http://www.counterpunch.org/Sarah Palin and the Good Book
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Being well schooled in scripture, Sarah Palin is certainly familiar with the Book of Kings, Chapter 1, verses 1-4 and I’m sure they have crossed her mind in recent days:
Now king David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.
Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.
So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag a Shunammite, and brought her to the king.
And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not.
On Thursday night John McCain certainly looked stricken in years, tottering through his interminable speech, and whatever heat now nourishes him in political terms comes from Sarah, not Cindy whose inner thoughts may perhaps be more directed towards the yoga instructor in San Diego reckoned by some in the yoga community in that city to be a source of consolation to the Hensley beer heiress.
McCain’s speech seemed to be me to be pretty much of a dud. It may have been watched by 40 million, but how many were awake by the time McCain reached his surprise ending, namely that in the service of his country he had experienced a terrible ordeal in a prison camp in what was once, in a long forgotten war, known as North Vietnam.
Since his speech was billed as “reaching out to the undecideds”, McCain did not pledge nuclear Armageddon, a prospect the biblethumpers await with equanimity, even enthusiasm. His references to Georgia were cursory and he even dared to insist that he prefers peace to war, which is exactly the sort of outrageous sentiment one would expect to hear from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Particularly hallucinating was McCain’s invective against the corruptions of Washington and Big Government – one of the two big enemies identified by Republican speechwriters in St Paul – the other being the national press which has spent twenty fawning years helping McCain cultivate the myth of his senate career as a maverick.