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Saturday, 15 November 2008 |
A few days ago, I received an email from a person I have known for 20 years. An English professor, photographer, author, and translator of works by an obscure blind Italian poet, she is the only woman of letters I know personally, a lady of cultivation, sensitivity and sophistication. She has spent most of her adult life at the head of a college classroom and, yes, meets the stereotypical expectation -- staunch and proud liberal. But you cannot put such a label on her empathy for others -- her students, minorities, immigrants, women whose talents have not been given full opportunity to flourish. She is one of the nicest people I know.
That is why I was stunned at the email whose contents my friend forwarded from the Huffington Post (or from someone who forwarded them to her from Huffington). With an Elizabeth Browning poem ("How Do I Love Thee?") as the inspiration and a mocking tone throughout, the article thanked Sarah Palin for trashing the Republican ticket. Change the name Palin to some equally orthodox lefty, and you could imagine the piece penned by Limbaugh or Hannity. (Okay, maybe not them since they probably never heard of Browning, but you get the point.)
A day before the election, such satire would have seemed clever and deserved, with a practical point -- keep a "whacko" and a political chameleon from lurching their way to the White House. But a couple of days beyond the election, in the afterglow of victory, it was pointless and mean-spirited gloating. When I read it, I thought back to those awful pictures from Abu Ghraib, and what smug superiority and victory can beget. But most of all, the Huffington article totally missed the point of the historic election of a man whose personal behavior and every word tilts in an entirely different direction.
It makes you wonder what kind of change the folks at the Huffington Post believe in.
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