap attendant, but without the responsibility. And then of course, the years spent as a junior precinct captain, I mean Community activist. And Obama's vast writing output: two autobiographys, that piker Churchill wrote only one.

With all this attention on the Republican VP pick, how about that Democrat pick, what's his name, the one with all that "in-depth international knowledge" from 30 years in the US Senate, and all he has to show for it is a lousy t-shirt covered with plagiarized statements of a British Socialist?

The US newspaper industry is having a hard time what with the internet and all, but the Chicago Tribune seems to be more than holding its own, in spite of printing drivel like Katha Pollett.

Arnold H Nelson
5056 North Marine DriveChicago 60640
ah_nelson@yahoo.com