Grievance II: Names

Sarah Palin is apparently unable or unwilling to give her children names that are not terrible. Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. These are not names. These are signs of abuse, the bruises and cigarette burns left by a callous mother indifferent to the plight of her children.

This is a track. It enables runners to run for long distances without actually going anywhere.



This is also a track (several in fact). It enables heroin addicts to do heroin.



Neither of these things are people. They are things. Fun things, mayhaps, but still things. Maybe Track would be an acceptable name if he were a little kid, and he had a twin brother named Field. That would be cute, in the way that dressing up twins in matching outfits and parading them around the playground is cute. Which is to say that it stops being cute and starts being creepy at the age of five. By their 50s, Track and Field would likely live together in squalor, rambling about the good old days and foregoing even weekly showers.

Bristol is similarly horrible. The only time I ever hear that word is in reference to liquor.



I cannot vouch for it personally, but my father tells that Harvey's Bristol Cream is actually quite delicious. But no matter how delicious it is, it is not a good name for human being. What if I were to name my hypothetical children after my favorite alcohol? Little Franzia and her brother Almaden? What about my eldest son Steel Reserve? Or his half-sister with my first wife Mad Dog 20/20? The press would have a field day.

Willow and Piper are technically real names. Still, they follow the family tradition of being other things. Even more disturbing, however, is the dark subtext contained within these seemingly innocuous, even quaint, names.




These names obviously references to satanic rituals. Any viewer of Charmed or Buffy the Vampire Slayer could tell you that. Unlike Sabrina, these teenage witches regularly convene with the forces of darkness in order to perform their ghastly magic. Also, I have it on good authority that this one time at band camp, the actress who played Willow abused herself with a flute, then later abused herself again by appearing in Date Movie*. Are these the so-called family values Palin will bring to the White House? Witchcraft and masturbation?"

Trig?



Trig?



Where to begin? What the fuck? Trig?! That's not a name you give someone in civilized society. Trig is the kind of name you get when you live in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world, where the rule of law has fallen, and all arguments are settled by the sweet whisper of gunpowder and steel. Trig is the name of a lone wolf bounty hunter or at best a renegade sheriff who plays by his own rules. Fine roles, these, but would you really want to destine your child to such a fate? It's like naming your child Jeeves or Higgins. You're dooming him to be a butler.

White people, it's time to get off your high horse. No longer can you poop on blacks for giving kids crazy names. It's time to look in the mirror. Do you like what you see? I bet not. Native Americans can get away with this kind of thing, but only because they have been through enough already. Sarah Palin is not a Native American. She is white. Fail.

*Hannigan is the man on How I Met Your Mother, though