Well, it looks like Andy Drama’s latest bout of Trig truth-squading has come to naught: “There is no proof here of anything.” I guess I was hoping for a denouement resembling a scene from “Chinatown“, or at least from a very special episode of “Little House On the Prairie”. Now, it looks like the best we’ll see is some kind of half-baked second shooter theory.
I don’t think this kind of focus on Sarah Palin’s personal life is healthy or productive. It reminds me too much of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky thing, pointless gossip about something that has no affect on anyone beyond the people direclty involved.
But I don’t agree that the current media fixation with Palin is bad all in all. Remember that Palin was a major party’s vice-presidential nominee. And that before she embarrassed herself in interviews, Palin polled pretty well. And that the top of her ticket was an elderly man who had a reasonable chance of dying in office. The fact that someone who seems dumber and more vindictive than George W. Bush was close to becoming president should frighten us all. To the extent that the current focus on Palin reminds people of that, it’s a good thing.
MikeJ
The panty sniffers have spoken.
Warren Terra
And here I thought the scene to cite would have been the Jack Nicholson “You can’t handle the truth!” from A Few Good Men.
Bubblegum Tate
@Warren Terra:
“No truth-handler, you! I deride your truth-handling abilities!”
licensed to kill time
“I’m your mother! {{slap!}} I’m your grandmother! {{slap!}}”
Hunter Gathers
OT – but this is hilarious
whetstone
There, saved everyone some time.
Rick Massimo
I agree; it’s just that the aggressive push (mostly but not exclusively by Fox) to make her seem other than a complete dimwit is unsettling. “The extent that the current focus reminds people” that she’s a moron is an unintentional by-product of the attention, not the goal.
feebog
What do you mean, seems?
still liberal
Well. crap. I had $2 on Levi being the second shooter and real baby daddy. Oh, well.
Sarah Palin is to politics as the Kardashian daughters are to entertainment. Draws a lot of lookers and some heavy breathing, but not a damn thing there.
mai naem
Okay, anybody remember how Fox was after Obama during the campaign and even now for not coming on Fox. Anybody remember how “he’s a coward” and “how’s he going to deal with terrahrists when he can’t deal with iddy biddy Focks Noose.”
Any criticism of Saint Sarah not going on Rachel Maddow or Olbermann? I am waiting for Billy Kristol to call out Palin’s cowardice.
Redshirt
I’m with Andrew on this one. Expose her, ridicule her, mock her and her enablers relentlessly. This strain of Know-Nothingism is a cancer on American society and needs to be dealt with by fighting insanity with sanity, mania with logic, emotion with the facts.
We have to win this battle. This war.
El Cid
I’m shocked that someone as centered as Andrew Sullivan would be distracted by petty moralistic personal issue topics with little real evidence or public impact. Shocked, I say.
Cat Lady
DougJ is exactly right – poking fun at her personal life is cheap entertainment. This nonsense is a threat to us all, and whatever works to discredit her and salt the earth where she stood is fine with me. Go Sully.
Mark S.
@Hunter Gathers:
42% of Republicans are birthers? I didn’t know it was that frickin’ high.
That’s pretty damn high.
licensed to kill time
Has everyone already seen this?:
Snicker.
SMR
I’d never really thought that Sully was only interested in the baby issue, so I’m still waiting on some explanation from him, additions to his current list of lies from her.
I’m not buying her baby story for a lot of reasons, but that’s secondary to the other governing/political substantive issues anyway. If the premise of his obsession is (as I believe anyway) that the fixation on the baby issue is because it points to her propensity for lying & denying, well, there are plenty of other issues that support that.
Alaska has a whole list of currently pending/unresolved ethics issues left over from her tenure. There is also the pipeline to nowhere. The hypocrisy involved with the Randy Reudrich issue. The list goes on & on & on.
I’m an Alaskan who was registered as a Republican for 20 years (changed that after Mc picked her), so it’s not as though I get all of my info from the liberals/progressives/Dems, it’s all there in Alaska, just waiting for real journalists to do some real reporting, or for bloggers (besides the Alaskan bloggers who have been fantastic, but not supported by MSM). So, I hope Sully continues to go for it, there’s plenty more work to be done!
arguingwithsignposts
@Mark S.:
The interesting thing to me is that the polls always say “23 percent of partisan republicans (or whatever republicans)” believe (fill in the blank), but don’t say what percentage of the entire electorate that is.
If you have a party that represents 25 percent of the voting populace, say, that’s 23 percent of 25 percent, right? That means the numbers are probably pretty low compared to the entire voting population. Similarly with the democratic numbers (iirc, more people self-identify as democrats, but i’m too lazy to look up the numbers right now).
They never report it that way, however. I think it gives a skewed picture of just how many people we’re talking about wrt party identification and public opinion.
MBunge
“It reminds me too much of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky thing, pointless gossip about something that has no affect on anyone beyond the people direclty involved.”
Oh, for pete’s sake. Just about any corporate CEO caught doing what Clinton was doing with Monica would have been in just as much hot water and faced the same problems of investigation and sanction. And frankly, ANY corporate CEO who responded to the investigation with the same kind of orchestrated campaign of deception and obstruction as Clinton would have been tossed out on his ass.
Mike
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I agree that the dead tree media’s obsession with Sorry Sarah Is A Good Thing. The more every independent voter and the remaining 8.97 moderate repups in the country get to see what a vacuous, vindictive grifter she is, *and* that she’s portrayed in many circles as the leading light in the Republican Party, whadya think their reaction will be?
“JEESUSFUCKINGKEERIST we’d never vote for them!!!”
She’s the gift that keeps on giving no matter what blatherings come forth from Nate Silver to the contrary. Huckabee has many of the same loony leanings as she does and I know from my brother in Little Rock that the Huckster is a lieing sack of shit and is as vindictive and slimy as she is. But, he talks a good game which makes him a helluva lot scarier than she’ll ever be.
As for Trig, what most people lose sight of is the crazy woman’s 10 hour flight and drive to get back to Alaska *after* her water broke. Talk about the height of recklessness and bad parenting. Once a woman’s water has broken and the amniotic fluid has leaked, the fetus is no longer in a sterile environment, thus, the danger of infection is elevated enormously. That action alone is telling about the real character of the trailer trash ex-half-term governor from Alaska.
Not to mention there’s no indication that her kids actually GO TO SCHOOL. I guess the Alaska Truant Authorities are also scared of her.
Bubblegum Tate
@Hunter Gathers:
Hilarious, but also sad. Is there any way to do a mass decrazification? This country won’t last long if this many of its people is completely fucking nuts.
SpotWeld
@licensed to kill time: Does anyone competent work over there any more?!
Mike G
Palin is dumb as a brick. The people who worship her are dumber than bricks. The End.
Punchy
OT: (from TPM)
Death panels, and now abortions dues. These guys are hilarious.
Comrade Kevin
If you want to read someone going over the Palin book in a funny manner, you should go look at Mudflats.
Punchy
blockquote fail. Sigh
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Hmmmm, where have we heard that before? Oh, I remember now, in 1999-2000 when talking about Dubya. I remember the excuse then was “well, he’ll surround himself with really competent people.” in order to excuse away the fact that everything he’d touched in life had turned to shit (many years ago, one blogger called him the Anti-Midas president).
We see what that got us.
While I yammer on that this woman has no chance of becoming president short of an asteroid hitting the planet and wiping out everybody but the True Believers, I still harken back to how most of us felt about Dubya and then I start second guessing my certainty.
The Moar You Know
I fucking told you so. When are people going to stop listening to Sullivan?
Col. Klink
Pathetic as it is Palin is now the de facto head of the GOP. The old boys club in DC is terrified of her and the Hannity zombies worship her as the reincarnation of Joan of Arc.
Sully is right to expose this vampire to the light of day, but not because of anything related to Trig, Willow, Piper, Bristol, Levi or any other members of Mooseville. That’s a fool’s errand and it makes him sound like Orly Taitz. Palin should be exposed for what she is though, which is a flat earth, creationist, know-nothing, idiot who would either bankrupt the USA or bring about the End Times her followers long for.
The Moar You Know
link fail. FYWP.
Bubblegum Tate
@Punchy:
It’s funny now, but it’s not so funny when the media starts considering “abortion dues” a Very Serious Point.
Demo Woman
So does this mean no guessing pool about Trig’s paternity.
Sarah’s interviews the last few days have not been encouraging. According to Ambinder, if only she read a few more books theory does not convince me that she can become any one other than who she is. That’s pretty scarry. Sarah has the support of the tea baggers and Netanyahu.
Origuy
Book review of Going Rogue. Summary: despite the title, it’s not about playing D&D.
aimai
I agree with Arguing With Signposts upthread–what proportion of the Palin fanfollowing are even actually likely voters? I totally believe that in a majority republican area, in a primary in which only republicans can vote, she may be a shoe in. But in a national, rolling, primary I just don’t see how her mouthbreathing fans don’t drive independents and sane republicans into defensive voting and then hysterical flight.
I’d also like to caution us not to attempt to discredit Palin with her fan base by talking about stuff they dno’t care about, or don’t understand. Palin will only go down, and go down hard, when some serious sex scandal, or a tape of her dissing her own followers, comes out. Everything up until then–including faking her own orgasms/bookwriting/thinkingonforeign affairs/birth of her baby will be not only forgiven but embraced.
The thing about Palin’s true believers is they are all life’s doormats and fuckups. They *love* that she represents that. And the more we humiliate her–or they see her as humiliated by us–the more she comes to stand for them. Only more expensive clothes and public grifting or insults to the fan base can affect that. Think Jon and Kate plus Eight. And I don’t think she’s going to run out on Todd.**
Which is to say showing up at all her appearances with a big sign saying “Where’s Trig? I wouldn’t abandon my special needs baby to anyone else’s care!” is probably the single most important form attacking Palin should take.
aimai
licensed to kill time
@SpotWeld: Apparently not. It’s funny that after being caught using old pics to puff up the crowds for teabaggery events, Palin book signings and their oft-indulged oops! of putting the wrong (and in their minds, damning) party designation on politicos that they would do something this dopey for their Chosen Princess of Populist ‘Murka.
But schadenfruedenly delicioso.
The Kenosha Kid
It’s Wasilla, Doug.
(lights cigarette, walks off)
Rick Massimo
I think the key difference/problem is that the focus on her personal life will, at best, show that she’s a phony. We should be after bigger game than that. If Sarah Palin were proven to be a phony, all that would do is get rid of her, and the next
Dan QuayleGeorge W. BushSarah Palin would come along and get the same cheering crowds and the same deference from our “librul” media.That’s why I want Palin to be the GOP nominee in 2012 – not because the Goldwater/Mondale-scale defeat she would suffer would make her sad, but because it just might convince the David Broderse of the world that this country, overwhelmingly, doesn’t want to be governed by some combination of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. They just don’t.
Col. Klink
This is a true statement @ aimai
Yep.
NutellaonToast
Yeah, but GWB didn’t even stick with people long enough for McCain to not get 45%+ of the vote. What makes you think Palin will stick in any better?
El Cid
The perpetually aggrieved and slighted and beset-upon Palin and Palinoids should link up with the permanently aggrieved Southerners in the Southern National Congress, who weep bitter tears that we Southerners that the federal occupation forces and the collaborators down here fail to recognize that the Southern white conservative “South” is the last true Western civilization. (No, I’m not making that up, that’s their “manifesto”.)
Nobody does perpetual aggrievement quite as well as Southern whites.
About every 3rd word is grievance. And yes, that’s the Kirkpatrick Sale, who thinks you can best destroy the U.S. Empire by encouraging secession and separatism.
Oh, but I forget — Palin was never, ever a member of the AKIP and never would be but it is totally right and Alaskans are tired of being repressed by the federal government seeing how much money it forces down their gullets.
cmorenc
@MBunge
On balance, Clinton would have done the country a HUGE favor by resigning after he was caught blatently lying about Lewinsky. Gore may have irritated and infuriated the wingnuts just as much in his own way as Clinton ever did, but the difference is that Gore is an untouchably squeaky-clean honorable boy scout as politicians go, and the wingnuts would have had to engage him by ridicule on policy (and policy-related personal grounds), but they couldn’t have touched his personal integrity. With the benefit of two years of incumbency and a favorable economy, Shrub wouldn’t have been able to get nearly enough traction to beat Gore – at best a 53-47 type of election with a 100+ electoral vote margin.
Yes, I realize that a strong argument could be made against enabling a GOP special prosecutorial vendetta to run Clinton out of office with relatively petty (but real perjury) charges. It would only encourage and embolden them to double down on the tactic with further targets. (But Clinton standing pat in successful resistance sure worked out real swell toward that end in the long run, didn’t it? NOT!)
Yes, Gore should have run a better campaign in 2000 and won in his own right (and on more of a critical microcosm scale, what was the Palm Beach County Board of Elections (controlled by democrats) THINKING by designing and approving that brain-dead butterfly ballot in the first place, with all those easily confused elderly voters (especially the several thousand Jewish ones who were very, very unlikely to have actually intended to vote for the anti-semitc Pat Buchanan). Also, there was the flawed legal stragegy of seeking recounts only in counties thought favorable to Gore rather than statewide, by a common standard, which created the opening for the partisan hacks on SCOTUS to spin the most dishonest, pure partisan court decisions in our history.
The point is, most of the disasters of the past eight years, and dilemnas of the present, could have been avoided had Clinton done the honorable, considerate thing for the best interests of the nation. But as much as I rather like Bill, he’s a narcissistic self-centered bastard at heart, for all his smarts.
Shell
Naah, it’s all a set-up. So in the future when they again try to inflate a tea-bagger’s gathering with phony pics, they can say, ‘See, it’s all just another innocent mistake.’
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I don’t think it ever should be about that since as everybody notes, short of the usual scandals, she’s immune to losing her fan base. I mean if David Vitter and probably skate to reelection, than she could do just about anything and still not lose that 20-25% of the electorate that makes up the far out right.
It was no different with Bush. We always said even if we had video of him strangling kittens with his bare hands in front of 5 year olds, it wouldn’t change a thing with those people.
All attempts to discredit Palin should be aimed at the rest of the country, the non-loons. We do have a few. And she sure makes it easy to discredit.
gwangung
@Shell:
For a THIRD time?
Stefan
Oh, for pete’s sake. Just about any corporate CEO caught doing what Clinton was doing with Monica would have been in just as much hot water and faced the same problems of investigation and sanction. And frankly, ANY corporate CEO who responded to the investigation with the same kind of orchestrated campaign of deception and obstruction as Clinton would have been tossed out on his ass.
C’mon, admit it. You’ve never actually worked in a corporation before, have you?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Hunter Gathers: Those damned ACORN people visited me in the middle of the night, dressed in those black ninja pajamas with hoods and everything. I know they were from ACORN because they had a little nut patch on their shoulder. They shoved a gun in my face, and threatened to kill my daughter and my wife in front of me, slice off my little soldier and feed it to me before they cut my throat if I didn’t vote for Obama. Damn straight I voted for ‘im! Everywhere I went after that, no matter where I looked, I kept seeing people in those damned black pajamas, staring at me. They were damned serious, they were. I ain’t screwin’ around with those ACORN dudes, by Jesus.
slag
Ay, there’s the rub.
My new young-earth theory suggests that time began on the day Obama took office and magically ran up a 12 trillion dollar deficit before his inauguration was even over. All that other stuff about a very old guy picking a beauty queen drop-out to be vice president of these United States is pure mythology.
geg6
@MBunge:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
You’ve never worked in corporate America, then?
Bubblegum Tate
@aimai:
Correct, though they couch it in more vague terms:
NOTE: The “vastly smarter than her critics” line is not meant as a joke, and Noonan seems utterly unaware of the tremendous irony that he would say “failed people who consistently get things wrong are not to be listened to” about Palin’s critics and not Palin herself.
Ed Drone
@aimai:
They should be called Palin-drones, sez I.
And yes, that kind of know-nothing anger cannot be neutralized by facts — but the low-information voters called “independents” CAN be saved from the march of the Palindrones with the wide dissemination of facts, truth, and a helping of ridicule. You won’t reach the whinge-nuts, but you will prevent the virus from reaching at least some potential victims.
Ed
JGabriel
@MBunge:
I’m not sure what planet you’re living on, but out in the real world, a woman who has an affair with the boss usually either gets promoted, or, more often, laid off with a semi-generous package.
For example, Bill O’Reilly is still on the air at Fox, despite sexually harassing Andrea Mackris, and Mackris got a settlement after suing. Since most companies don’t want to deal with the expense of a suit, cases of affairs are usually handled with a quiet settlement. Not perjury charges, investigation, and sanctions.
.
Elizabelle
@Comrade Kevin:
Thank you to Kevin for reminding me to check Mudflats’ coverage. They’re reading the book so that we don’t have to take up residence at Barnes & Noble to speedskim. Most of us are already buying turkeys next week. No spending on this one in the meantime.
Mudflats includes a little “pants on fire” logo throughout their page by page summary.
Not subtle, but inspired.
http://www.themudflats.net
BDeevDad
I have no doubt that Sullivan would have been going whole hog after Clinton as well if he had the same platform he has now.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Just ask any of the women Letterman bed over the years. Same deal.
JGabriel
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Wouldn’t that be a sort of Anti-Rapture?
.
dfd
shorter cmorenc
The world would be a better place if only…
Brendan
“Second shooter” <– FTW.
bemused
When I’ve seen Levi commenting on Palin, I noticed how relaxed & unflappable he is. No fidgeting, fast talking or signs of his blood pressure rising. Palin is agitated, nervous & her voice goes high pitched when she talks about Levi. Quite an interesting contrast.
Elizabelle
sample from Mudflats (and this is where I should use MikeJ’s blockquote instructions, if not so lazy today):
Here we go with chapter two. (Deep breath)
Page 63
First sentence – “When I first got into Wasilla city politics, I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce the mayor’s name.” So, what do you suppose the mayor’s name was? Wojciechowski? Finnbogadottir? No, actually it was Stein. Pronounced the regular way. John Stein.
Nick Carney got her into politics. He was a snooty golfer and didn’t wear duct-taped bunny boots. Recruited her to run for City Council. (Thanks a lot, Nick.)
http://www.themudflats.net/2009/11/17/chapter-two-kitchen-table-politics/
Comrade Scrutinizer
@MBunge: Huh.
__
Yeah, Bendix tossed Agee right out his ass after he promoted Cunningham (with whom he was having an affair) from executive assistant to VP, causing a very public scandal. Swift and certain retribution, that was.
Oh, wait…
geg6
@cmorenc:
If you are even the slightest bit serious about this, I don’t think we can even have an intelligent conversation.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@bemused: Well, Levi’s a grinder, and Sarah is a beauty queen. Amirite?
kay
@licensed to kill time:
I’m hoping they have some disgruntled employees behind the scenes at FOX.
I think the shopped-in crowd scene footage is really and truly damaging, if it continues. Twice in 2 weeks is a lot.
We need one of those “mix ups” a day, every day, and an apology.
ellaesther
I really like Andrew Sullivan, I really do. And I really wish he would drop the Trig story. We don’t have any need or right to know the truth of that (if we don’t already!). As a woman who has had two babies, both of whom in rather sudden, emergency circumstances, I agree that the story sounds very, very odd. But it so thoroughly not my business as to be embarrassing that I actually know anything about it.
To the extent that whatever Sullivan uncovers reflects on the fact that Sarah Palin remains a public figure whose inability to tell the truth and/or produce reasonable policy ideas (vs. talking points) and/or function as an adult in polite society — and whose choice as a Vice Presidential candidate tells us an awful lot about John McCain and the GOP — then Sullivan is doing God’s work. To the extent that he’s digging into her reproductive history and the life of a toddler, it’s just unseemly.
dfd
@geg6: In the end, EVERYTHING is Clinton’s fault. Didn’t you get the memo?
eemom
“But I don’t agree that the current media fixation with Palin is bad all in all. Remember that Palin was a major party’s vice-presidential nominee. And that before she embarrassed herself in interviews, Palin polled pretty well. And that the top of her ticket was an elderly man who had a reasonable chance of dying in office. The fact that someone who seems dumber and more vindictive than George W. Bush was close to becoming president should frighten us all. To the extent that the current focus on Palin reminds people of that, it’s a good thing.”
I must respectfully disagree. The current focus is not reminding ANYONE of that who didn’t already have it well and firmly in mind.
All it’s doing is further fomenting and fanning the flames of the neverending emmessemm 24-7 bullshit parade, the sick culture of celebrity, and worst of all, the moronic and potentially dangerous ideology of those who are stupid enough to support this woman.
Those things, as the good Mr. Somerby never tires of pointing out, are what’s fucking KILLING any semblance of intelligent political discourse in this country.
licensed to kill time
@kay:
Ah, a fifth column at FOX. I like it!
Comrade Scrutinizer
@eemom: Word.
Senyordave
John Stewart had a great take on Fox and Palin last night. He showed the reastion of all the Fox shows, how she will appear on Hannity, Beck, Pat Robertson, the usual suspects. The kicker was when Fox and Friends admire her for, as they said, “going into Lion’s den”. Obviously, they msut have meant she was going to go on Olbermann or Maddow, right. Wrong, they were talking about OPRAH. So Oprah Winfrey is the “lion’s den”?
The final piece had Bernard Goldberg saying one of the most disgusting things I have heard in a long time by a “pundit”. Watch the end piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOrj2UuIVv0
ellaesther
@eemom: Completely, totally, UTTERLY off-topic, but many folks around the intertubez have nicknamed me “ee” — and whenever I see a comment by you, I am seized by an urge to say: “Mom…?”
(And as long as I’m here, on-topic: I have actually been served by it. I have an occasionally regrettable tendency to screen out idiocy and that-which-shouldn’t-matter, and then get all stunned when it turns out that Hey! It matters! I don’t know how many progressives there are out there like me, but this one has been sadly served by the Palin circus. Also).
bayville
Gee, you think so Doug? Sully has done the almost unimaginable – he has made Robert Stacy McCain look reasonable.
Palin has written(?) a 400-page tomb so full of stupid and ignorance, that – in a normal era and place – should disqualify anyone from seeking national public office. And to further highlight her paranoia and shallowness, she has granted a series of interviews with sycophants, far right crazies and infotainment queens – who have managed to confirm (either directly or indirectly) these suspicions derived from her book.
But it’s as if Sully got a free invite to a champaigne, seafood buffet at the Four Seasons and he’s spending the whole dinner putting the croutons from his salad under the microscope. For the sake of your sanity (and ours) skip it, and move on to the lobster and free booze.
Mark S.
@Elizabelle:
That is too damn funny! I’m going to have to read this.
Mike Mundy
Isn’t the real problem the fact that the presidential nominee can pick any vice-president that he/she wants?
I mean, anybody at all.
Cheryl from Maryland
Great title Doug J, especially in light of the book’s and film’s lack of clarity:
ellaesther
@Elizabelle: Hand to God, I cannot believe I’m writing anything in defense of anything that Sarah Palin has ever said or done, but…. I have known people named “Stein” to pronounce it like “St-eye-n” and others to pronounce it like “St-eee-n.”
In that case, of course, if a person who had been served by her mayor for some amount of time yet STILL didn’t know how to pronounce his name (I’m guessing she didn’t have a lot of interest in politics), that person, if she were a normal, functioning adult, would say “I’m so sorry Mr. Mayor, but I’m not sure how you pronounce your name. Is it St-eye-n? Or St-eee-n?”
So I’m not really defending her. I SWEAR!! I’m just, you know, sayin’. “Stein” swings two ways.
eemom
@ellaesther:
heh. eemom is actually a combination of two screen names I used to use, one of which was just “e.”
I really like your name, btw. : )
Sentient Puddle
@Origuy: The only review of the book that anyone will ever need!
kay
@bayville:
Hysterical. I just laughed and laughed.
Andrew Sullivan ordinarily gets on my nerves but all of a sudden I have some sympathy for him.
He periodically goes crazy, okay? Just lay off.
I used to spend a lot of time around pot smokers. They get obsessive, and sometimes miss the big picture. Maybe that’s it.
El Cid
@Mark S.: Yeah, but it had two vowels in a row!!! What, it would take like some sort of a rocket scientist to say a name that complicated! Damn East Coast ay-leetists!
Joel
@MBunge: All that gibberish that you’re spitting, you need to kill it
Your style is like dying in my sleep, I don’t feel it
Demo Woman
Andrew wrote
Does examining her make me look obsessed? Does not examining her make me look cool? Who gives a fuck? She’s a great story, a truly bizarre creature, an international woman of mystery, and completely off her rocker.
He’s right. Sarah is off her rocker. It’s not only the drill, baby, drill, or real Americans slogans, it’s her view of world history.
J
El Cid @ 39
Kirkpatrick Sale, not the old Nation correspondent, author of the book about the SDS among others I hope!
If so, what happened to him?
Aimai @33
I suspect you are dead right. For Palin’s supporters, everything that counts against her for the rest of us counts for her.
Comrade Dread
As predicted.
Now I imagine Pelosi will talk Stupak on board and everyone will get to go home to their Pro-Life/Pro-Choice camp and claim victory without anything significant changing on abortion.
Politics.
kay
@Demo Woman:
Did he write that? Better still.
I was hoping that was it. That he just doesn’t care anymore.
kay
@Comrade Dread:
Thanks. I saw the “success!” quote from Kerry last night and I wondered how they worked it.
mai naem
@ellaesther: . I don’t think Sully does himself any favors with the Trig obsession but Sarah is the one who brings up the kids, Trig and abortion so he has every right to go snooping. And, yes, I find the whole plane trip during labor bit very fishy. Personally I think she was trying to accomplish something by going on the plane trip. Nobody I know who’s had a baby(and I know many) would have by choice gone on a plane trip that far into a high risk pregnancy and certainly not a 10hr trip during labor and then gone to a small community hospital. It’s unfathomable. Remember she chose to do it this way. This was not an emergency birth.
Davebo
A comment from one of the links.
Geeno
Actually, Clinton’s deposition would have had to be entered as evidence to a pending court case for it to have been perjury. The Paula Jones case – for which the deposition was taken – was “dismissed on the merits”, because she couldn’t show how she had been “injured” in a tort sense, even if her accusations were true. So the deposition was never entered as evidence in any court, therefore not perjury.
Midnight Marauder
@eemom:
The problem is that with or without any pushback on Palin, those things that you listed would all still be happening. Just like the quote you were responding to in your post noted, a lot of people on the Democratic side were, in fact, scared of Sarahgeddon when she first arrived on the scene and thought it would be a terrible idea to go after her. Clearly, we all know now that it was easily the right call to make, and that the aggressive counter-campaign against her really got the ball rolling on the negatives and high unfavorables she “enjoys” to this day.
So, in essence, we’re faced with a situation where, if you don’t pushback against Palinpalooza in the media, then you run the risk of letting her set the tone of things, and even the remote possibility that she could massage the narrative surrounding her–“SHE’S A COMPLETE FUCKING LOON!” “SHE JUST NEEDS TO READ SOME MORE BOOKS?”–into somehow being more favorable. You run the risk of letting her go around to nothing but favorable outlets and spout off as much unchallenged nonsense as possible. But then if you do decide to pushback against her, you create a situation like you’re talking about, where people become resentful at the idea that all you’re doing is giving her more attention and allowing her to be in the spotlight more than she ever should.
It’s a fine line to walk and a tough balance to strike, but 11 times out of 10, I’m going to put my hat in with the people going after Sarahgeddon, because you honestly can’t let her just waltz around from Hannity to Limbaugh to Beck to Fox & Friends, just spouting whatever bullshit pops into her head. The woman does want to run for president again at some point, and as long as she even has a scintilla of that intention in her mind, then all guns need to remain fixed on taking that woman out of any and all discussions as a “Serious Person.”
El Cid
@J: It’s him, that Kirkpatrick Sale. He just thinks the Empire can’t be defeated as a whole. He thinks the only way to stop it is to break it up from the inside. Maybe he’ll prove correct. But I’m afraid I wouldn’t led the neo-Confederates have their hands on the South so that Vermont could feel free.
El Cid
A lot of people on the Democratic side always thinks its wrong to go after Republicans and even wronger to stand against Republican ideas and for Democratic ideas.
El Cid
And, just on cue, more Southern conservative dumbass-ism:
Quoting that, though, oppresses Sarah Palin, because it involves lots of complicated facks and stuff about North and South and who the President was and how you pronounce “LBJ” anyway.
J.D. Rhoades
Actually, the most die hard Palin supporter I know is a very good friend, a highly intelligent woman with a master’s degree who worked in the White House and the Commerce Department before leaving government to write successful crime fiction. Her take: “she’s a woman, she’s a conservative, she’s pro-life. That’s all I need to know.”
We just avoid the subject when we get together now.
El Cid
@J.D. Rhoades: Remember that next time someone asks you about anyone vaguely liberal. Put in whatever factors seem important, and act just as unchallengingly rigid.
“He’s a Latino, he’s liberal, he supports X. That’s all I need to know. I don’t care how many dogs he’s raped or orphanages he robbed. That’s all I need to know.”
The Grand Panjandrum
@El Cid: Yea. Secession worked out so well for these knuckleheads the first time around. Besides I like the South and the people. It’s a great place and I love driving through it to stop off in little towns to eat some of the local cuisine. In the summer of 2008 we drove from NM to NH and stopped off in a place in Lake Village, Arkansas just to eat the tamales. No shit. The place is called Rhodas Famous Tamales and it is unbelievably good food. The people were pretty damn nice too. I’d hate to have to have a passport just to go eat at Rhoda’s.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
There’s a phrase for that: Single Issue Ghetto. A friend’s Rethug husband lives in the Guns Ghetto always convinced that we squishy Dems are plotting to take away his basement full of weapons.
The Single Issue Ghetto trumps edumacation, intelligence, background, everything.
El Cid
@The Grand Panjandrum: Yeah, I know, I’m in the South, there’s lots of great people, etc., etc. I’m pretty sure our African American and Latino population, as well as all us liberals and sane types, have noooooo interest in letting a conspiracy of crazy neo-Confederate jackasses take it over as their own feudal country so Vermonters can feel free.
MikeJ
@El Cid: The other thing to point out is that many of the liberals who passed those bills may have been in the Republican party, but they were all liberals. Conservatives, both Republicans and blue dogs, are the ones that stood in the way of civil rights.
Joel
@Comrade Dread: i never thought i’d say this, but
harry reid, ftw.
especially given the guy is a committed mormon and pro-lifer.
El Cid
@MikeJ: Ow! OW!! You are OPPRESSING me and SAY-RUH with all yer facks and stuff!
J.D. Rhoades
Sort of like the people who are insisting Obama’s no different from Bush because he hasn’t repealed DADT or DOMA?
Violet
J.D. Rhoades:
I know a couple people like that too. Very intelligent women with high-powered jobs (well, one is now a stay at home mom, but was high-powered corporate type before kids). They love her.
I think it’s easy to dismiss her followers as doormats and idiots, but that isn’t the whole truth. That’s why I think it’s important to stay on top of her lies and try to expose her ill-preparedness for office. The more she’s exposed as an ignorant fraud, the less likely it’ll be she gets anywhere near the Oval Office.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
You’ve said something I agree with. I sincerely hope that this is not the start of a trend.
The Grand Panjandrum
@El Cid: A little interesting fact about Vermont. According to the NRA they are ranked #2 in the nation for the BEST pro-firearms laws in the country.
El Cid
That’s true. You don’t have to be a doormat or idiot to embrace truly doormattish, idiotic arguments. Or things that aren’t even arguments, like odd Palinoid cultural sneering as though there’s some sort of revenge-based content in there.
Smart people can and routinely do and believe horrendously wrong, stupid, deceptive, and ridiculous arguments.
And as a person who has worked all his life to try to think through arguments and have some sort of understanding of an issue or some politician’s claims, I have no sympathy for somebody who intentionally acts like a lazy jackass because some bullshit pulls some strings with them.
J.D. Rhoades
@Violet:
I totally agree, and I’m in the camp that thinks that all this nonsense about her home life distracts us from that.
Shawn in ShowMe
@JD Rhoades
Then Sarah Sharpshooter is all sweetness and light compared to her previous heroine, Marge Schott.
El Cid
@The Grand Panjandrum: Yeah, but Vermont ain’t Mississippi.
Bruce
I nothing to add except that the line about “the second shooter” almost caused me to do a true spit-take across the Starbucks I’m in reading this. Nicely done DougJ.
geg6
@J.D. Rhoades:
I don’t care about this woman’s CV or level of education or what trashy novels she writes (Twilight anyone). The evidence is that she is most definitely not highly intelligent. Believe me, I work with people who have some of the most impressive CVs in the world and who have terminal degrees from some of the most prestigious universities in the world. And I know that neither of those things correlate to their real world intelligence in any way. In fact, they are some of the most clueless and stupid individuals I’ve ever come across. I know goldfish smarter than these people.
Senyordave
The more she’s exposed as an ignorant fraud, the less likely it’ll be she gets anywhere near the Oval Office.
I like that term “ignorant fraud”. The worst thing is she is proudly ignorant. But I think her worst quailty is that there is no possibility in her shallow mind that she could be wrong, and no reflection whatsoever that any action she did could be anything less than correct.
I’m not sure there is a person in public life I loathe more. I’m almost praying that Levi really has a dirty secret about her. Not sure what it would be, can’t be that she lied, that would only increase her street cred with her supporters.
If she does run it will be interesting when they examine every detail of her life, her financial records (she must have refiled taxes at least once during her term as governor, and she has changed her expense reports multiple times, which, as my brother the salesman says is usually a sure sign somebody has been playing fast and loose).
Also, I still have to believe that someone in the McCain camp has to have footage of her from practice debates. That would be worth a lot if she runs.
Violet
@J.D. Rhoades:
I’m kind of back and forth on it. On the one hand, I agree with you because it is very distracting and allows her lies and lack of policy knowledge to slip by. But on the other hand it “celebutizes” her and makes her seems less substantial – she’s a celebrity, not a politician. And ultimately, I think people don’t want to elect just a celebrity.
It’s kind of like people getting caught up in Octomom’s saga or John & Kate. They tune in to watch the trainwreck, but they probably wouldn’t vote for any of those people for President. I think the media’s treatment of Sarah Palin nudges her in that direction. And it might not be all bad.
binz
That pointless gossip wasn’t pointless, even one strongly believes it should have been.
Whether one thinks it was bullshit or panty-sniffing or not it had the desired effect for republicans of eroding Clinton’s presidency and shaping the public’s gut response for having a democratic president.
An unforseen bonus for them was it also diverted attention (in the White House and in public debate) from far more important things. IIRC this coincided with Big Dawg trying to deal with a then little-known terrorist organization calling itself Al Qaeda and some guy named Bin Laden.
All of this ended up benefiting the republicans to say the least.
I wonder if we would have had gotten a moron fuckup like GWB if the Republicans and the media had not gone 24/7 on the Lewinsky thing.
So I don’t have a problem with seemingly pointless gossip about the latest incarnation of GW Bush. Because endlessly pointing out the lies and the stupidity and the evasions and the weirdness surrounding the Trig birth story can’t be a good thing for the delusional fucktards that now own the GOP.
Legalize
Going Rogue: The Citizen Kane of Fail?
Going Rogue: The Brothers Karamazov of Stupid?
Going Rogue: The Death of a Salesman of Dishonesty?
New Yorker
SEEMS dumber and more vindictive? Christ, she makes W. look like Thomas Jefferson. She is, without question, the dumbest, most irrational major politician of my lifetime. She’s what would happen if you took a typical failed American Idol contestant and made him or her the VP nomination for a major party.
El Cid
@Senyordave: I wouldn’t give half a shit about this ignoramus if she weren’t worshiped by the rightist, Talibangelitards out there precisely for all her worst characteristics.
WereBear
@El Cid: I, too, am stunned.
It’s enough to make one want to be a tad violent; to push their faces up against the headlines of the day and scream, “See, see what you were doing back then?”
But I don’t suppose it would do any good.
El Cid
@New Yorker: If I hadn’t listened to right wing shortwave and crap throughout the 1990s, I’d be shocked to grasp that the problem a lot of people had with George W. Bush Jr. was that he was too intellectual and too restrained in his policies and pronouncements. God damn.
We just better remember forever that the last 8 years taught us that there is a rigid 27-30% of the country who absolutely love the most medieval style proto-fascist Talibangelical warring primitivist anti-intellectual authoritarianism imaginable.
And they only need another 25% or so to join in with them to win or steal an election. At all times. A permanent threat to any notion of democracy or a republic. And, no, I’m not exaggerating.
dricey
Levi says she knows he has “the goods” on her. I’m wondering what those “goods” are and whether he’ll ever reveal them.
If we’re really lucky, the “goods” are that Saint Sarah had an affair with him. That’d sure put stop to all this nonsense.
Cain
@geg6:
Maybe that is the whole basis of the “urban elite” meme that we sometimes get from the right? You know the whole idea that you can have all this book learning and still be a complete fool.
Here you have an intelligent woman who has proven she can think logically but still belives that Palin is the da shit. I would guess there is a major blindspot and a lot of smart people have them cuz they ignore their instincts.
cain
El Cid
@WereBear: No, no it wouldn’t. First, they’re usually better at raw violence, and second, when you pushed their faces into the newspaper headlines, they’d probably say, ‘Hey, says here there’s 10% off lawn furniture at Target this weekend, is that it?’
Demo Woman
@kay: Sully now links to Nate @ 538 who gives a list of ways Sarah can win. Sarah’s backers don’t care that her state exists on welfare, they don’t care that she supported the banks bailout, and they don’t care that she thinks the Palestinians should move over to make room for further settlements. They don’t care that Bush’s tax cuts and anti regulation techniques almost drove us over a cliff, they just care about Sarah. She is dangerous.
Can you see Bill Kristol as Secretary of State?
geg6
@Cain:
Well, based on some of my brothers’ college friends and professors during the late 60s and early 70s, you are probably correct. They, too, were less analytical and had less common sense than your typical goldfish.
Book larnin’ is not evidence of intelligence or usefulness to the world.
Demo Woman
@Demo Woman: If this site had an edit function, I would also add that real Americans like smut and if it takes smut to bring her down, so be it.
Violet
@dricey:
Heh. That would be excellent gossip. Sully’s would be on fire for weeks.
Maybe Sarah didn’t have an affair with him, but had an affair with someone and he’s got confirmation – Bristol knows and told him, or he knows the person involved.
I still think Levi knows something. Just don’t know if he’ll ever spill it.
Anne Laurie
@aimai:
Heck, right after Palin was introduced by McCain, when all we knew about her was the “traditional Xtian SuperMom with the special needs trophy baby! ! !” trope, I said that choosing Palin indicated that McCain didn’t intend to win. No “conservative” mother could publicly agree to dump her Downs Syndrome newborn into daycare for a job that demanding, so the Permanent-Party Republicans had chosen Sarah as a sacrificial lamb to be blamed for McCain’s upcoming defeat — eight weeks of campaigning and she could go back to Alaska, presumably with a large payoff to salve her political wounds. And, for all we know, that may have been what the Party Powers intended… but of course Sarah Palin turned out to be as narcissistic as Bill ‘Crystal Ball’ Kristol himself, only a lot more charismatic on-camera. Pointing out that she’s neglecting her “special angel” child doesn’t work — apparently her new fan club doesn’t really believe in traditional motherhood. Or else they’re so lazy / stupid that they’re happy to pretend that Trigg is just another prop, the same way they’re happy to “believe” that Medicare has nothing to do with the evil government and that ‘The Constitution’ mandates that only white suburban Christians should be allowed to vote.
geg6
@Demo Woman:
Personally, I’m praying to the FSM that it involves smut. Lots and lots and lots of smut. The more smut, the better.
ruemara
@geg6:
This. My boss doesn’t have this lady’s resume or degrees. Hell, he doesn’t have mine. Not only is he scary knowledgeable on par with the most degreed people I know, he can’t stand Sarah Palin. Rote memorization does not = smart.
freelancer
Ladies, Gents, via the WaPo, I give you the Crazification Factor – Personified.
Highlander was a documentary and Sarah’s all about the Constitution.
El Cid
@freelancer: Maybe we could use Sarah Palin’s magic inner power to find all the ghosts on all these 40,000 shows in which people wander around old buildings with night vision cameras and keep saying that they just felt a cold breeze or think they saw a shadow and would the spirits please talk to us now.
Andy K
@Anne Laurie:
I’ll go with lazy/stupid, because, as I type, there are dumbasses calling in to a statewide (Michigan) sports talk show (originating here in Grand Rapids) and lauding Palin for her honesty and responsibility.
Fern
@Violet:
I`d have thought that these women would value competence.
Morbo
@freelancer: Ooh, sounds like we have the title for her talk show: Sarah Palin, Host of Destiny.
tamied
To be president or host a talk show. Those almost have the same job descriptions, right?
kay
@Demo Woman:
Bill Kristol thought Dan Quayle was a sure thing.
licensed to kill time
__
Another Palin/Bachmann supporter, demonstrating critical thinking skills.
linky
Violet
@Fern:
You’d think so. But it doesn’t appear to be the case. One of them isn’t very into news or politics. She has a lot of family responsibilities (including ill elderly parents) and she just “likes” Sarah Palin. Others of us who are friends with her are astonished and ask her why. And she just says, “I don’t know. I just do.”
It’s definitely not critical thinking at work. But she’s a smart woman, has held down high powered jobs. Now stays home with the kids and has a ton of responsibility for her parents. She’s smart, competent, and still likes Sarah.
And I think there are a lot of people out there like her. They’re bright people, but very busy, and the bits and pieces they hear about Sarah Palin makes her seems appealing. Finding some way to nicely and politely show that Sarah Palin’s image is a house of cards and that she lies and isn’t very competent will probably lead these types of people to turn against her. But it can’t come across as attacking her – then they’ll just get defensive. And it has to break through into the mainstream media somehow in such a way that they’ll hear it.
Which is why I think treating her as a celebrity isn’t all bad. Nothing can destroy someone like her like a bad run of “news” on Entertainment Tonight.
freelancer
and as an aside, I think it’s possible there is a really peculiar linguistic phenomenon occurring between Palin and her fans.
Palin’s policy statements are so generalized and nebulous that they sound like they could mean everything when in fact they are empty platitudes. Her supporters are the same demo for the AM radio wingnut lineup, and because of that, they probably have more awareness of some issues than Sarah herself (still woefully misinformed though), and they have been trained to have their ears perk up at the mention of wingnut codewords.
It is the same symbiotic relationship between pseudo-scientific charlatans and the gullible who continually feed off of the woo that is offered.
Snake-oil, chelation, homeopathy, subluxation, Chiropractic (outside of treatment for back injury), dowsing, crystals, free energy, all these quack endeavors have the similar codewords that help them sell their nonsense. And the codewords resonate, not because of their implied efficacy, but because it feels like the truth. When empiricism is equated to gotcha-ism, emotional truths become the high ground to capture and hold.
The crazy 27% and their Piper have an alarmingly similar M.O. And they know it, because they all describe their method of thinking in this way to be fixed, and everybody else is immutable in the sense that they won’t ever get it. This makes the Palinites special.
Look at the quote above and think about how many times Palin herself has used the phrase “Not wired that way” or “Not wired to operate with the same ol’ politics as ususual”.
They’ve gone to plaid, and the media is responding with raucous applause.
WereBear
@El Cid: I find those shows to be a riot of low expectations. Anything looks spooky in those low light shots.
Thank you to whoever mentioned the Mudflats review sections; I’m plotzing.
Brachiator
@aimai:
What? While I truly enjoy a Palin snark fest, I seriously doubt that her most devoted acolyte’s give a rat’s ass about the derision tossed their way. Typically, they defensively perceive that her most vocal critics either hate Palin, or are jealous of her.
And the idea that her fans are life’s fuckups and doormats is not just pointlessly insulting. It is bonehead wrong. This kind of crap reminds me of my NPR sewing circle buddies who would alway sniff about Dubya’s ignorance, and the small mindedness of his base. They always seemed to forget that Dubya was still, after all, the president, and getting his way, while all the smart boys and girls bent over to kiss his chaps.
I’ve noted in another thread that a number of women I know who admire Palin run their own businesses and had to succeed despite not having a great deal of formal education. Most of these women are smarter and more capable than Palin, but still their identification with her is amazingly strong. And they ain’t nobody’s doormat.
Gee, I can’t think of anything more ineffectual than suggesting that a female political figure has a special obligation to stay home and look after her child. No one would ever suggest the same thing of a male politician. And even indirectly using a special needs child for political purposes and expecting this to make Palin opponents look like anything other than a bunch of tools? You have got to be kidding me.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Cain: Or that this woman has certain core priorities: she wants to see a woman in power, she wants to see the pro-life agenda pushed hard, and she wants a conservative administration. It’s a thin crust, because she doesn’t care about whether that conservative, pro-life woman is competent, or thoughtful, or effective; just that she gets there. If that’s all that’s important to her, then she’s not interested in whether it’s Palin, or Bachman, or Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage, or even if it’s someone with half-a-brain.
Now to me, those are screwed up priorities, because thoughtfulness, competence, and effectiveness are at least as important as gender and political positions to me when I consider who I want to see in power. Does that mean I’m more intelligent than whatsername? I really don’t think so. She’s acting consistently with her values, I’m acting consistently with mine. Now, I want to prevail over her and her kind, but I’m making a big mistake in thinking that because we disagree, she’s unintelligent, or not a good thinker.
MikeJ
From Kos:
That is, if you’re a republican in Fla, the more you support Rubio, the more likely you are to be a birther.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Violet: Anyone besides me think that all this stuff that Levi says he knows is just a big tease, and that there’s nothing behind the curtain?
Violet
@Brachiator:
Yep. There are a lot of people out there like that. Characterizing her admirers as doormats and failures is not a good idea. It insults her followers and they’ll just get defensive and refuse to listen to any actual discussion of her. And it also underestimates them. Which is never a good thing to do.
slappy white
i watched her on Hannity last night for a while and I literally couldn’t understand what she was saying. it was just catchphrases strung together and pretty much incoherent. its amazing the stupid rubes of america put so much stock in her.
valdivia
@geg6:
hey what have vampires ever done to you? ;-)
J.D. Rhoades
@Violet:
You beat me to it.
Brachiator
@Violet:
RE: And they ain’t nobody’s doormat.
And I have a feeling that a single Palin acolyte could take on at least a half dozen PUMAs in a fair fight. Also, too.
valdivia
@Demo Woman:
You should check out 538 where another coblogger of Nate, Tom Schaller I think, gives a list of 10 reasons why he thinks she won’t win. Excellent too. But I agree, she must be debunked.
J.D. Rhoades
@valdivia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_PY405f40
mai naem
I work/have worked with 6 people who I love to work with who are conservatives. They are smart/conscientious/dependable. One I know for sure is a Palinite. She was attending an industry conference where Bill Clinton was a speaker and she actually told me that she was disappointed that it was Clinton and wished it was Sarah Palin. While they aren’t the James Dobson kind of christians five are evangelicals who volunteer within the community. Yes, they’re anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion they aren’t nutso winguts. I don’t know what you do about these people. Yes, they buy into Republican social values crap and they have to be educated on tax policy but they aren’t stupid or mean people.
El Cid
That’s certainly true, especially for real public fora.
It’s only one-sided, though, for us to hold ourselves to this standard — just as with fans of W., fans of Say-ruh get to be just as sneering, insulting, dismissive, condescending, accusatory, and flat out callous to anyone they think is not among their ilk.
They’re all noble, principled strugglers who care about women and strong women and the Constitution and pluckiness and being yourself in public etc etc., and all the rest of us are godless liberal elites who are lazy and never worked a day in our lives and want to destroy the country through soci*alism and hate the troops and love Muslim terrorists and all the rest of it.
It’s a practical yet highly immoral fact — we have to be extraordinarily sensitive about the grievance feelings of a lot of people who think it’s awesome to call all the rest of us a bunch of worthless, immoral non-real Americans.
Cain
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
She should think about what happens if they are done incompetently, her own life could be affected due to bungling or her sons and daughters sent to war and killed etc. Having a check list and not demanding the best and the brightest just makes the choice itself bad. if you finally picked a woman and she fucked it up so badly that nobody would want to vote in another woman, then that’s bad. Obama is the best and the brightest, the upper crust of the black community and he makes the choice look good. You need that to overcome inherent racism or genderism inherent in the system.
cain
Alien-Radio
@Legalize:
The Finnegan’s Wake of Fail
J.D. Rhoades
I don’ think it’s about their feelings. It’s about how each side appears to the people who aren’t dug in to one side or the other and who are still able to be influenced.
Heck there are some Republican positions with which I might have once had some sympathy (I mean, really, who LIKES paying taxes?) but the people espousing them are such egregious, smug, dismissive assholes that my self-respect won’t let me be associated with anything having to do with them.
valdivia
@J.D. Rhoades:
LOL, so funny. Thanks for that.
Frostbite Falls
Sullivan going silent to read the book reminds me of that old Simpsons episode when Kent Brockman declared, “The Lincoln Squirrel has been shot!! We’ll stay up all night if we have to”.
geg6
@valdivia:
Nothing, I adore vampires (see my adoration of True Blood), but that’s the point! Vampires that sparkle?
Kill me now.
LD50
Oh man. Sully’s not gonna like this.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
sparky
@cmorenc: yes, exactly. and thanks for saying it.
Clinton squandered so much of the 1990s and, just as awfully, made GWB possible. it’s easy to see why people like(d) him so much but he is a loathsome opportunist.
El Cid
@J.D. Rhoades: I don’t think the people who ‘aren’t dug into one side or the other’ are the ones likely to be talking about how I’m not a Real American.
kommrade reproductive vigor
In other words, there’s too much there to need to go there. Agreed. This is just another example of Sully being Sully.
Personally, I hope we can stay in the People mock Palin – fReichtards defend Palin- Palin says something stupid – People mock Palin … cycle until the GOP is collapses into a Wingularity.
@licensed to kill time: Do we need any further proof that God loves him some DFH? No. We do not.
valdivia
@geg6:
yeah I got you. I was reading a thread somewhere else about Twilight and it turns out that the melt in the day lore of vampires is actually rather new and hollywood centric. But I do get why the sparkling could annoy you.
kommrade reproductive vigor
WTF happened to the font?
Joel
@Violet: This is absolutely true. On the other hand, it’s critically important to treat the ideas that Palin often espouses with absolute, unrelenting derision.
arguingwithsignposts
@El Cid
@mai naem and others:
So they’re basically PUMAs.
geg6
@valdivia:
Well, between the sparkling vampires and the Mormon sensibility of the entire story, I have nothing but disdain for Twilight. I have no doubt that the squealing middle aged women I saw on The Today Show, dressing up in costumes and standing in line all night for the new movie, are the exact same middle aged women doing the same thing at the next Palin book signing.
And I’m a middle aged woman, so I can point and laugh at these arrested development idiots all I want.
licensed to kill time
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
God, like reality, has a well-known DFH bias. In fact, God prolly is a DFH. You know that prayer “Da Father which art in Heaven “… ? DFH, QED.
El Cid
@arguingwithsignposts: I don’t know. Again, I’m here in the South, so the phenomenon of someone getting all sort of admiration and slavish fandom ’cause they’re willing to stand up and say how proud they are of being arrogant & stupid and backing stupid catch-phrase reactionary talking point policies and ‘I don’t need to know nuthin’ ’bout X’, and how it just looks like they’re arrogant and stupid because the librul elites are scared of and hate real Southerners… it’s just old. I’m so god-damned sick of it.
mai naem
@arguingwithsignposts:
I don’t think they’re PUMAs. They’re a combination of people with the fear that the middle class lifestyle may slip from them any minute, that the world has gone out of control a la Brittany Spears/Octomom/random mass killings and evangelical church teaching about the OMG gays!!! and those “baby killers.” I laugh with the guy who did the YouTube clips of the McCain/Palin/Tea Party rallies but I can tell you the people I’m talking about aren’t morans that you would mock.
valdivia
@geg6:
I actually think that the middle aged women waiting with bated breath for New Moon fall under a, um, different category all together. It involves sinful lusty desire for the young perfect vampire. Maybe you are right that these are the same who love Palin but I wonder.
I find it funny that this week we have throngs of women waiting for Palin and throngs of tween waiting for Twilight. The two shall meet at the Mall! Let the fun begin.
Brachiator
@El Cid:
While this is very true of Palin herself, it is not equally true of all the people who identify with her for whatever reason.
And smug anti-intellectualism is a birthright claimed by many Americans, not just Southerners.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Violet:
Savor the irony there. For yet another data point in favor of the theory that wingnuts are projecting their own flaws on everyone else, remember how the McCain camp was trying to paint Obama as a “celebrity” and a lightweight.
aimai
I think there is plenty of good, solid, demographic evidence that the core of Sarah Palin’s voting block are, in fact, life’s losers and doormats and they love her because she tells them you can be ” nobody” (which, of course, she isn’t) and become “somebody.” This has nothing to do with whether they own their own businesses or not. I’m sure Brachiator knows four/five/six! republican women who run their own businesses and blah blah blah. I know plenty of republican women like that–but they don’t love Palin. The actual republicans I know are totally fucking revolted by Palin. That’s because there’s a huge divide between educated, powerful people on the right and the losers and the falling middle class, holy rollers, attended six colleges without getting a final degree Palinbase.
And I’m not afraid of pissing them off. As El Cid pointed out *the whole point of those people is to believe that people like me are pissed off*. Palin is ressentiment politics incarnated and they already believe, against all evidence, that people like me are scared to death of Palin’s brilliance and effectiveness. I’m not. I despise her and her mindless followers. And forgive me for thinking that they are, in fact, mindless *when everything out of her mouth is either incoherent, or a lie, and they don’t know that.*
I get that there are many walking, breathing, taxpaying, citizens in this country who look upon voting as a tribal, sports like pastime. I get that people on both sides of the aisle vote that way. I’m sure that there are Republican men and women who are voting expressively for Palin. But that doesn’t make them any the less life’s losers. To me that’s the definition of one of life’s losers–to think that you can vote for a brain dead ex beauty queen runner up and achieve any realistic political/populist goals.
aimai
Brachiator
@aimai:
Wow. You just don’t stop. First of all, I never said that any of the women I know who admire Palin were Republican. In fact, I didn’t even say that the people I knew who identified with Palin necessarily even voted for her. And none of these people I know who admire aspects of Palin’s life are evangelicals.
Don’t confuse the snarkfest that a lot of us enjoy (including me) with any real understanding of what Palin admirers like about her. People who underestimate their opponents inevitably get rolled by them.
You’re wrong here. And a bad speller.
One of the worst aspects of the Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly Axis is that they just love separating people into winners and losers. Congratulations. You have met the enemy, and they are you.
aimai
Oh fuck off.
aimai
El Cid
@Brachiator:
No, that’s true. It is not equally true of all the people who identify with Sarah Palin for whatever reason. That’s true of course of any historical figure whatsoever, of any background, at any time period, of any orientation.
And though smug anti-intellectualism is not and could never be exclusive to the South, smug anti-intellectualism is a deep, inherent part of Sarah Palin’s public character, and having grown up in the South where smug anti-intellectualism was truly a penetrating public value, and on which much of the entire Reagan and New Right Republicanism was based on, I really, really am sick of it. There are many, many ways to reach out to working class peoples, and the right wing style isn’t the only one.
In a back-handed way I’m sort of grateful for George W. Bush, whose Presidency embraced the public notion of dumbassedness as a public virtue, and encouraged lots and lots of followers and even electoral victories (or close enough) based on a notion that people who think too much about stuff are not good for the country, and what we need are impulse-driven dumbasses.
And he f***ed things up so bad that I actually think that all but the hardest core smug anti-intellectuals of the average American population kind of got sick of it. Colleagues of mine whose job focuses on moving heavy stuff around — no liberal elites — occasionally say things about how though they don’t trust no politician that Obama seems smart enough that at least he seems to know what he’s doing unlike George W. Bush. I’m not making that up.
But those views aren’t always the majority. Being around people who hold really far right and talk-radio formed opinions all day, rather than working in a liberal enclave, I’m really thankful for places like this, where I don’t have to smile and make pleasant conversation at the latest joke about Obama being an African or hear some ignoramus small business owners suddenly think they’re an economic historian because they read 5,000 Year Leap.
aimai
El cid, you’re so patient! The problem I’m having with Brachiator’s points is that they are incoherent. Of course people like Palin–she’s “commonsensical” and she’s so gosh darned cute and she has five kids and all that stuff. That’s not even in question. What’s in question is how many of hte people who like her, and buy her book, would actually vote for her in a Republican Primary. And then how many of the rest of the country would vote for her in a general election. And then the next question–the “gettin’ rolled by the opposition” question is what moves what subset of Palin’s fans in, or out, of Palin-philia? Brachiator hasn’t got a clue because he doesn’t seem to grasp that Palin’s followers are a very, very, mixed bag. Not all of her admirers are actual voters. Not all of her admirers admire her for her sex appeal. Not all of them admire her for her five kids. Some of the ones who admire her for one thing can/will end up being repulsed or angry with her for her manifold and ultimately manifest failings on some of the other continua.
That’s the question I’m interested in. Sure, I personally think people who can stomach Palin on *any* continuum are fucked in the head. But that doesn’t mean that as a political activist I make that my winning argument. Au contraire. The whole point is to figure out which venues which arguments make sense in.
But still, as I so often do when interacting online with Brachiator, I come back to “fuck off.”
aimai
Mike G
They’re a combination of people with the fear that the middle class lifestyle may slip from them any minute…
And they enthusiastically vote for grifters who are accelerating the eceonomic decline of people like themselves while being willingly dazzled by culture-war distractions.
Their criteria for political leadership stretches no further than that for their local TV anchor or the host of Dancing With the Stars — someone they imagine is “like me”, pleasantly photogenic, who makes them feel comfortable. They may be intelligent in other aspects of their lives (or not), but their shallowness and disinterest in politics makes them peasants, easy marks for slick con artists.
To quote Matt Taibbi, you know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit.
Brachiator
@El Cid:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Once again, I agree with everything you say about Palin. Once again, this is not the prime motivator of many women who identify with her. I’m not saying that they are right, and I am certainly not saying that I agree with them. But I am saying that the stereotype of many of those who admire Palin just don’t get it. You don’t have to, of course, but you’re missing out on something. And you’re missing out on something that the Democrats should be trying to tap into.
By the way, I also note that the GOP leadership is missing this as well, as they look for new ways to drive their party totally into the ground.
aimai –Brachiator hasn’t got a clue because he doesn’t seem to grasp that Palin’s followers are a very, very, mixed bag. Not all of her admirers are actual voters. Not all of her admirers admire her for her sex appeal. Not all of them admire her for her five kids. Some of the ones who admire her for one thing can/will end up being repulsed or angry with her for her manifold and ultimately manifest failings on some of the other continua.
Yawn. I’m really not interested, for now, in speculating about Palin’s chances in any election, mainly because I don’t think she could be elected to any federal office. Violet and others got my point. Too bad that you didn’t.
Sad_Dem
That should be “effect,” not “affect.” Today’s usage lesson is free.
El Cid
Yes. I get it. Again. Over and over and over. People see all kinds of things in public figures. You see this with celebrities all the time.
I don’t think I’m missing out on anything. I think I’m pretty aware of the myriad ways in which the Democratic Party fails to reach out to lots of people. Women, working class people, Southern whites, etc. And actually I respect Palin’s fans enough to disagree with them and characterize them as completely wrong even if I have no particular stereotype in mind at all.
And I don’t think the Palin phenomenon is revealing any of those lacunae in any way that hadn’t already been exposed, over and over and over and over.
By the way, I would like to see this amount of flexibility in appreciating the points of view of people admiring such public figures as Palin equally applied to public figures on the left or in the 3rd world who exhibit clear failings but yet appeal to many people in deep and charismatic fashions. We would really be missing out on a lot if we fail to consider that.
Liberty60
Its funny- I was Republican up until the Lewinsky affair; I remember watching the circus, and thinking- This is all you got? This is your best shot, that the guy got a blowjob?
All they ended up doing was making themselves looking like fools; I like Sullivan, but hope he drops the fixation on Trig.
Church Lady
@aimai:
Honey, I don’t think any of Palin’s admirers are interested in achieving what you consider “realistic…progressive goals.” It rather goes against their beliefs.
If you want to understand why the people that love or admire Sarah Palin hate people like you, please go back and read your comments on this thread. After you do this, try and understand why you’re not ever going to be able persuade anyone with beliefs contra to yours of squat. The smugness and superiority you positively ooze is a tad obnoxious.
handy
@Church Lady:
Yeah but that’s not why people who admire Palin have a problem with someone like Aimai, since…well let’s just say that Palin has got that smugness and superiority thing down pretty well.
Hob
@Brachiator:
Ressentiment. Useful word. Or maybe you knew that, and were just being (more of) a dick.
Hob
@Church Lady: While you were being all folksy and insulting and telling Aimai to reread her own comments, you got hers wrong. She never said Palinites were interested in “progressive goals”; she said “political/populist goals”. There’s no reason “populist” would be a bad thing for a Palin fan.
Church Lady
@Hob:
I stand corrected. Thank you. However, I don’t think Aimai’s idea of populist goals would match up with Palin supporters’ ideas of populist goals, do you?
Hob
@Church Lady: Since you asked nicely… here’s how to read that phrase:
“…to think that you can vote for a brain dead ex beauty queen runner up and achieve any realistic political/populist goals”
Aimai is saying that Palin fans are dumb if they think that. The goals in that phrase are goals in the mind of the Palin fan. The point is, they can define “populist” however they want — they’re not going to achieve their own goals by voting for a brain-dead ex-beauty-queen runner-up.
Also, I think you may need to look up “populist”, because you seem to think it has some kind of idealistic connotation. Otherwise, what you said about Aimai defining it differently doesn’t make any sense.
Brachiator
@El Cid:
By the way, thanks for this bit on how some people around you are reacting to the recent changes in the political scene, and your own take on it. I find this stuff far more interesting than most of what pretends to be commentary or punditry.
I mentioned once before that most of the people I work with were pleased with the election results, although a lot of the workers in their 20s and 30s don’t care about politics or current events at all. They just can’t be bothered. But there are a core of unhappy Republicans who scurry into a corner like rats whenever politics comes up because they refuse to engage, and are intent on nursing grudges and pretending that tea baggers represent the heart and soul of America. One guy in particular gets all his facts about the world from Michelle Malkin’s site and even when people who are more or less neutral about the political parties patiently point out the errors and nonsense in what he thinks are fact, he just keeps returning to the wells of intellectual oblivion.
It would be sad if it weren’t so funny.
Hob — Ressentiment. Useful word. Or maybe you knew that, and were just being (more of) a dick.
Let’s review. What aimai wrote was “Palin is ressentiment politics incarnated.” Now, Palin is resentment incarnate, as in resentment made flesh, would have been a great line. But “ressentiment” is a too much of a stretch, and “Palin is ressentiment politics incarnated” tortures three languages to no purpose.
Or maybe you knew that.
Church Lady
Hob, the term “populism” has a generic definition as the interests of the little (or common) man fighting against the entrenched interests of the “elites”, which “elites” can be government, big business or even trade unions. Populism can contain elements of the beliefs of both the political left and the political right.
My point was that left leaning populism, such as what Aimai might support, would be fighting against the interests of big business, while encouraging the expansion of government and possibly increasing the clout of Unions for the benefit of workers, whereas right leaning populism, such as what Palinistas might support, would be primarily fighting against the expanding reach of government into the lives of citizens. While right-wing populism is not particularly supportive of big business (as exemplified by the right wing anger over the Wall Street bailouts), they typically don’t particularly care for Unions either (as exemplified by their anger over the GM and Chrysler bailouts).
Church Lady
Oh, and Hob, Aimai isn’t saying the Palin supporters are dumb for believing a particular thing. Aimai is saying that Palin supporters are dumb. Period. Or, to be more exact, I believe she referred to them as “life’s doormats and fuckups.” I guess she must have skipped her Dale Carnegie training.
Barrayaran
Re: paragraph 2 —
That should be “something that has no effect on anyone”, not “affect”.
El Cid
Only when ‘government’ is defined as assistive economic and social programs. When it comes to expanding the reach of government through law enforcement, surveillance, warrantless searches, harsher laws on the personal consumption of drugs, and the banning of gay marriage, many right populists are equivalent to the authoritarian evangelical right.