Shortly after candidate John McCain announced that his running mate would be someone most Americans had never heard of, I wrote a brief article about the fact VP pick Palin didn’t have a passport–ever–until 2007.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only person in America who wondered why Palin waited until she was 43 years old to get a passport.
The nagging thought occurred to Katie Couric, too, and Couric got to Palin before I did (she isn’t scheduling a whole lot of interviews, you know).
Couric unraveled the Palin passport mystery:
Couric: “a lot of our viewers … and Internet users wanted to know why you did not get a passport until last year. And they wondered if that indicated a lack of interest and curiosity in the world.”
Palin: “I’m not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world. No, I’ve worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life until I had kids. I was not a part of, I guess, that culture. The way that I have understood the world is through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me a lot of perspective on the world.”
Palin’s response is offensive because it assumes, falsely in my opinion, that:
1. Travel is only for members of the upper class.
2. The only purpose of travel is leisure… travelers are part of some “culture” that’s separate from the mainstream.
3. A parent can’t travel… and definitely can’t take their kids along for the ride.
4. The only way to become educated about the world is through a book (or some “medium” that provides “a lot of perspective”).
All of which Matador members are proving wrong every day.
Take, for example, Matador editor Tim Patterson’s article “How to Travel the World for Free”. Or Rigo Lara’s moving article, “Changed Forever,” an account of his experience of traveling abroad for the first time.
Read blogs by Matador dads David Miller and Jacob Bielanski. Or visit Matador member MST’s blog, Big Sweet Tooth, to see what a non college educated woman can learn about the world… and what she can do with what she learns.
I wasn’t the only person who thought this was one of Palin’s biggest “Doh!” moments.
As Matador member planetbagel blogged earlier today:
Yeah – because it happens just like that for everyone. Every backpacker you find today had parents that handed them a passport, gear and ticket abroad by as soon as they got out of college (with no debt and never having had to balance work and courses, for sure). That’s how backpackers get to travel…. right?
What do YOU think about Palin’s passport delay excuse? Share your comments below!
Photo: Buddhakiwi (Flickr creative commons)
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6 Comments... join the discussion!
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Malia- Thanks for your comment. What I failed to mention in my article–but what I'm sure was obvious enough to anyone who DOES hold a passport–is that one's parents cannot just hand their kid a passport upon graduation. If she doesn't even understand how the process of obtaining a passport works, I don't have a lot of confidence in her ability to elucidate the red tape of other bureaucratic processes.
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Somebody better review the passport application requirements with this woman… Last I checked, Mommy and Daddy couldn't stroll into the passport office and apply on behalf of their widdle graduate! Absurd. Besides which, for me, her lack of travel experience only underscores even further her TOTAL lack of experience. Yes, she's been working "all her life" – but never at any job that required her to step over an international border. To me, there's a simple calculation at work here: No job that required international travel = no job that has adequately prepared you for the White House. Senators, Congressmen, most Governors (who've been in office for more than 18 months) and even many city majors (oh wait, Wasilla isn't a city, is it?) travel all the time. ps: Has Palin done anything to indicate that she has gained "a lot of perspective" (perspective now quantifiable rather than qualifiable??) about the world from education and books? It is a semi-acceptable substitute, if I actually thought she had done so…
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Dear Sarah Palin, Okay. You're too busy to travel for leisure. Fine? My question is: Why have you never considered that using your (limited) political clout to do volunteer work, and call attention to situations abroad, would benefit other people in this world? If you had to work SO hard just to get by for the majority of your life, why haven't you chose to help people around the globe undergoing far greater hardships? If broke college backpackers can find a way to travel the globe volunteering, surely a governor can.
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Weird. If you're a traveler, you're either filthy rich or a hippie stoner. What am I doing wrong? I blame her optician: nice glasses, but just a liiiiittle on the myopic side. If Biden keeps the train on the rails, it should be a fun debate on Thursday. What a muppet…
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For anyone who's buying Sarah Palin's "I'm an ordinary gal, I just can't afford to travel like all those lazy rich folk" shtick – I just read that her blazer alone at one night of the GOP Convention cost $5000! Ummm… That's roughly the amount I spent on a 10-week trip to Europe. And I wasn't even being that budget-minded. Who's the rich elitist now, eh?
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