Dumb quote of the day
That scene and others are sure to suggest to some viewers that the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee is positioning herself for a 2012 presidential run.
There are other messages that seem to conflict with those ambitions, though. Palin talks about her love of wild Alaska, offering in one well-known homily, "A poor day of fishing beats even a great day at work."-Rachel D'Oro, Associated Press,
"Palin's show might set up a run",
syndicated by Salon, November 13th, 2010.
Sorry, I hate to do this to Ms. D'Oro, but seriously? Those messages are in conflict? Really?
I mean, look, I realize that the comments quoted above are fluff to set up some small discussion of whether Palin's show is being subsidized by Alaskan tax incentives for film productions (answer: the reporter wasn't able to find out, making the whole thing even more of a non-story, thanks for nothing), but part of Palin's pitch to the faithful if she runs--and I think it's very likely she will--is going to be, "I'd rather be at home with my family in the glorious wilds of Alaska, hunting and fishing and raising my children and helping raise my grandchild, but if God calls me to be President and the people of this great country need me, I'll make the necessary sacrifices to answer that call, God Bless America." And some people will eat that bullshit with a spoon, like it's chocolate ice cream and not one of the hoariest old clichés in the demagogue's playbook while a more sophisticated audience from both sides of the aisle throws up--as much over the way people are chowing down on cow flop as over the sulfurous reek of the excrement itself.
"She's a good women," her supporters will say. "She don't want to be President, but she knows she's needed. Unlike that Obama who's just had things handed to him, she's willing to give things up."
Which is the exact opposite of actuality: in the non-Bizarro world, Sarah Palin has been living a life of political entitlement from the time Nick Carney plucked her from the street, mistakenly thinking she'd be a tractable political ingénue he could do the whole Svengali bit for all the way through John McCain's chowderheaded decision to catapult her to the national stage in a fit of childish pique because his advisors said he couldn't have his friend Joe on the ticket because having Al Gore's former running mate would undeniably look funny.
A runner-up for dumb quote from later in the same piece:
Again, I realize we're talking fluff to set up another pointless discussion about how much Palin is getting paid for this gig (again, the reporter wasn't actually able to pin down numbers, making the article a big, useless, unnecessary zero), but again with the false choices. I'd be ecstatic to be wrong, but I have little doubt that Palin is setting up a Presidential bid and grabbing up whatever spoils she can get. The sense you get from Going Rogue (her own "memoir"!) and from all the mean stories that have leaked from the McCain camp and elsewhere is that this is a supremely narcissistic and smugly self-entitled woman who is finally basking in attention that she has long felt was hers by right and was long denied to her.
This is a woman, let's recall, who was apparently a biggish fish in a... well, it wasn't even a little pond, was it? More of a tiny fishbowl for Sarah Barracuda. She went to the University Of Hawai'i at Hilo, almost half as big as her whole hometown and transferred to a school likely as big (as of this writing, Wikipedia puts the population of Wasilla at 10,256, the student body of UHH at 3,974 and the student body of Hawai'i Pacific University, Palin's second school, at 9.000; I can't say whether these numbers were in similar ballparks in the early '80s, when Palin was in college), where she almost certainly was nobody special--much as practically any incoming freshman is nobody special. Let me repeat: Sarah Palin went from being a beauty pageant winner and star athlete in a microscopic Alaskan outpost to being a college freshman at schools where she was almost certainly mundane, at best, just like you (probably), just like me (I can vouch wholeheartedly). After a college career spectacular only for the number of schools she attended, she eloped with the solidly blue-collar Todd Palin and was well on her way to, frankly, a trailer-park level of existence, working odd jobs and having babies, before Carney spotted her. Her story, in other words, was (up to that point, at least), the opposite of Cinderella's: the coddled and admired princess who becomes an unappreciated and abused servant--no doubt through the agency of supernatural forces and not any particular choice she made about school, love, marriage, career, or family.
All this admittedly armchair analysis being important because Palin is a princess again, and you bet your ass she knows it and you'd better act like you do, too. Palin isn't Sharron Angle, who seems to be a true believer, or Christine O'Donnell, who likes being paid attention to. Sarah Palin is getting what she deserves, she has a mental book with columns for what she's given up and columns for what she's owed, and nobody is near balancing the books; Sarah Palin, you see, never stopped being a princess even when she was cleaning house and changing nasty diapers and wondering why nobody was showering her with the adoration and material things the universe promised her, so there's interest on that unpaid, unacknowledged principal, you bet'cha.
Does she want the talk show or the Oval Office? The answer is yes. Does she want to be a rich celebrity or the leader of the free world? Yes. Does she want a million followers for her pithy Twitter feed or the respect, recognition and attention of America's intellectual caste? Yes. People who think that Sarah Palin has to make a choice don't understand the question: they're right, but Sarah Palin doesn't know that and she doesn't care. It's her time, and she wants what's hers. All of it.
Let me get something else across before I shake my head again and wander away: I hear a lot of people saying they hope the Republicans nominate her for President in 2012 because they think she'll get brutally trounced. They're fools, even if they're probably right. Is Palin a divisive prospective candidate who would drive away droves of sensible Republicans if she secured the nomination? Sure. But, know what? There's a helluva lot that can happen in a Presidential campaign, and history is full of strange twists and oddities; sometimes those oddities look inevitable in retrospect, but some of them remain boggling no matter which angle you try to sneak up on them from. President Palin may be improbable but it isn't impossible, and that should scare the piss out of any reasonable human being on the planet. Any Democrat, any pundit, any person who relishes the notion of Palin on a Presidential ticket is a fucking idiot, no uncertain terms and no two ways about it, who ought to consider whether they'd still be laughing it up if some terrible chain of events led to her standing in front of the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court with her hand on a Bible one wintry morning.
I mean, look, I realize that the comments quoted above are fluff to set up some small discussion of whether Palin's show is being subsidized by Alaskan tax incentives for film productions (answer: the reporter wasn't able to find out, making the whole thing even more of a non-story, thanks for nothing), but part of Palin's pitch to the faithful if she runs--and I think it's very likely she will--is going to be, "I'd rather be at home with my family in the glorious wilds of Alaska, hunting and fishing and raising my children and helping raise my grandchild, but if God calls me to be President and the people of this great country need me, I'll make the necessary sacrifices to answer that call, God Bless America." And some people will eat that bullshit with a spoon, like it's chocolate ice cream and not one of the hoariest old clichés in the demagogue's playbook while a more sophisticated audience from both sides of the aisle throws up--as much over the way people are chowing down on cow flop as over the sulfurous reek of the excrement itself.
"She's a good women," her supporters will say. "She don't want to be President, but she knows she's needed. Unlike that Obama who's just had things handed to him, she's willing to give things up."
Which is the exact opposite of actuality: in the non-Bizarro world, Sarah Palin has been living a life of political entitlement from the time Nick Carney plucked her from the street, mistakenly thinking she'd be a tractable political ingénue he could do the whole Svengali bit for all the way through John McCain's chowderheaded decision to catapult her to the national stage in a fit of childish pique because his advisors said he couldn't have his friend Joe on the ticket because having Al Gore's former running mate would undeniably look funny.
A runner-up for dumb quote from later in the same piece:
The intent of the series is not clear--is she merely showing off a state she truly loves with off-the-cuff remarks, or are these the opinions of the paid Fox News consultant subtly laying the groundwork for a presidential bid?
Of course, with a production of this magnitude, money also could be a powerful motivation.
Again, I realize we're talking fluff to set up another pointless discussion about how much Palin is getting paid for this gig (again, the reporter wasn't actually able to pin down numbers, making the article a big, useless, unnecessary zero), but again with the false choices. I'd be ecstatic to be wrong, but I have little doubt that Palin is setting up a Presidential bid and grabbing up whatever spoils she can get. The sense you get from Going Rogue (her own "memoir"!) and from all the mean stories that have leaked from the McCain camp and elsewhere is that this is a supremely narcissistic and smugly self-entitled woman who is finally basking in attention that she has long felt was hers by right and was long denied to her.
This is a woman, let's recall, who was apparently a biggish fish in a... well, it wasn't even a little pond, was it? More of a tiny fishbowl for Sarah Barracuda. She went to the University Of Hawai'i at Hilo, almost half as big as her whole hometown and transferred to a school likely as big (as of this writing, Wikipedia puts the population of Wasilla at 10,256, the student body of UHH at 3,974 and the student body of Hawai'i Pacific University, Palin's second school, at 9.000; I can't say whether these numbers were in similar ballparks in the early '80s, when Palin was in college), where she almost certainly was nobody special--much as practically any incoming freshman is nobody special. Let me repeat: Sarah Palin went from being a beauty pageant winner and star athlete in a microscopic Alaskan outpost to being a college freshman at schools where she was almost certainly mundane, at best, just like you (probably), just like me (I can vouch wholeheartedly). After a college career spectacular only for the number of schools she attended, she eloped with the solidly blue-collar Todd Palin and was well on her way to, frankly, a trailer-park level of existence, working odd jobs and having babies, before Carney spotted her. Her story, in other words, was (up to that point, at least), the opposite of Cinderella's: the coddled and admired princess who becomes an unappreciated and abused servant--no doubt through the agency of supernatural forces and not any particular choice she made about school, love, marriage, career, or family.
All this admittedly armchair analysis being important because Palin is a princess again, and you bet your ass she knows it and you'd better act like you do, too. Palin isn't Sharron Angle, who seems to be a true believer, or Christine O'Donnell, who likes being paid attention to. Sarah Palin is getting what she deserves, she has a mental book with columns for what she's given up and columns for what she's owed, and nobody is near balancing the books; Sarah Palin, you see, never stopped being a princess even when she was cleaning house and changing nasty diapers and wondering why nobody was showering her with the adoration and material things the universe promised her, so there's interest on that unpaid, unacknowledged principal, you bet'cha.
Does she want the talk show or the Oval Office? The answer is yes. Does she want to be a rich celebrity or the leader of the free world? Yes. Does she want a million followers for her pithy Twitter feed or the respect, recognition and attention of America's intellectual caste? Yes. People who think that Sarah Palin has to make a choice don't understand the question: they're right, but Sarah Palin doesn't know that and she doesn't care. It's her time, and she wants what's hers. All of it.
Let me get something else across before I shake my head again and wander away: I hear a lot of people saying they hope the Republicans nominate her for President in 2012 because they think she'll get brutally trounced. They're fools, even if they're probably right. Is Palin a divisive prospective candidate who would drive away droves of sensible Republicans if she secured the nomination? Sure. But, know what? There's a helluva lot that can happen in a Presidential campaign, and history is full of strange twists and oddities; sometimes those oddities look inevitable in retrospect, but some of them remain boggling no matter which angle you try to sneak up on them from. President Palin may be improbable but it isn't impossible, and that should scare the piss out of any reasonable human being on the planet. Any Democrat, any pundit, any person who relishes the notion of Palin on a Presidential ticket is a fucking idiot, no uncertain terms and no two ways about it, who ought to consider whether they'd still be laughing it up if some terrible chain of events led to her standing in front of the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court with her hand on a Bible one wintry morning.
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