The Palin Doctrine & The Culture Wars: Seeing "Spring Awakening" Through Sarah's Eyes

amp160It39s not for nothing that Wedekind is held to be the Father of Expressionism Spring offers a far truer look at teen angst than Diablo Cody39s candy cane of an indie flick served up earlier thisspring While coverage of Spring has been obsessed with the show39s take on sexuality religion and freedom of expression are actually on equal footing here It39s no wonder then that the Duncan SheikSteven Sater collaboration of a rock musical manages to channel the Zeitgeist of this presidential election cycleDeaf Dumb BlindAs Spring opens fourteenyearold Wendla Bergmann has just been made an aunt twice over She begs her mother to tell her where babies come from adding that she knows the stork doesn39t make deliveries Frau Bergmann is struck dumb She wrestles with an answer but ultimately postpones it hoping against hope that ignorance is bliss In the first song of the musical Wendla sings quotMamma who bore me who gave me no way to handle thingsquot Later in the play the adolescent conceives amp8211 in the original Wedekind text it39s rape in the Steve SaterDuncan Sheik adaptation it39s an act of love In either case she is condemned A back alley abortion follows thenamp8230 the abyssIt39s impossible to tune out Bristol Palin here The first daughter39s name is like a Billboard Top 40 song that finds and seizes a shelf on your cerebellum Three days after Gov Sarah Palin was named McCain39s running mate she revealed that the seventeenyearold was pregnant Cunningly she invoked the word quotchoicequot in describing Bristol39s decision to carry to term It39s all well and good that the Palin family has chosen to support their daughter but what of those teenaged women without any visible means of support What39s Palin39s record here as governorNot so good While The Washington Post inaccurately reported that Gov Palin slashed the 2008 budget of Covenant House she did lineitem veto its 5 million allocation cutting it by over 20 This faithbased organization for atrisk youth includes Passage House a program that provides transitional housing for young mothers The Governor took pen to paper in April just as Bristol Palin was conceiving her childIn a sense the candidacy of Sarah Palin is a throwback to the 19th century world that Spring Awakening satirizes Until she switched to the more mediagenic Wasilla Bible Church Palin was a member of her hometown39s Assembly of God church amp8211 which believes in the Pentecostalist speaking in tongues and layingon of handsThe Times Online reports how in a June 5th speech Gov Palin credited the ecstatic prayer of Kenyan witchhunter Thomas Muthee with the clinching of her 2005 gubernatorial bid Remember when media sharks and surrogates alike were all about the excesses of Revs Wright Parsley and Hagee From where I sit Sarah Palin39s a twofer pastor and politician rolled into oneThis Pentecostal follower believes the Bible to be the Word of God Not that it39s a cult like Scientology Almost the chronological peer of the New York debut of Spring Awakening centuryold Pentecostalism is now the 10th largest Christian denomination look for 500 million true believers by 2020 In Sarah Palin39s September 6th speech at her former Assembly of God church she reiterates a central conceit of her flock that Alaska has a quotdivine destinyquot and that we are in Iraq as a quottask from GodquotWhat we have here folks is Bobby Jindal with lipstick without the Hurricane and exorcism experience So what do you get when religious dogma drives policy Sex Panic Bristol Palin39s condition not only runs parallel to 19th century shame over the body but also to 21st century Bush Administration policies that have decimated comprehensive sexed And in Sarah Palin39s Alaska women39s reproductive rights aren39t a priorityNo Sex We39re AmericanRep Henry Waxman Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has been probing federally sponsored Abstinence Only programs for the past two years This spring not only did he reveal that this cottage industry has received over 13 billion in federal funding over the past decade but even more troubling over made notorious this spring by Gloucester high schoolers39 seemingly trying to get knocked up there is one sexeducation coordinator for the entire State Given this context it shouldn39t come as a shock that the Centers for Disease Control reported in March that nationally 26 of women aged 1419 have at least one STD Another local triumph Alaska has the highest per capita incidence of Chlamydia and in the nationAbstinence Only then has been more than a fiscal boondoggle It has reinscribed Victorian and fiftiesera messaging that the body is taboo If the Bush Administration considers this progress Sarah Palin has a track record that is positively the Manhattan Project of sexual repression Here39s a stat for McCainPalin to tout According to FBI crime statistics Alaska is 1 nationally in forcible rape Back in April 2007 Amnesty International admonished Alaskan state and federal authorities for maintaining quota maze of tribal state and federal jurisdictionsquot that allow sexual offenders to act with impunityTroopergate supporting player Walter Monegan was fired from his position asPublic Safety Commissioner for having gone quotroguequot What gained him this honorAllegedly he went to Washington without proper authorization It has since been confirmed that he did receive approval for the trip in which he was lobbying for federal monies to aid victims of sexual assaultUnder Palin39s watch Wasilla was the only town in the state of Alaska to charge the cost of rape kits to the victims That is until the practice was banned statewide by its last governor There is consensus among medical experts that it can retraumatize a rape victim What reasons then might Palin have for supporting this largely punitive measure There39s no case to be made of taxpayer burden we39re only talking some 15000 a year The Violence Against Women Act a bill authored by VP nominee Joe Biden and voted against by none other thanamp8230 John McCain mandated that these kits be made available free of charge to rape survivors Might the inclusion of the quotmorning after pillquot amp8211 given the Governor39s abortion stand amp8211 permitting no exception even in cases of rape and incest amp8211 be the crux of her resistanceThis environment has buoyed for a national movement of Christian pharmacists who wish to deny contraceptives on the basis of their religious beliefs There39s a Federal law in the works that would enable them to do so despite their Hippocratic Oath amp8211 the comment period for it ended Thursday September 25thHalfway through the first act of Spring schoolgirl Martha admits to being beaten and sexually abused by her father Her song carries perhaps the most plaintive stirrings of the musical In quotThe Dark I Know Wellquot she shares her secretYou say all you want is just a kiss goodnightThen you hold me and you whisperquotChild the Lord won39t mindIt39s just you and meChild you39re a beautyquotDuring last week39s avalanche of attack ads the McCain campaign chose to resurrect a leftover smear first concocted by wingnut Alan Keyes during his 2006 Senate contest against Obama As putrid as a used condom it purports that Obama voted for a program that would offer sexed to kindergarteners Actually it was a bill to head off inappropriate touchingWhat allowance does Palin make in the case of a child conceived by incest NoneShe39d turn back the clock appointing judges that would overturn Roe v Wade and make abortion illegal even in the case of rape and incest Finally this week Obama is making this an issue and aggressively I know that abortion is the Third Rail of politics but what took him so longNo Child Left BehindWedekind was writing at a time of exciting discovery Freud was giving voice to the subconscious Nietzsche famously announcing quotGod is Deadquot while Darwin painstakingly presented his Theory of Evolution Spring Awakening lead Melchior Gabor is his academy39s star pupil With his mother39s tacit approval he39s reading Faust Wedekind himself was known as a quotradical atheistquot and Melchior is clearly his doppelgangerJust as sexuality is fraught amp8211 and tragic amp8211 for Wendla Bergmann freethinking Melchior Gabor is at odds with the hidebound teachings of his academy After enduring corporal punishment at the hands of Rektor Sunstroke Gabor breaks that fourth wall and singsquotAll that39s known in History and Science Overthrown at school and home by blind men You doubt them and soon they bark and hound you amp8230 All they say is trust in what is written Wars are made and somehow that is wisdomquotMelchior Gabor might just as well have been reacting to No Child Left Behind39s quotteaching to the testquot or for that matter our misadventures in Iraq The most intellectually gifted student of the school is summarily expelled for quotthinking bad thoughtsquot When he answers best friend Moritz Stiefel39s hormonallydictated need to know about human sexuality in the form of a frank quothowtomanualquot he is branded morally corrupt by his own father and sent to the Reformatory Flashforward On a questionnaire by the conservative Eagle Forum during her gubernatorial run Palin noted that quotexplicit sexed programs will not find my supportquotShame and secrecy are two sides of the same coin Censorship is a scaffolding that preempts dissent and debate as we see with Sarah Palin Although that initial email about banning books was apocryphal Palin has far from a sterling record in upholding the marketplace of ideas In 1995 Focus on the Family amp8211 whose quotLove Won Outquot conference was promoted by Gov Palin39s church earlier this month was on a mission to nationally ban books such as quotDaddy39s Roommatequot and quotHeather Has Two Mommiesquot Sarah Palin went on record saying that the former didn39t belong in the local library The following year Wasilla Library Director Mary Ellen Emmons recalled MayorElect Palin asked her outright whether or not she quotcould live with censorship of booksquot After three such queries it became a public matter and Palin quickly backpedaled insisting that hers was merely a rhetorical line of questioning Apparently librarian Emmons crossed that rhetorical line Now governor Palin asked for her resignation but the town faced the executive down in a grassroots effort And during her tenure Gov Palin refused to support funding for a badly needed new library expansion while putting her executive stamp on a sales tax increase for a new sports complexIn Palin39s September 6th address to her church she declared that Alaskan39s need to be quotRight With Godquot for His support How does that play out How can a Muslim or a Jew be quotRight With Godquot if she doesn39t worship the right Deity What about this nonbelieverHere39s a possible answer Palin39s anointed spiritual warrior Thomas Muthee is shown here blessing the Governor Last weekend journalist Max Blumenthal paid a visit to the Wasilla Assembly of God to pay homage to the Minister Muthee referred to nonbelievers as pythons He urged Christians to crush quotthe python spiritquot and to infiltrate the quotSeven Kingdomsquot including schools business and you guessed it governmentWe have every right to be furious when a Holocaust denier like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tries to undermine historical veracity But what about a candidate who refutes scientific consensus for global warming not to mention the Theory of Evolution When Pres Bush was asked if he ever consulted quot41quot he answered that he sought counsel with a quotHigher Fatherquot There39s every evidence that not only would Sarah Palin follow his intelligent design but that amp8211 unless otherwise indicated amp8211 she believes we39re in End Times If so pray tell us of the policy ramificationsSeeing Spring Awakening during the final breaths of the general election reminds us that America has one foot wading into the 21st century and other mired deep in the past Not that there39s anything wrong with tradition or nostalgia but clinging to quotguns and religionquotis not a holistic rhetorical strategy as our nation grows more and more heterogeneous This election is not about quotRepublicratsquot amp8211 as Ralph Nader might suggest It is about those who would return us to an era of mysticism over science institutionalizing shame and secrecy and policing our personal lives The real tragedy of Spring Awakening with its frank talk of masturbation abortion homosexuality incest and suicide is that the 1891 source text is so damned timely today The optimist in me demands that it be a clarion call to leave our superstitions and prejudices behind and to finally embrace Bill Clinton39s Bridge to the 21st Century not Sarah Palin39s Bridge to Nowhere

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The Palin Doctrine & The Culture Wars: Seeing "Spring Awakening" Through Sarah's Eyes

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