Palin on Traveling Abroad
When I started blogging, I told myself I wouldn’t blog about American politics unless I encountered a really interesting perspective from the Germans. However, I’ve naturally still kept up with politics. By now, my preferred candidate would, to quote a beloved CMC professor, “need to commit a major sin with a minor farm animal” to get me to change my mind, but I still want to watch all the debates and generally remain informed.
I just watched Katie Couric’s interview with Sarah Palin. I’ll start by saying that I’ve seen several things this election from both sides that disturb me. Neither side should try to portray their base as fundamentally better or more moral than the other. This is why the culture wars exist. It was not appropriate for Obama to talk about people clinging to guns, religion, and antipathy to those unlike themselves in response to not liking the changing face of the country and the world (although having grown up in Bakersfield, I can’t pretend that people like that don’t exist). It bothers me when Republicans try to portray well-educated city-folk as elitist or pretend that eating arugula and drinking Honest Tea is a crime (especially since I happen to like both, thank you very much!)
What Sarah Palin said to Katie Couric about travelers in response to a question about her passport, however, struck a cord and really disgusted me. I can’t add videos to the blog, so I’ll post a link and a transcript here:
Couric: In preparing for this conversation, 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 ‘em a passport and give ‘em a backpack and say, “Go off and travel the world.” Nooo, 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 I have understood the world is through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me with a lot of perspective of the world.
The link is here. It starts around the 40-second mark. I think it’s important to watch her say this and to hear for yourself the tone in her voice as she talks about those people, that culture.
To put it bluntly, I am incensed on so many levels. Traveling is for spoiled kids? Those who work don’t travel? (Am I to take it that those who travel therefore don’t work?) The world can be understood solely through books? She thinks she is better than people who have made the time and effort to see other parts of the world? Who the hell does she think she is? I shouldn’t be surprised: this is, after all, a woman who will say to Dan Rather with a straight face that she has insight into foreign relations with Russia because you can see part of Siberia from an island in Alaska on a clear day.
Anyways, my disdain for the woman aside, there are some serious issues with this world view. I am an international relations major. Clearly, I place a lot of value on the rest of the world and the experiences you can derive from other nations. My knee-jerk response was to reject her idea that she has a clear perspective of the way the world works solely through books and education. No offense to education nor to books, but I can tell you as a student completing her third study-abroad experience that no book and no professor (no matter how gifted) can tell you how the world works. You need to see it for yourself.
Before each time abroad, I would go through any book I could find about the country. I wanted to know about their politics, their culture, their table manners, their customs and norms, everything. And each time, I was completely humbled when I found out how little I actually knew. You don’t know what “It is considered normal for French men to stop a woman on the street to ask for a date, and you should not be alarmed if this happens to you” really means until you live for four months in France and have men stop you to ask you to go up to their apartments every day. You don’t know what “The Germans/French are slow to warm to strangers, but once you make a friend, you have one for life” means until you’re trapped in their country and no one will return a smile. You don’t know what it’s like to see a country come to a stand-still and just how ferociously an entitlement will be defended until you’ve passed out after walking to a doctor’s appointment, unable to take the tram because French strikers were blocking all transit routes.
If you have the opportunity to travel, or especially to live abroad, I think you should take it. You’re not a bad person if you can’t, but if you are applying for a job that entails foreign policy, I think you need to have seen the world, or at least recognize the value of doing so. If you can’t muster even that, you can still at least have a minimal amount of respect for those who have. Everything really does come alive before your eyes when you actually see the things you’ve read about. The same is true for everything else. Do you want a surgeon who’s just read a book? A lawyer who’s only sat in on a few classes? We value experience for a reason.
It is because I believe in the value of everything I just mentioned, and because I find while abroad one learns as much, if not more, outside the classroom as inside that I’m so insulted that she would characterize travel as something spoiled children do with daddy’s money. Many people, my parents included, work their behinds off for the ability to travel or to provide their children with that opportunity. Someone please explain to me what is wrong with that?
I believe in the American dream- that people can and should better themselves whenever they have the opportunity. I don’t think that people who do so are snobs, people from some other culture to be disdained. And I especially don’t think that people who have made it to the top are to be automatically smeared or their children dismissed as spoiled brats (emphasis on the word automatically. I know exceptions exist. I’ve been to private school.) This reminded me of her VP acceptance speech when she said that people in small towns are “the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food, and run our factories, and fight our wars.” Not that there is anything wrong with that. At all. Get that through your head before you keep reading.
But… why are you better for staying in your small town and never leaving? I grew up in a small agro-industrial town. I have dreams that encompass the entire world, that are too big for Bakersfield, so I got out. I am getting the best education I can, and I heading abroad at every opportunity, and I want to be the best at whatever I end up doing. I want the American dream. Many people I went to high school with took a low-end job, got married, and many have kids at the age of 20. Most are not still there because they are morally better people, but because they didn’t put in the work it takes to leave. And you know what? I’ve seen a lot of hopelessness in a lot of people from back home. What is elitist about trying to leave that? About saying “I want so much more than this” and vowing to never put yourself in the situation where you need to work long hours at menial jobs to just barely scrape by?
Many people, Sarah Palin included, talk about self-creation and being the best you can be. It’s time to stop pretending that those who have reached that goal and can pass on good opportunities to their children are snobs rather than people to be looked up to.
Really, if you can, please see as much of the world- including the US- as you can. I can think of nothing more valuable than understanding as much as you can of the world around you.
