Profiles in Ignorance by Andy Borowitz

Profiles in Ignorance by Andy Borowitz

Author:Andy Borowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00


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Palin’s zest for endorsing candidates she knew little or nothing about would also haunt her in the 2012 election cycle, in a comedy of errors that played out in three acts. I will do my best to re-create it for you.

Act I: Palin endorsed Richard Mourdock for the U.S. Senate seat in Indiana. So far, so good: Mourdock bested the incumbent Republican senator, Richard Lugar, in the party’s primary.

Act II: In Missouri’s Senate primary, Palin opted not to endorse Todd Akin, who went on to become the Republican nominee. Then, in an interview with a St. Louis television station, Akin, a longtime antiabortion activist, was asked whether women who become pregnant in cases of rape should be permitted to terminate such pregnancies. In a response that would add a new term to the political lexicon, Akin replied, “First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment, complete with its baffling attribution of sentience to the uterus, sparked widespread outrage—including from Palin, who urged him to quit the race. “This is not going in his favor, so you have to step aside from self, from yourself, your desire to get in there and serve and do what you believe is right, and you have to, in a sense, take one for the team,” she said. “You have to step aside. Hand the mantle to someone else.” Akin ignored the Alaskan interloper’s advice to “step aside from self” and stayed in.

And, finally, Act III: Back in Indiana, Palin’s handpicked candidate, Mourdock, appeared at a televised debate. Answering a question about abortion, Mourdock demonstrated not only his opposition to that procedure but also his apparent failure to learn anything from the Akin shit show: “I know there are some who disagree, and I respect their point of view, but I believe that life begins at conception. The only exception I have to have an abortion is in that case of the life of the mother. I just struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize: life is that gift from God that I think, even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” Faced with the daunting challenge of saying something more offensive than “legitimate rape,” Mourdock seized the hold-my-beer moment. Palin, who’d exhorted Akin to “take one for the team,” found herself in a pickle when it came to Mourdock’s comments and, extraordinarily for her, remained silent. On Election Day, her endorsement of Mourdock was for naught: voters in Indiana, much like their counterparts in Missouri, decided that the Senate was better off without a pro-rape caucus.

Palin wasn’t the only Tea Party champion whose endorsements sometimes backfired. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina backed Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell; also like Palin, he had an original take on what might be called “matters of historical record.



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