Perspective

A stark reminder that in the world of US politics, the sum paid to outfit Sarah Palin, a politician who is neither rich nor had the time herself to accrue such a wardrobe, is not excessive. And to be sure- if she wasn't professionally turned out, we'd be hearing about how terribly she dresses 24/7.

Is anyone really surprised that in today's image conscious times that the RNC thought it was a worthwhile investment to dress her at least as well as the TV anchors who interview her?

Anyway, onto the main point. While the Republicans are accused of wasteful spending on Palin, let's just take a moment to compare that spending to the Obama budget.

Convention expenses paid by the committee included $14.1 million for construction costs, including the stage and lighting, at the Pepsi Center and $5.3 million at Invesco Field.

So Barack Obama wasted $5.3 million dollars taking his acceptance speech to Invesco, an act of the purest vanity, rather than using the perfectly adequate convention centre- which the campaign had already paid over $14 million dollars on. Now, that's wasteful spending. Kind of puts Palin's $150,000 into perspective- and that will last her for the length of the campaign, not just one night.

Then we have this staggering news-

OBAMA’S OCT 1-15 SPENDING = $105,599,963.76

That’s more than $293,000 an hour.

So he could buy nearly two sets of Palin wardrobes every hour, 24 hours a day for 15 days running.

I've never in my life seen such petty coverage of a political figure as that which Sarah Palin is subjected to. What makes it even worse is that while the media wastes time on her clothes and so on, it ignores genuine stories about the Democratic candidate.

We get headlines about Palin's shoes but Barack Obama declares he wants to create a civilian defence force funded as well as the Army and...the blogs cover it.

It's simply astonishing how the media has betrayed even the appearance of objectivity this election cycle.