The turning of this personal event in the life of an adolescent girl and her family into a media circus is symptomatic of the unhealthy character of American politics and of the media itself. Nonetheless, the Republicans have secretly welcomed the controversy as a means of diverting public attention from more substantive political questions and enabling it to lash out at the traditional villains of its right-wing populist demagogy—the “liberal” media and the Washington “elites.” The media and the Democrats have tip-toed around the most important political implications of the Palin nomination: the fact that one of America’s two major political parties is effectively controlled by forces that can be best described as theocratic fascists, who see her nomination as a means of imposing their ideology on the country at large. AntiWar: PALIN: ‘PRAY THAT’ OUR LEADERS ARE SENDING OUR TROOPS TO IRAQ ‘ON A TASK FROM GOD’. Democratic Underground / Salon: Best statement yet about Palin -- One day on the Greatest Page ain't long enough for this! -What's galling is this: When the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, minority teenage mother growing up in some (presumably Democratic) urban area, that pregnancy becomes fodder for lectures from conservatives about bad parenting, the perils of welfare spending and so on. But when the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, white teenager from some small town in a Republican state, that pregnancy is...a celebration of the wonders of God's magnificence--and choosing life!