Top News of the Week Or Things that make me go BLECH

The "viking look" for the oval room perhaps?

In a maneuver that has pundits peeing in their pants, John McCain announced his GOP running mate last Friday. As anyone who has the technology of two paper cups tied together with a piece of string already knows, Sarah Palin is the barely one term governor of Alaska, former mayor of a town smaller than a Non-Evangelical Mega-Church in the bible belt of Colorado, gun totin', anti-abortion, evangelical, hockey mom. Whew, what credentials! Oh and for her foreign policy experience, well, you know her son is going to Iraq and Alaska is oh so close to Russia; she practically has tea with Putin everyday!

Many claim that this is McCain's last ditch attempt to wrangle in the votes of both former Hillary Clinton supporters and the Christian Right, a group that has in the past given him the cold shoulder. I personally agree with this analysis and I believe that the choice of Sarah Palin is a thinly veiled cry for help from a man who was crushed by his opponent in the last presidential race and desperately wants to become president of the United States before he dies, which doesn't give him a lot of time being that he's 72. Scary.

Why is the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate so important? Look above at how it made me feel and then reflect those emotions onto millions of Americans both on the left and the right! The economy is going down the toilet, we are deep into a war with an unknown enemy that is costing us billions in dollars and even more in casualties and issues like abortion and gay rights have tempers flaring on all sides. These are issues that most Americans can relate to and are affected by and whoever is the next president will be saddled with this baggage. Will they turn things around and start building our nation again or will they just repeat more of the same?

This is a perfect illustration of why this story is newsworthy, because it has impact. I would also argue that this story is newsworthy because it has all seven newsvalues; timeliness (The announcement came immediately after the DNC and immediately before the RNC), prominence (She could be our president!), conflict (There is definitely strife between these two parties!), currency (This is a presidential campaign with 9 weeks to go), bizarreness ( I mean come on, before last Friday would you have ever imagined that the headlines would read "John McCain picks gun totin' beauty queen from the frozen North for VP pick"?). Maybe proximity is a stretch, but not for all of those Alaskans that dress up like vikings and hunt bear with her!