Palin’s Pretentions
Hurricane force winds pummeled Alaska’s capitol city, shredding the American flag atop the almost vacant capitol building. This kind of weather, in any other part of the country, would have been the lead story on every network and cable newscast. Here the weather barely made the front page. No biggy. We’re used to it.
The Alaska flag, flying proudly aside our national symbol, held its own during the gale and lost not a strand of cloth.
We’ve weathered worse storms.
The world has changed since the Stroller last put pen to paper.
One of us died.
Tim Kelly, legendary Senate Rules Committee Chairman and former President of the Alaska Senate passed in his sleep on August 17, two days after reaching the tender age of 65.
He was one of us, a Stroller, and an intricate participant in this column. His insights will, I’m sure you’ll notice, be sorely missed. Our politics conflicted but he was, at the end of the day, my best friend.
One of the most conservative political voices in Alaskan politics, Senator Kelly, behind the scenes, was the most effective champion of women’s and gay rights in the history of our state. He defended friends when no one else stood up for them. The Stroller believes that Tim, like former Senate President Clem Tillion, used his public conservatism as cover to help the disenfranchised and downtrodden.
He was a kind and decent man and his insights and temperate guidance of our state’s political future will be sorely missed, and everyone who has anything to do with this government knows it. He was the craft master of the possible and was always, at the end of the day, able to bring opponents together and find common ground. A rare person.
He lived his life well and the Stroller misses him more than words can express.
He despised Pretend Governor Sarah. Mostly her arrogant disregard and disrespect for the institutions that make us the guiding light for people worldwide.
Tim was outraged that Pretend Governor Sarah had absolutely no interest in governing, learning about how to govern, how to implement her ‘visions’ or fulfill the promises she made to those she seductively conned into voting for her.
In a world where politicians are regularly vilified, he believed she cheapened all of us.
There is not enough elixir from Scotland, or lemons, to dull the pain of Tim’s passing or Pretend Governor Sarah’s ascension to national prominence. We will all have to suffer the consequences.
Stroller
