Urban Thought Collective

I watched Sarah Palin address the Republican National Convention. “The most peculiar Vice Presidential pick there’s ever been,” according to Republican Ben Stein. I heard a great deal about her life, her family and one liners directed at Barack Obama and Joe Biden. She was bold, aggressive, arrogant, condescending, confident and clearly divisive. In less than one week this became one of the most anticipated television events, and I saw nothing to dissuade my belief, that this is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on America.

I’m voting for Barack Obama.

However, this isn’t about my guy. This is really about America and John McCain. Has he just gone plum loco? Trailing in the polls and now, clearly desperate, he wants to have a Vice President he met once, who just got a passport last year, who in July said she didn’t know “exactly what the Vice President does all day”, who has no national security or foreign affairs experience, and governs over one our most remote states with a population of Austin, Texas a heartbeat away from sitting across the table with Vladimir Putin to negotiate the proliferation of Nuclear Arms and Bio terrorism. This would be funny if it wasn’t REAL!

When I say this is propaganda I mean it in the truest sense of the word. The Republican Party is presenting her as a hockey mom, a wife and mother, with conservative family values. All designed to make all of us forget we have cognitive powers and the capacity for critical thinking. To ignore the facts that if Sarah Palin put an exploratory committee to run for President of the United States she’d have never made it to the stage with any of the bonafied Republican contenders.

President Bush is now providing all the candidates with National Security briefings. Only one person had no national security clearance at all. Sarah Palin.

The McCain camp says they vetted Sarah Palin thoroughly. They knew that she was under legislative investigation and her teenage daughter was pregnant…and still picked her.

You all know I believe the children of famous people are off limits. So I have nothing to say about the Bristol Palin.

But it’s the conservative right that gets on their self righteous high horse, slamming the African American community for the number of pregnant teenage girls. They love to condescend and lecture how it’s a function of absentee fathers and lack of family values. Well here you have a white, small town, privileged two parent house hold, which preached abstinence and shunned sex education and birth control with a pregnant teenage daughter.

Where’s all the fire and brimstone? Where’s all the condemnation? Where’s the “shame” that they say is lacking in our community?

Not only have they gone silent, they let their hypocrisy go deeper. They asked for privacy, and then they put Bristol Palin out on the campaign. She’s five months pregnant, yet magically the week after Sarah Palin is picked for Vice President, Bristol’s teenage boyfriend is now her “fiancé.” They even brought HIM out on the campaign!

Remember when Ross Perot was running for President? He seemed like a can’t miss “breath of fresh air.” Then he picked Admiral James Stockdale as his running mate. He was an accomplished man and distinguished veteran and winner of The Medal of Honor. However he was completely out of politics and advanced in age. When he famously remarked in the Vice Presidential debates that he didn’t hear a question, because his hearing aid wasn’t turned on, Ross Perot was done as a serious candidate.

John McCain could have picked anyone. He could have been true to his word and stuck to the “experience” argument. But when you’re sixty days away from Election Day and trailing, all bets are off. Well after tonight, so is the veil of “Straight talk” and honesty.

Damn shame.

Darryl Bell is an actor and Chicago native, best known for his role in classic TV series “A Different World” and Spike Lee’s “School Daze.” His unique television commentary is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.