December 21, 2009 6:27 PM
Obama and Palin - a contrast in personal histories
From the American Thinker (HT:Tripp):
November 27, 2009
The Competing Narratives of Barry and Sarah
By Jack CashillIn the spring of 1964, Sarah Heath, then just three months old, flew into backwater Skagway, Alaska (population 650) aboard a 1930s-era Grumman Goose to start a new life with her parents, brother, and sister.
At that same time, in America's other new outlier state, Hawaii, two-year-old Barry Obama was just getting used to a fatherless existence in the otherwise-comfortable world his white grandparents and occasionally his mother would make for him.
At the time, not even Nostradamus could have foretold that the paths of Barry and Sarah would intersect in the "historic" 2008 election, Barry as the first major party presidential nominee of African descent and Sarah as the first woman with a real shot at the vice-presidency.
Each would change names before reaching the national stage. Barry Obama would become Barry Soetero, and then Barack Obama. Sarah Heath would become Sarah Palin after eloping with the formidable Todd Palin. Obama would chronicle his journey in the 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father and the 2006 sequel, The Audacity of Hope. Palin would chronicle hers in the 2009 memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life.
How the literary/media establishment would respond to the respective memoirs of these two political figures would reveal far less about the authenticity, honesty, and literary quality of the tales the authors told than it would about the collective mindset of that establishment.
From a classical perspective, Palin's is the more compelling narrative. The obstacles that she must overcome to fulfill her destiny are many, varied, and real. Raised in the frozen outback by a schoolteacher father and a school secretary mom, Palin accomplishes nothing without a good deal of work, often under difficult physical circumstances.
Palin takes a semester or two off to pay for college. She works at a diner over the summer. She enters the Miss Alaska contest to help pay tuition and is awarded second runner-up and "Miss Congeniality." She interns during other summers to become a sports reporter.
After college, Palin joins fiancé Todd on his Bristol Bay salmon boat. During slow salmon runs, she works "messy, obscure seafood jobs" until she can find a job as sports reporter, and even then she keeps returning to Bristol Bay when the salmon are in season.
Throughout this period, despite the hard work and harsh environment, Palin never loses her sense of wonder about the spectacular natural theater in which she is so very much at home.
Read more at The American Thinker.
Posted in Obama Nation, Sarah Palin | Permalink
Comments
I am half way through this article and I am laughing my head off at the differences between these 2. How can people be so blind???!!!!
Posted by: tereza crump AKA MyTreasuredCreations | December 22, 2009 12:14 PM
Read this and had to share it on my Facebook page. Excellent read. I don't think President is the right role for her, but VP was made for her, despite the naysayers who, in my opinion, don't know enough about either of these two to express an opinion. She is far more qualified for President than the one we have, thats for sure!
Posted by: Laurie | December 23, 2009 3:00 PM
