You know what? I spent a lot of this thread taking up for this expenditure. But over the last couple of days, as more information has come out and I’ve had time to think about things…I’ve come around. It’s fucking ridiculous.
Yes, she needed clothes. She needed a whole hell of a lot of good clothes and accessories, and she needed them fast and done right. There was no time for bargain-hunting. She needs to look just right and that includes hair and makeup too.
But there’s a big difference between paying a premium to get things done quickly and correctly, and spending like a drunken sailor.
These expenditures are firmly in drunken sailor land.
We may actually be in “drunken sailor with Paris Hilton’s credit card in hand” land. At least the ordinary drunken sailor would run out of money after the first three hookers/bottles of whiskey/Hermes scarves…
Is it gauche? Yes. Is it stupid? Yep. Is it somewhat shameful? No, it’s a lot shameful. Fact is though that IT DOES NOT FUCKING MATTER.
It’s a shame that Obama’s camp is going to drop $2MM on the announcement in Grant Park. It’s a shame that there was $150MM raised in a month to be spent on things that will just end up in thrift stores and landfills.
It’s a shame that hundreds of millions of dollars have to be spent for one man to get a job that pays $400K a year.
Still, it doesn’t matter even a little bit what Palin wears and how much the pubbies paid for it.
You wankers can’t have it both ways, either Barack’s petty shit matters, or it doesn’t, but you can’t take Palin’s petty shit that’s on the same level as Obama’s petty shit and claim it counts for anything more than mudslinging nonsense. Fuck, who among you would eschew the wonderment that comes with playing freely with millions and millions of dollars, knowing full well you don’t stand a chance in hell? Lie to me, but we both know better.
Palin hasn’t been around long enough to have real skeletons in her closet. If this is the best fucking thing anyone can come up with, I say elect the skank and lets she what she and McGrumpy can do. Otherwise, for the love of all that’s sacred, shut the fuck up about this meaningless bullshit already.
I posted this in another thread, but wanted to repeat it here. Here is what Palin had to say about the clothes during an interview with Jill Zuckman of the Chicago Tribune:
"PITTSBURGH - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin insisted in an interview with the Tribune on Thursday that she did not accept $150,000 worth of designer clothes from the Republican Party and “that is not who we are.”
“That whole thing is just, bad!” she said. "Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are.
“It’s kind of painful to be criticized for something when all the facts are not out there and are not reported,” said Palin, saying the clothes are not worth $150,000 and were bought for the Republican National Convention. Still, she has been wearing pricey clothes at campaign events this fall. She said they will be given back, auctioned off or sent to charity. Most of them, she said, haven’t even left the belly of her campaign plane."
What a painful distortion. She didn’t “accept” the clothes? They are “bad”? They aren’t “worth” the dough, and “belong” to the RNC (if that is that what she meant)? She hasn’t worn them?
Embarrasing. My kids can make up more believable lies than she.
I’m with you. I can’t get worked up over it. $150K is nothing.
That said, I can see why people are upset over it. When the AIG news broke that we were pouring $85 billion dollars into rescuing their company, people were rightly upset that the company then turned around and spent half a million dollars on a luxury resort — and then turned around a few weeks later and demanded another $37.8 billion.
Curbing spending excesses are the heart of McCain’s economic strategy. Earmarks, earmarks, earmarks. Then the AIG story breaks; then it breaks that McCain’s campaign has been spending lavishly on clothing for Palin.
Taken together I can see why people are upset with it: it seems to impart a flavor of “do as I say, not as I do” to the campaign.
Fair? No, not really — McCain isn’t responsible for how AIG spent that money. It just seems to tie together in one big stinky ball in some peoples’ minds.
How do equate the Grant Park event to Palin wardrobe? The criticism of Palin isn’t that the money is ill spent, it is that it conflicts with her message of humble, Joe Sixpack appeal, and her criticism of Obama’s elitist, rock star status. That’s why she is being bitch smacked, not because it is a shame that the money was spent in the first place. Even if Joe Biden spent the same amount on his clothes, he would not be subject to charges of hypocrisy, because he didn’t accuse his opponent of acting like a celebrity. There is no equivalency.
I don’t think if I had a blank check I’d pad the expense account anyway and get paid/reimbursed for money I never spent/shouldn’t have spent. But who knows, maybe if I changed my political affiliation to Republican my mind would change regarding what I’m entitled to.
I’m coming in late to say what has been on my mind since this whole issue started:
I don’t care how much money Sarah Palin’s campaign spent on her clothes. It doesn’t bother me one iota. And I don’t think it’s being hypocritical to say you understand the middle class and wear designer clothes.
This is because I don’t think a person’s class defines who they are or what they are about. I live comfortably middle class, but I have a great education that’s only getting better. Maybe someday I will be upper middle class. Actually, due to my husband’s likely inheritance down the road, maybe I will actually be wealthy. There is no telling what lies ahead.
I could wear Wang and carry Prada for the rest of my goddamn life and it wouldn’t change the fact that I grew up in a working class family, that I’ve lived in trailer parks, that my Dad has worked in the same factory for 20 years. Likewise, I could live in a cardboard box and it wouldn’t take away the fact that my mother, grandmother and grandfather are damn smart, educated people who have instilled in me the importance of critical thinking.
How much money she has says nothing about who she is.
The implication that she’s out of touch with the middle class is an insult to the middle class because it implies that everyone has the same set of values and beliefs. I really wish people would stop making assumptions based on stupid shit like household income.
Their efforts are laudable, but—as has been explained many times already—the reason this issue is attracting attention is not Palin’s wealth or class, but the fact that her self-representation is so obviously at odds with her reality.
But I don’t necessarily believe that it is. That is my point. People are decrying her for being a hypocrite but I don’t believe saying you can relate to the middle class and then wearing expensive clothes makes you a hypocrite. The two are not mutually exclusive in my mind.
The simple truth is that nobody really knows who she is because she effectively didn’t exist politically until a short time ago. She may have lived a very typical life until the campaign began. She may have lived in a large house, but she raced snowmachines and hunted and was a hockey mom. Those are things a lot of people can relate to.
I doubt she was even aware what the clothes cost when she put them on. I doubt she even had a say in what she could wear. My general impression is that the campaign managers handle all of those minutiae and the candidates just trust that the right decisions are being made. (This has been McCain’s undoing the way I see it.)
I just can’t muster outrage about this. There are a lot of things about her I can be pissed off about, but this just doesn’t strike me as a legitimate criticism.
She’s running for Vice President of the United States, for the love of fuck. She’s got to wear the best clothes money can buy. I don’t believe Barack Obama is an elitist, but if he’s not wearing the finest tailored suits he can get then he’s a damned fool. If you put ME in charge of Sarah Palin’s campaign the first think I’d do is hire an image consultant, give them an Amex, and tell them to go nuts at Saks. Then I’d hire the best stylist money could buy. I’m no fashion plate, but I’d want her looking as good as money could arrange.
How you dress for a job interview - and a political campaign is little more than an extended job interview - isn’t related to how you were raised or your station in life. I was raised thoroughly middle class but at my last job interview I wore a thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and accessories. I couldn’t dress like that every day - I couldn’t afford it - and I wouldn’t want to. In fact, the job (I got that job) doesn’t call for me to dress like that more than once in a blue moon. But if I’d walked in wearing my usual outfit I’d rightly have been considered a goddamned idiot and would have been summarily eliminated as a candidate. When I walked in wearing a fine suit, silk tie and nice shoes, they didn’t think “here’s a rich boy” or “here’s an elitist,” they thought “Here is a man we would be pleased to represent us.” That I was middle class was not relevant. They weren’t trying to hire someone of a particular caste. They were trying to hire a professional, so I wanted to look the part. Sarah Palin is asking to be hired to represent her entire damned country; no matter her class, she’d be stupid to do it wearing cheap clothes.
I also wore a tuxedo to my best friend’s wedding, and my sister’s wedding, and many other weddings. Obviously, a fine tuxedo isn’t middle class attire, so did I stop being middle class when I was wearing a tuxedo?
My wife puts it best: “When I pay someone to represent me in a professional capacity, I expect some of my money to be used for them to look better than me.” Palin is representing MILLIONS of people.
This babbling over her wardrobe is Republican, Karl Rovish shit. It’s fucking ridiculous.
I don’t care if it’s ridiculous or not. MY point is that Republicans of the less affluent sort are in fact a bit less than pleased about it, and I’m very happy about their unhappiness.
Consequently, I’d have no problem if Palin spent $150’MM’ (whatever the fuck an MM is - did buttonjockey leave out an ampersand?) on clothes. This really is between her and her ‘base.’
The purpose of this thread isn’t to throw stones at Sarah Palin or the RNC; it’s to gloat. I assume the Pit is the correct forum for political gloating without an intended issue for debate.
