Is it ethical to support Sarah Palin?

Dear Ethan,

Evel Knievel Johnson III
Eight Mile, Missouri

Dear Evel,

You have finally and forever confirmed my prejudice-cum-scientific-conviction that – as a consequence of 24-hour TV, twinkies, one-tonne hamburgers, celebrity culture, oil addiction and having been ruled for eight years by a president who resembles a chimp (though without a chimp’s ability to love or to make the hand signal for ‘more bananas, please’) – Americans are the most stupid group of marauding humans on Earth.

Yes, the whole Earth, Evel – which means I am even including AUSTRALIA in this international judgement of dumbness. How does it feel to be stupider than a nation where ‘throwing shrimps on the barbie’ is considered an acceptable pastime rather than a form of Crustacean Genocide, and where Kylie, Kath, Kim and kicking seven shades of shit out of Aboriginal culture represent the dizzy heights of artistic excellence? Is your face turning red, young man? GOOD.

Support Sarah Palin?! A woman who OWNS A GUN and has FIVE CHILDREN?! A woman who thinks that having a dead bear sprawled across her sofa is a sign of sophistication when in fact it reveals that she is possibly mentally ill and certainly murderously speciesist? Whatever next? Will I receive a letter that was delayed in the post by 75 years saying: ‘Dear Ethan, PLEASE don’t get mad at me. I’m just floating this as an idea. I’ve been watching Adolf Hitler wow the mobs at the Nazi Party convention and advertise himself as an everyday anti-Semite-cum-pitbull-with-moustache, and I’ve been thinking to myself: “You know, I could support this lunatic.” Sure, he has some “off views”, but he’s a breath of fresh, Austrian air!’

Actually, Evel, even that wouldn’t be as bad as what YOU have suggested. At least Hitler was a vegetarian, a supporter of organic farming, a rabid anti-smoker, an opponent of garish big department stores, a promoter of breastfeeding, a scoffer of brown bread, and an implacable warrior against the modern evil that is vivisection. Which means his lifestyle choices were FAR superior to Palin’s, who probably shops at Wal-Mart (Hitler would have shut it down), bottle-feeds her small-country-sized family (Hitler would have fined her), and wouldn’t recognise an organic turnip if one was hurled at her by an angry demonstrator (and let’s hope that one is).

Look, there are so many reasons NOT to support Sarah Palin that I don’t know where to start. First off, she wears a stars-and-stripes bikini while wielding a Kalashnikov! Yes, yes, I know that picture was faked but it reveals a GREATER TRUTH, don’t you think, Evel? And as every eco-warrior against humanity’s carbon skidmark knows, greater truths (the world will be consumed by hellfire in the next 27 to 29 years) are far more important that actual facts (the world won’t exactly, word for word, be consumed by hellfire in the next 27 to 29 years). The greater truth revealed by Palin’s photoshopped stars-and-stripes shenanigans is that she is a) nationalistic, b) gun-lovin’, and c) sexually wanton. Is that really the kind of person you want to have CONTROLLING America – and by extension the oil fields of the Middle East and the brain cells of the TV-addicted masses everywhere from Alaska to Zimbabwe – if (let’s face it, when) John McCain sustains a serious injury or loses his front teeth after stumbling over his Zimmer frame on his way to over-80s bingo?

Leaving aside the bikini, Sarah Palin is also an ANIMAL KILLER! She murders moose and butchers bears. She decorates her home, her office and, I’m willing to wager, her bawdy boudoir with the severed heads and ripped-off fur of some of nature’s most beautiful, peaceable beasts.

How would you like it, Evel, if I chased you through a forest, shot you, tied you to the back of a truck, dragged you to my home, displayed your naked carcass on the back of my three-piece suite, and then gave interviews to CNN and Fox about what a wonderful ‘mom’ and potential ‘VP’ I am with your dead body on full display to the world? You’d be mortified, right? Well now you know how that bear feels – and how its family will feel if, heaven forfend, they should ever walk by a hunter’s cabin and spy a TV image of Sarah Palin and their poor, long-lost bear brother joined together in a bizarre speciesist-cum-necrophiliac sofa situation that is perfectly befitting of a woman who ‘wears’ a stars-and-stripes bikini.

We also know for a fact that Palin is a terrible judge of character. Just consider the names she has cursed her children with: Trig, Bristol, Track, Exxon and Microsoft. (I never cease to be amazed by the ridiculous names that ‘white trash’ and ‘chav’ parents give to their kids! Just the other day me, my friend Margo and her two beautiful children Fifi-Goldilocks and Pomegranate guffawed ourselves silly as we watched Palin, her bizarrely-named children, her pregnant daughter and her redneck son-in-law walk awkwardly across the Republican convention stage like a bunch of badly-dressed Mormons (or morons?) heading to church.) Anyone who names her son Trig – rather than, say, Stig, which is what my friend Jude has named his newborn boy, in honour of that super-ethical character from literary fiction, Stig of the Dump – clearly should not be given ANY position of responsibility.

Also, Palin opposes abortion!! Now, as every ethical fighter worth his or her salt knows, abortion is a key weapon in the war against fecund overpopulation, especially in Africa where they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other and where they are too poor/uneducated/lacking in access to ethical lifestyle advice to know how important it is to use a condom. Listen to the words of my good friend and fellow ethicist Kelpie Wilson (now there’s an American woman who has NEVER worn a stars-and-stripes bikini, in the real world or the virtual world). Wilson says abortion is super-ethical because sometimes ‘a tiny embryo must be sacrificed for the greater good of the family or the human species as a whole’; that is ‘the moral high ground that we stand on today’.

Exactly! But what does Palin do? She paints abortion as ‘evil’ and single-handedly overpopulates Alaska with children named after athletic facilities or brands of snowmobile.

Finally, Evel, and if this doesn’t clinch the anti-Palin case then nothing will – THIS WOMAN IS A CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER. Asked about global warming, she said: ‘I’m not one who would attribute it to being manmade.’ I’m sorry, but: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How on Gaia’s good earth could we trust such a heretical woman to run world affairs? Why would we put someone who has such a lascivious relationship with The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth in the White House? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again): climate change deniers, otherwise know as falsifiers or liars or sinners or scum, should not be permitted to take public office. The stakes (the future of the solar system and every single thing within and without it) are simply too high. Only those who swear an oath of allegiance to The Science and make a blood-pact with Gaia should be allowed anywhere near government, media, academic or artistic institutions.

Evel, voting for Palin does not only mean that America could possibly end up with ‘First Children’ called Track and Trig who sport mullets and chew gum – even worse than that (if you can imagine anything worse), it will mean a death sentence for the planet. Don’t do it.

Ethan Greenhart’s book Can I Recycle my Granny? and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas is published by Hodder & Stoughton in October (for more details, visit Amazon(UK)). Ethan is here to answer all your questions about ethical living in the twenty-first century. Email him {encode=”Ethan.Greenhart@spiked-online.com” title=”here”}. Read his earlier columns here.