Okay, I feel better now. I am off obsessing about Sarah Palin, at least for now anyway. Now I am much more enveloped in the news that we have been carrying out clandestine operations in Pakistan without the government’s awareness. I’m trying to read more, but my knee jerk reaction is that Bush and his guys are those kids on the playground that just cannot solve any problem without hitting someone. I am fearful that something will happen before the election that will ensure a scared population running into the arms of it’s brave war veteran. Which reminds me, how about how McCain ended his convention speech like it was a rally of prisoners of war who just had to focus and overcome? That was weird. I could see why he was a person who survived in combat and a war prison. It was almost a maniacal look in his eye. But honestly, that is the last quality that we want in a president. And now he’s coupled up with a religious conservative. These are two scary ingredients in our increasingly possible presidential soup.

Yesterday I edited together (well, my editor edited, I sat and commented) the audience interviews that were done after the filming of “Letting Go of God” over a year ago. They are so good! I am so moved to have had people say such nice things. On the movie front, it looks like Showtime is buying the rights to play the film for a year and there will be a “premiere” during primetime (that means between 8 and midnight) sometime early next year. But in the meantime, I have the right to distribute the DVD on my own. Which means that finally nothing is stopping me but just getting it out there. I was planning to release it in November (at least in my latest calculations) but now I am going to try to get it out there as soon as I can. Maybe by mid-October. I am sorry there’s been so many ups and downs with this. I could write reams about the indie-film process, but I’ll spare you. Looks like a quiet little personal release and then when the film is on Showtime I will do national publicity then. Or I mean, try to anyway. Everything is so different than 10 years ago, it’s like a whole different world out there. I have gotten a few letters from people asking that the film have Spanish subtitles. This is a good idea, but may slow me down in terms of getting it out. My husband then suggested Latin subtitles, which made me laugh really, really hard. Latin subtitles!!!!!!!! That is hysterical. But jesus, now I have to find a Latinist. And all for the laugh of seeing the option on the DVD menu. But I think it might be worth it.

Okay, back to what I am not obsessing about. The most condescending thing about the Palin nomination is that McCain is banking on the fact that political and national and international problems are too complex to be simple. And Palin draws in the simple thinkers.

We did not evolve brains that easily grasp worldwide intangible problems. It’s not easy for us to see far into the future and far back into the past and check our emotions and behave rationally – at least not without discipline and effort. We evolved brains that loved gossip. And the thing about Sarah Palin, her nomination and what it did to me, is that I fell for it. I got caught up in the gossipy junior-high aspect of it, even in my outrage it was a qualitatively different emotional surge for me than the regular outrage I have about politics. It DID feel like I was in high school. Although I have to say, I don’t even think I did that in high school!

When I pass all the gossip rags at the newsstand, I always feel sad about how many of them there are, how acceptable it is for grown men and women to read them. And yet it worked on me. And on many more people than me, too. In a way it doesn’t matter if we hated her or loved her, we were drawn in – captivated, unable to look away, fascinated. Sarah Palin has drawn in a whole group of people who would otherwise not really care that much. And even among those of us who do care already, we were hoodwinked by the drama.

In any case, I am still reading everything, listening to everything, hoping against hope, calculating odds, the whole gamut. I guess to me that is not obsessing, it's just... intense interest. HA.