Military Mom: Why I'm Sour About Sarah Palin

Today I decided that I needed to see the great communicator Sarah Palin in person at the giant Home Depot Stadium in Carson, and voice my opposition to the many public statements she has made recently about supporting the troops. The implication here is that she is, in effect, ready to abandon our troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, supporting the troops means you leave them there. No need to have a reason. You see, my Marine son, Beto, has already done two tours in Iraq and is about to be deployed for his third. This is why I found it particularly offensive when she said at the debate that we just can't fly the "white flag of surrender".

And so I felt compelled to brave a sea of red, right-wing, Palin worshipping republicans who were sure to throw me out of the arena. I was able to get a ticket from a passerby who didn't want to use her ticket. I had not planned to get into the event, but it seemed that destiny was calling, so dutifully covered up my Military Families Speak Out T-shirt and joined the flag waving crowd entering the Home Depot Stadium. After all, if my son can just buck up and go out for another tour, I can do this. So here I was among huge throng of republicans who would normally be calling me names, and were telling the Palin demonstrators to go back to Cuba and accusing even Iraq veterans of not knowing the words to the song "America the Beautiful", while they sang their way into the stadium. I was really out of my element and quite worried as I found myself lost in a swarm of pro-war and damn-the-torpedo people. No one even batted an eye at the guy next to me with the "Guns, God and Glory" T-shirt. Just the whole wrong headed thinking of this group filled me with enough indignation to get me through at least the airport-type security check.

I was beginning to wonder what had I been thinking when I decided to go all alone into this wild crowd of thousands of rabid republicans? Had the whole Republican Party membership come to my community? This was not going to be pretty. My knees were starting to wobble, but because I was alone, at least it was easy to get a seat. It would be a long time before Sarah Palin showed up. I seriously thought about forgetting the whole thing and leaving because people were so hyped up. The crowd what doing "The Wave", and I knew then it would be a long while before Palin would be on stage. So I took in some of the ambiance and picked up on a few conversations around me. A guy behind me was actually trying to impress his friends by joking that he tried to run over those Obama people on the way in, but didn't, and said if he had, he would have put the car in reverse and run over them twice. I cringed. Then I felt sad because a guy was sitting next to me with his two pre-teen girls. The girls looked at their daddy and waited for his response. The dad laughed at the car joke and so they echoed his laugh. They waited, but got the signal. I was amused by a conversation between a couple almost in front of me. A husband whispered too loudly to his wife that she should look across the stadium at this woman who was wearing pink. He was proud that he could detect that because her pink shirt had no words on it, she must be a protester. "Watch, something is going to happened", he clued her in.

I knew that in this crowd could get ugly. I was starting to agonize over my position and feeling very conspicuous in the heat with a sweatshirt all buttoned up, but then I looked up at the sky. Lo and behold, buzzing right over all those heads was a small pesky plane with the most wonderful banner that read, " Thanks but no thanks, Sarah Palin". Ah -- a sign from the gods, I thought. It has to be the Courage Campaign folks. Can't overlook that message -- COURAGE! Then out trotted my old nemesis, my representative in Congress, Dana Rohrabacher -- the one who promised that he would call for the troops to get out of Iraq when the Iraqis want us out, which we all know was several months ago. Also, the same caring guy who called military families, and a Gold Star family member traitors for wanting the troops home. My new found courage got me thorough that tired and broken accordion Rohrabacher. I considered moving my seat to another one, though, because there was a sweet old woman who was sitting on my right who was going to give up her seat to some much younger demanding woman who said she made 50 phone calls to get these seats She was waving her tickets and complaining that none of those seats were reserved! How dare the Republican Party treat her like that!