The Palin pick reminds me of nothing so much, as this.

A few springs ago, during one of the latest rounds of budget "chicken"(wherein Republicans insist they're going to cut everything, and Democrats insist we win if everything is about the same as before) I went to a protest, no doubt staged by those wily, do-nothing community organizers in between latte lunches and a few brisk hours of heartland bashing, to protect the Division of Developmental Disabilities community-based attendant program, which I benefit from.

I've been to a number of protests over the years, and this was not the typical fired-up protest crowd. They didn't have a chant picked out, so the effect was more like people milling about waiting for the bus to summer camp, but their hearts were in the right place. They greeted me and one wished me a "blessed" day, which I had never heard before. I just said "You too!" and figured I shouldn't say anything about the lack of chants and organization.

These were moms, mostly. Undoubtedly pissed-off, I don't doubt, but the sort of women who probably didn't even like to think of themselves in those terms, unlike your correspondent, who, in her non-working incarnation, curses all too vividly and enthusiastically. Some of the moms had more than one child who needed services

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We didn't wait long at the Capitol. Even the most lunkheaded legislator knows to look "responsive" to moms and crippled people. They stood outside in the breeze and told us how honored they were that we were taking our Special time to participate in this grubby budget fight, since, you know, every day is a fight for us. They quoted some Scripture and the religious moms clapped. They held their kids up to get a better view. Some of the legislators were fine speakers and the combination of Biblical phrases combined with the flags fluttering in the fall breeze affected even my trying-hard-to-be-cynical heartstrings. A moment later, though, I was often left with a nagging sensation :Hey, he didn't answer our question. It wasn't that I didn't like a good speech, and the quotations had been sustaining people for thousands of years, after all. But even with my Easter Sunday Lutheran approach to matters of faith, summarized by one uncle's quote that Christmas service was "better than last time", I felt used. I felt that the legislators were telling us what they thought we needed to hear to go away, which strikes me as a real misuse of spiritual sentiment.

I couldn't help noticing, even though that was in a previous election cycle, and I was still learning the players, that there was an inverse relationship between the folksy Sharing, and passages about God and sparrows and actual support of the bill. The more touched that they were that we showed up, the more likely they were to vote against the bill, but the mothers were more impressed by their command of the Bible, than interested in what the legislator's actual vote had been. It seemed that way, anyway. They did not give a lot away. I wonder now if they were too intimidated to expect more than a pandery shoulder-pat. These people used their spirituality to vote against their concrete interests, much like McCain-Palin are hoping a whole different crowd of "special-needs" moms do.

As a disabled person, I have enough "friends", if you define "friend" as that random stranger who comes out of nowhere on the worst day of my life, spies my chair, and says "You're so brave! I could never do what you do." She probably could, if she was forced to do it. I have enough people I hardly know thinking they understand me or my life because they have a relative with a disabling condition that my presence makes them trot out like some secret handshake(most of them don't have an audience of millions, though.)

My experience is that those people just want to be on record with their*desire* to help. It makes them feel like they are especially sensitive to notice something that, admittedly, a lot of people do spend a lot of time running away from. But you can't count on them when you need someone. Actually ask, and they will remember a pressing appointment or an old football injury. Maybe that is why their favorite forms of life are fetuses and the comatose. Because they can't actually ask for anything or even say "No, I want the red one," or anything(Progressives, not all of you, but a fair number. I'm shocked by your...revulsion of Trig Palin, whether you think you could raise him or not, whether you believe that cocamamie plane-birth story, or whether you hate the bulletproof status you feel that she is angling for by using him as a shield between her and the country. I'm hip to most of those concerns. But he is a boy and he could grow up to be a real pleasure to be around, not just a drain on society. A lot of people with Down's Syndrome are pretty great people, although I think that "angels on the earth" thing provides a pretty creepy clue to the kind of support people with disabilities will get with our earthly needs. Not much. But we get Heaven for free. Yay?)

I don't think I can count on my "friend" Sarah to protect my right to live in the community, since her friend, and "President for these troubled times" John McCain doesn't support the Community Choice Act. Nor are we going to have much juicy girl talk, since homegirl opposes contraception.

And mostly, I like it when my friends trust my judgment. But my friend Sarah doesn't trust me enough to know what to do with my body.

With friends like those...

Erika J.