So, Sarah Palin is Good-Looking: So What?

This isn't a good year for people who like to think of American politics as a dignified affair. I'm not one of them, by the way. Important, yes. Dignified, no.

It looks like a horde of zombie voters may be trying to send in absentee ballots.

And, one party's vice-presidential candidate is an attractive young woman who likes to hunt, and whose husband rides snow machines. Here in Minnesota, we call them snowmobiles.

She's also a former beauty queen.

All of which has focused attention, in some quarters at least, on a couple of Sarah Palin's attributes. I wouldn't have thought that how she'd look in a one-piece swimsuit, or maybe it's a bustier, is all that important: but then I'm not the creator of Doonsbury.

That panel is from a strip that got a lot of exposure last month. Freudian slip, there.

Not that media has been focusing all its attention on the top of her front. Palin's ankles have received international scrutiny, as in this Reuters photo.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I grew up believing that people running for political office should be evaluated on qualities that mattered, like:

• How they stood on the issues
• What their voting record was
• And, sometimes, how often they'd been arrested, and for what

The last I checked, the shape of a candidate's ankles, or how she'd look in a swimsuit, wasn't all that important.

Maybe the rules are different, when the candidate is an attractive young woman.

And, I just now read, a racist. 'It must be true: I read it in the paper.'

News and views, some of them mine:

Palin, McCain stir up storm of ugly racism "
Chicago Sun-Times (October 15, 2008)
• "South Pacific" is a morality play for our time. Sarah Palin is the Ensign Nellie Forbush -- an All-American girl as racist, this time a racist with her eye on the White House...."
• "Monkey Pirates, Jews, and Zionists? Get a Grip!"
  (October 14, 2008)
• "McCain, Obama, ACORN, Ayers, Character, and the American Election"
  (October 10, 2008)
• "Obama's a Radical Muslim; McCain's a Racist: Facts, Mud and the Anonymous Expert"
  (October 7, 2008)
• "Elitism may doom Obama's campaign"
  Baltimore Sun (September 28, 2008)
• "Is It Fair To Depict a Curvy Palin in a Bustier?"
  The Campaign Spot on National Review Online (September 24, 2008)

Again, the usual disclaimer.