Sarah Palin. OMG.

I don't know where to start.

When I first saw the anouncement of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate I thought, in my knee jerk reaction way, "Oh good. A woman. That makes a change. Nice balance for John McCain." I'm a woman. I like to see the advancement of women. It goes with the ovaries.

The I saw her billing as "mother of five" and thought, "Well, yes, but if she's reached this stage in her political career then I'm guessing that the children have not been uppermost in her considerations over the past seventeen years." It'd be like calling George Bush "golfer". He does play golf, but frankly there are other important things about him. Like the fact that he's a congenital idiot. But I digress. I overlooked the fact that she's burdened her children with stupid names. Maybe they don't seem as stupid in Alaska. But someone ought to have told her (preparing for office as she obviously has been from the cradle) that in English English Bristol is slang for breast, as in 'Look at the Bristols on that.' I've no idea why that should be.

The I read that John McCain has only met her once for a half an hour and the whole illusion started unravelling in my mind. She's not a brave choice of running mate - she's a walking lure for the feminist Hillary-ites who might not go for Barack Obama.

Then I keep seeing pictures of her clad in fur with something dead at her side; sometimes she has her kids with her (alive). A little off-putting. I know Alaska is cold, but not even polar explorers drape themselves in dead animals these days. I mean, come on!! The photograph of her parents watching her nomination in their Alaskan home was remarkable for me because of the skins festooning the walls as much as for the total lack of expression in her father's face.

Then I start reading her credentials; pro-life, anti-gay marriage, pro-hunting [and how, pray can you be pro-life and pro-hunting? Make your mind up.] , in favour of creationist teaching and the tinciest bit sceptical about evolution. Hold on!! What??? Creationism?? And I bet she fulminates against the mad excesses of fundamentalist Islam without any sense that there might be some irony in her position...

And if you look at her eyes behind the glasses (which according to her she had to take to to tone down her attractiveness - I paraphrase, but that's kind of what she was saying...) there's this mad emptiness in there. A massive well of ambition and mad emptiness. Is it just me, or does she look slightly startled in those toothy staged family portraits, as if she's wondering who these other people are?

So so far, getting pretty dreadful. And then this morning I read that her daughter is pregnant. But the Republican party reassures us that we should not worry - Bristol will be keeping the baby and she will be marrying the young man who is the father.

Pro-life? Give me a break! What about poor Bristol's life? First of all they saddle her with a name that means tit, then she is brought up the oldest daughter, forever lugging younger siblings around and, one might suppose, instructing nannies on how to bring her up while Mum is chasing office. She is occasionally dragged outside to pose in blood-stained snow alongside some furry corpse. By accident (presumably) she finds herself pregnant, and one can only imagine the scenes inside the Palin household at that little nugget. As they are evangelical Christians, it is possible to believe that she feels that she has made her bed and must now lie in it by keeping the baby; just possible. But I cannot and will not believe that a child of seventeen decides voluntarily to enter into a marriage as an inevitable consequence of such a mistake. And where does this rumour stem from that the youngest and most ridiculously named Palin child, Trig, is not Sarah's but actually Bristol's? Why is Trig shoved into Bristol's arms for public appearances? Is Mr Palin so underendowed in the muscle department that he can't hold his own child?

So because they are 'pro-life', which means that they value the life of a mess of cells more highly than the person they have lived with for seventeen years, and because Sarah is on a mission to the history books, they consign their child to a miserable adolescence of duty-mothering and duty-wifing, and an early, miserable and widely publicised divorce.

I have immense and overwhelming distaste for a woman who foists her own dubious ethics on a child. And contempt. You should under no circumstances be allowed to bill Sarah Palin as a mother. It's as ludicrous as calling Dubya a golfer