Palin attended Hawaii Pacific College — now known as Hawaii Pacific University — in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1982 for a semester, where she majored in Business Administration, and transferred in 1983 to North Idaho College.

In 1987, Palin received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho, where she also minored in political science.

Most jewschool readers aren’t kids trying to see how clever (or not) we can be – we’re adults trying to live in and engage with the world around us. Which means, make the sarcasm funny, okay?

Some of you have horrified me, others have amused me. Most of you pointed out my concerns with my post. I knew right wingers would jump on me because I was anti-Palin. I used the word “hate” to line up my argument with the source post at Gawker. I don’t really hate her. There are bigger fish to fry in this world. But, yes, I do think she’s a moron and would be a terrible VP or President.

Part of progressive Judaism for me is about conversation. Conversation about things that don’t allow consensus because of a variety of opinions on any given topic, about sensitive issues, about conflicts. It was great to be referred to as “whiny” (@Rick H), “Racist” (@chick – ok, that one stung), and to have someone claim that I suffered from a severe case of “classism and snobbery” (@beth h).

@Eric was concerned that my thoughts on abortion were disputed within my own links. That contradiction is essential to the arguments of Judaism, recorded from the time of the Talmud onward. Two Jews? Three opinions!

@AJ read Palin’s book…and others suggested I read it before I snark off. Maybe I’ll put it on the list after other worthwhile literature, @miri. Maybe…if I ever get through the required reading of a “high school freshman trying desperately to be intelligent.” Where is my copy of “Slaughterhouse Five” hiding?

@Oren, I think most of US citizenry, not just Jews, would benefit from experiencing the outdoors more often. There is, to quote Avenue Q, life outside one’s apartment.

@Vicki, Thank you for noticing my thesis statement, something I wasn’t sure was ringing clear enough through the veil of snark. When it comes down to it, I just don’t think stupid people should be in charge. Plenty of smart people can shoot a gun. Like the many intelligent men and women in our own armed forces, for example.

@Ruby K, thanks for your thoughtful discussion on my piece. You’re right. I don’t have anything against the blue collar.

@KRG, thanks. I can’t really drop the snark, so expect more rabid commenting on my sarcastic future posts. It was something of a wake-up call that writing for Jewschool isn’t like the snark-tastic blogging I did when I lived in Israel for a year (Wait, what? SBB’s a Zionist?! Who knew?). It seems Jewschool readership demands a strong, academic presence, something I will bring, sometimes. (Readership – feel free not to read my less-researched, more ranty posts, which I will still write. I dare you to ignore my sophomoric arguments, and not comment on them.)

By the way, @David AMW, I was raised in a swing state. I’m aware of vibrant Jewish communities outside of the liberal Northeast, as I am still an adjunct member of one myself.

@Ennui, nice to see there’s someone who gets what I was trying to do. Thanks.

@Readership, Shavuah tov!

Without getting too deep into the Palin mater here, though, as a liberal, halachic Jew, I was offended by many of the statements in the post about *Jews* which are at best oversimplified. It’s true that hunting is frowned upon by Jewish law. It’s not true (as Ploni ALmoni corretly points out) that Jewish law allows abortion end of story. (Whether in the more leftish versions of Judaism that’s the view is another matter, since that’s not a matter of Jewish law). It’s not true that all Jews live in cities – I love how New Yorkers think that all Jews live in New York, which is what the implication is here, and by the way, Jews live in other cities than New York, AND they live in suburbs, small towns and the country.

God forbid that Palin should get anywhere near the white house, even as a tourist, but the tone of the post wasn’t, in my opinion, very fetching.
BY the way, congrats on a first post that roused the rabble. Good work.

On the one hand, I am also “privileged” to reside in a Blue state. As the first person in my family to earn a University degree I carry no small amount of bragging rights to my education. And I am blessed to be part of a loving, active Jewish community that has embraced me and my spouse as just another part of their extended family.

But I didn’t grow up privileged, or connected to Jewish community or to a strong sense of Zionism. I was in some ways what I would call a “white trash Jew”. I spent my adolescence in a semi-rural suburb east of Portland, OR where my sister and I were the only two Jewish kids in our high school. My parents could not afford synagogue membership, Hebrew school or Jewish camp. My camping trips were taken with the Girl Scouts, where I actually learned how to pitch a tent, fish, backpack, hike, swim, provide primitive first aid and thrive in the outdoors. Marching band and drum corps were letter sports and I excelled at them. I was an occasional guest at various friends’ church services, where the priest would learn I was a Jew and wish me a very happy Passover and ask where we got our Matzohs (we had to drive twenty miles across town into the rich westside suburbs to find any). And in the summer my sister and I made spending money by babysitting, delivering papers, picking berries, clearing brush, and helping a neighbor clean out his horse stalls. Bored Saturday nights were sometimes spent sneaking pop and beer from the refrigerator parked outside a neighbor’s house, watching Portland Wrestling and making fun of how obviously faked it was.

We grew up with a combination of our parents’ liberal leanings and our own strange sense of political independence — imagine a social liberal mixed with a fiscal conservative and a touch of libertarianism and you have someone like me. I am too sad and angry about the homeless army vet who froze to death in a downtown doorway last month, and too stressed about my spouse who hasn’t found a full-time job for over TWO YEARS, to worry about what goes on in Israel — a place I can’t afford to visit anyway. For me, and for lots of Jewish Americans, it is all about what is happening RIGHT NOW, where we live; and about how hard it remains to make a living and get our kids a decent public education in this toilet of an economy.

And while Sarah Pailn and I don’t necessarily see eye to eye on a great many things, I GET her. I GET why she struck a chord in the hearts of so many Americans — especially those who, like me, had to earn their way through college (it took me twenty years to finish my degree) and whose jobs today barely pay enough to make rent each month. The big draw about Sarah Palin has as much to do with working peoples’ hatred of the class system that ALREADY exists in this country as with Palin’s decidedly ordinary roots.

If your BS and MA are all that’s keeping you warm at night, perhaps you ought to toss another log on the fire while you enjoy the safety of your insular, east-coast-centric privilege. Your post reeks of classism and snobbery in a way that doesn’t make any Jew look good, or even merely decent.

Oh and Jeff’s post made me laugh.”Americans are “Shokolad” or chocolate in Russian, Soft and sweet, not tough as nails.” haha if that were true we would not be the nation that we are.

I don’t like Sarah Palin, but I also don’t like this post too much.

And, by the way, there’s nothing I hate more than this: “Jews are generally urban, educated, Blue State dwellers.”

For the eight-millionth time, there are Jews all across the midwest and south and southwest and texas who live great Jewish lives in vibrant Jewish communities.