Palin: Future son-in-law is no high school dropout

Thestate.com ^ | Dec. 31, 2008 | The Associated Press

[AnAmericanMother]

I think it's fair to say that she wasn't a doctrinaire socialist, that she could (as you observe) learn from mistakes and observe difficulties. The true believer just shuts his or her eyes to the failures and redoubles efforts to bring 'true socialism' to the benighted masses.

I think that her and Franklin's background and upbringing in Old New York saved them from going right over the edge. They knew better.

[GipperGal]

Totally disagree with you on Eleanor. Eleanor had it way worse. She also lost her mother as child. Had a drunken father who committed suicide, and two insane alcoholic brothers. She had to buy pad locks for her bedroom doors to keep them from breaking them down during their drunken rages. You can imagine what the implication was in that. Not a pretty picture.

Her looks would have been greatly improved if her grandmother had been willing to pay for dental work when she was a little girl. The grandmother refused for some strange reason. Ironically, Eleanor's mother was considered the great beauty of New York high society. She always suffered in comparison, and what's even more awful is that her own mother often mocked her for being unattractive. Her father was her only loving parent, and as I mentioned, he was an alcoholic who eventually committed suicide.

Eleanor's saving grace was when someone (I believe it was her grandmother) finally stepped in and got her away from the drunken brothers and sent her to a girls school England. She came into herself there. She became self confident and even learned how to make herself look more attractive.

Her second cousin Franklin genuinely fell in love with her because she was smart and also rather attractive in her youth.

He certainly had nothing to gain from marrying her. She had no money and came from the black sheep side of the family (with drunks and suicides and lunatics and profligates). In fact, I believe his own mother was dead set against it. He loved her. She loved him. The marriage definitely soured when he cheated on her. It's one of the saddest sections of her autobiography. And the photos of her that time show a look of despair that wasn't there before. They grew closer after he contracted polio, and they genuinely respected each other; but she never loved him the same way. She burned his love letters to her. He kept hers to him.

[Little Bill]

Eleanor was an Oyster Bay snot who married a Hyde Park Wilsonian for dynastic reasons.

My Grandmother, from Peoa, Utah, married in 1909 at 18, could raise a family, kill and preserve meat, keep a garden, nurse the sick, and give guidence to the unsure, and was still a good shot at 70. Eleanor was a dilettante.

[GipperGal]

Oh come on. Eleanor was no dilettante. In fact, one of the things that made FDR fall in love with her was the fact that she introduced him to the wider world outside of Hyde Park. She used to do volunteer work in the NYC tenements. It was the sort of work that "good girls" didn't do, but Eleanor was always drawn to that sort suffering because she instinctively understood it (see my comments on her crazy childhood). FDR was appalled that people lived like that just a few blocks from his Manhattan home.

Their do-gooder tendencies stemmed from these experiences.

As AnAmericanMother pointed out, the Roosevelts were not doctrinaire socialists. They were bleeding heart liberals. FDR would have been appalled with the programs that LBJ later adopted. Reagan often used to say that. FDR believed that people needed to work. He didn't believe in giving them handouts. His wife was the more "compassionate" of the two, and as I noted, she later came to realize the error of this sort of thing. FDR once stated that government relief programs were for the winter only because no man starved in summer. In summer time people could find food.

And as for her being a whimp. The following is the transcript of the PBS "American Experience" biography of Eleanor Roosevelt:

NARRATOR

In 1958 the Ku Klux Klan learned she was going to speak at a civil rights workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.

Allida Black

The day before she’s supposed to go, the FBI contacts her and says, "Mrs. Roosevelt, we can’t guarantee your safety. The Klan’s put a bounty on your head, a $25,000 bounty on your head. We can’t protect you. You can’t go." Eleanor says, "I didn’t ask for your protection. I appreciate the warning. I have a commitment. I’m going."

Vernon Jarrett

She was relentless. She made a statement to the effect that if you don't take a stand, you got to leave the impression that you're cowardly. She used the word "cowardly."

Allida Black

So Eleanor flies into the Nashville airport and she’s met by this 71-year-old white woman. No Secret Service. No cops. No young muscle men around her. You know, this elderly white woman picks up a 74-year-old Eleanor Roosevelt. And here they are, they're going to stand down the Klan! They get in their car, they put a loaded pistol on the front seat between them, and they drive up at night through the mountains to this tiny labor school to conduct a workshop on how to break the law, how to conduct non-violent civil disobedience. And she drove through the Klan to do it.

I call that courageous!

[strongbow]

Hate to burst the SP love fest but why hasn’t the boy married the girl yet? Wouldn’t you want your child to be born legitimate instead of illegitimate. Maybe I’m old fashioned but I there used to be shame associated with having a child out of wedlock.

[GipperGal]

Maybe she didn't want to be pregnant in her wedding pictures. Or maybe she wanted a spring or summer wedding.

According to some gossip news stories back in September, Governor Palin wanted them to get married right away, but her daughter wanted to wait for a spring/summer wedding. And I think that they couldn't marry without some parental consent or something until they turned 18 (I could be wrong on this).

At any rate...I agree with you. And if the gossip stories are true, I also agree with Governor Palin. I think the kids should have married before the baby was born.

[Non-Sequitur]

Maybe she didn't want to be pregnant in her wedding pictures.

Well I can think of any number of ways of accomplishing that. First and foremost would have been to keep her pants zipped.

[GipperGal]

Naturally. I think that’s what she had in mind when she warned other teenagers to not follow her example.

[Non-Sequitur]

But—there’s much to be said for having your babies when you are young and healthy, like Bristol and Levi.

There is also a lot to be said for having your babies when your out of school and married, too. Unlike Bristol and Levi.

[GipperGal]

There is a lot to be said for a lot of things.

[Little Bill]

Get real! I have relatives on Campobello, Island, Allen's and Newman's, they have a different story to tell.

The Roosevelt's were Fascists.

FDR bought every vote he could buy by manipulating government aid to Republican leaning areas. Eleanor was a socialist and promoted socialist programs, for the children,till the day she departed her mortal coil.

I remember sitting on my Grandfathers lap watching the 1956 Rat Convention when she endorsed Stevenson. My Granddad pointed at her and said "Billy her husband was the First Dictator of the United States and the eventual down fall of the Republic.

[GipperGal]

My Grandfather voted Republican too. So did my Dad. In fact, my father used to say that he only voted for a Democrat once in his life and that was just to prove that a Catholic could be president. He then went on to say that he regretted that vote.