Sarah Palin In a Different Dress and Using a Different Name

Today, October 1, 2013, might actually prove to be highly significant when the future history of the U.S.A. is written. This was the day when a small band of radical extremists showed that destructive attacks didn't always need to come from foreign outside forces. Leading the charge was Sarah Palin, although now she was wearing a different dress and masquerading under the name of Ted Cruz... but there was no mistaking that old familiar right-wing narcissistic self-righteousness.

There isn't any law that says a nation is only allowed to have a civil war ONCE in its history. All it takes for a country to look like Egypt or Iraq or Syria is a lot of weaponry and a lot of divisive ideology, and the United States has more guns and political animosity than anywhere else on earth. Our downfall right now is our democracy itself. Democracy has always been a fragile form of government that was played out like a game under a strict set of rules, and...like a game... it depended on having all the players stay within the rules. And the main rule was always that the loser in an election had to accept the loss. But now we see that the rules are unenforceable, so they don't apply.

I honestly believe that what we saw today is the first step in the transition from a democracy to something else, and I'm certainly not smart enough to know what that "something else" might be. 

The Civil War Won’t Last That Long

This is personal, so I’ll just say it flat out. “I don’t love this country enough to try and save it from the new angry and resentful breed of Republicans”. I haven’t been what you’d call, “a patriot” since the 1950s, and seeing as how the American public has some input into the fate of the country, I feel that The United States pretty much deserves what it gets. And what America will probably get in 2012 is an all-Republican government with a Republican president, but this is better than the alternative.

The alternative isn’t Obama. He wouldn’t last that long if he was re-elected. The alternative to Republicanism is civil war. No president in United States history has been as aggressively hated as Obama, and it started the day after his inauguration when conservatives across America went out and stocked-up on hand guns and assault rifles and ammunition. To their credit, they haven’t opened fire just yet.... outside of Arizona, but if they can’t get their way at the polls next year— if Obama beats their guy or gal in the election, then In Rick Perry’s popular shit-kicker vernacular, “they’ll get ugly on him”. No way in hell would they peacefully tolerate another four years.

I could actually vote Republican in 2012, if I could vote for Chris Christie or Jon Huntsman, but Christie is too intelligent to even want the job of president, and Huntsman is too intelligent to get the nomination from the party of Perry, Palin, and Bachmann. Most Republicans now seem to value only angry fundamentalism and extreme conservatism, which means that their candidate will be an extreme conservative fundamentalist, and almost certainly angry and ignorant as well. So I won’t be voting Republican. I will vote again for Obama as I did three years ago, but this time I really don’t want him to win. I don’t want the street riots to start. Not that the civil war would last that long. It would be over in a day or two. The Republicans have all the guns. And I wouldn’t be anywhere in sight. I don’t love this country enough to resist angry Republicans when they have guns in their hands.

The Perfect Icon for Our Times

Hats off to Newsweek Magazine for its cover photograph of the wide-eyed, looney-looking Michele Bachmann. More than any other single visual image in the last few years, this Pulitzer-worthy photo captures every nuance of America’s flirtation with true collective mental illness. Whether or not it was Newsweek’s intention, the magazine has given us the perfect icon for our times. We're so messed up now that we can't even do rebellion in a rational way.

Looking back to the early years of Vietnam, governmental failures at that time coincided with the Civil Rights movement, and the summer of love in San Francisco, followed by Woodstock two years later. Back then, we knew how to rebel against a constrictive and dysfunctional Federal government by celebrating our own version of freedom. Our icon then was Bob Dylan who wasn’t electrically mesmerizing in any wide-eyed way. He was just simply brilliant in a thoughtful way. Fast forward 40 years. After ten years of Iraq and Afghanistan and Democrats and Republicans, our newest version of rebellion takes the form of the Tea Party, with Michele Bachmann as their standard bearer. They gravitated to her because they thought Sarah Palin was too intellectual. You know that a nation is crazy when the rebellion against the national insanity is crazier than the national insanity itself.

Taking Back America

I'll admit that I just don't seem to understand codes, particularly the codes used by political parties to say things internally that will stay under the radar of those outsiders who might take offense or dispute the messages. Case in point is the Tea Party call to take back America. I flat don't get it. Take back America from what? Or from who? And most importantly, take back America how? "Take Back America" is the kind of shorthand that looks good on a bumber sticker, but since the meaning is so ambiguous I have to assume that it's code for something deeper and perhaps more sinister. Could it be that there are patriotic Americans who want to take their country back from a colored man who got himself elected President?

"Taking back America" seems to be a favorite theme (always unaccompanied by specifics) with Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, and I confess that each time I hear it from them it reminds me of the cheerleader who sleeps with the entire football team, and then goes off to college announcing that she intends to take back her virginity.

This World’s No Place to Live

Bluegrass picker, John Duffy, sang that, “This world’s no place to live— but it’s home.” Problem is, the “hominess” seems to diminish with each passing day, and this makes writing a cynical blog like The Stonecypher increasingly difficult.

2011 has been simply the worst and it’s not even Easter time yet. Writing should result in something that’s fun to read. From my viewpoint, the fun comes from absurdity, and the absurdity usually comes from stupidity. But stupidity is never funny when it’s tragic, and 2011 has (so far) been mostly about tragedy. Oh, to be sure, there have been bright spots. Charlie Sheen isn’t funny, but watching major networks devote large segments of prime news time to interviewing psychologists about their interpretation of Sheen’s You Tube postings— that’s absolutely hilarious because it makes the “farce factor” meter peg out at the max. And of course, Sarah Palin is always entertaining for “farce factor” value. She doesn’t even need to speak. All she needs to do is hold one of her kids or grandkids up in front of the microphone, and we all get to wonder how big and heavy will the kid need to be when she stops doing this. That’s funny.

But Arab dictators are not funny. Citizens facing fatal gunfire in the mistaken belief that somehow there’s safety in numbers— that’s not funny. Mexican drug cartel violence isn’t funny, especially for Americans along the southern border. Global unemployment and homelessness are definitely not funny. 9.0 earthquakes are not funny. Thirty foot tall Tsunami waves are not funny. Radiation leaks are not funny. But when the radiation leak is in Japan, and hysterical Californians stock up on iodine tablets to protect themselves— that’s funny, at least in a snickering, condescending kind of way. It’s all about the reading on the “farce factor” meter, and god knows I’m certainly not above a little snickering condescension.

I look forward to the day when we can all get back to just watching the fast track canonization of John Paul II. For sheer farce and absurdity, it’s hard to beat Catholicism, especially when it involves sainthood for JP2— a man who kept clerical pedophiles working their evil in parishes for 22 years when he had the power to stop it. It makes you wonder about all the other Catholic saints. How messed up were they?

Campaign 2012— Sock It To Me

Speaking only as an inadequately-informed average citizen/voter, I feel personally that American politics is maddening at best and positively excruciating at its worst. What’s needed is for politics to become entertaining, and for a sick and cynical person like me, the best entertainment is humor. And for politics to be humorous, the best recipe would be a strong dose of self-satirical buffoonery from one or more candidates. We haven’t seen anything like this since Dan Quayle left office nearly 20 years ago.

Happily, we might be in store for just what we need. It looks like both Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin could throw their hats (or bras) into the political race and try for the presidency. I can hardly contain my glee at this prospect. Back in the late 1960s there was a weekly television program called “Laugh In” which had, among the cast, Goldie Hawn (known for being ditzy) and Ruth Buzzi (known for being truculent). Now just imagine a pair of hot-ass egotistical shrews with each of them having the ditziness of Goldie Hawn and the truculence of Ruth Buzzi, and this would give you a picture of Bachman and Palin both on the campaign trail. Now all we need to do is resurrect Rowan and Martin to run the House and the Senate.

WTF is Up with Sarah Palin?

I’m starting to really enjoy Sarah Palin. Really. She provides just the right mix of amusement and astonishment that I used to get from a fresh copy of Mad Magazine back in my teenage years, but even publisher William M. Gaines could never have dreamed up something as outrageous as the cartoonish diva from the frozen North. Tuesday night in Obama’s State of the Union speech, Palin must have felt that she hit the mother lode. In the President’s slogan, “Winning the Future,” she saw the acronym WTF, and she made the connection with the same three letters used on her favorite communication medium, Twitter, as raunchy shorthand for “What the Fxxx?” Then Palin immediately posted a video and a tweet to let all her fans know how clever she is. Watching the video, it’s obvious that she was experiencing the same snickering titillation that a pre-pubescent child feels when it first learns that the word, “pussy,” has a double meaning.

Months ago, I decided to give it a rest with Palin on my blog. To use an old cliché, writing about her was like wrestling with a pig. It just made me feel dirty, especially when I knew that the pig actually liked it. But as I said, I’m starting to enjoy her more and more. You don’t hear much from the Democrats about her these days, but now the Republicans have taken up the charge. I think I know why. The Tea Party is a very real problem for the Republican Party, and since Palin seems to be the de facto leader, taking shots at her has the effect of clipping the wing of the Tea Party movement without overtly offending the Tea Party constituents. And god knows, she is such an easy target. I almost feel sorry for the Republicans. George W. Bush was not exactly a modern Jeffersonian version of presidential genius, but Bush was intellectual light years ahead of the Tundra Tootsie.

What is Sarah Palin Telling Us About Herself?

Here’s the only statistic that we need to know. The top 1% of the American population owns 34% of the personal wealth in the country. Financial inequity like this doesn’t exist in any other developed nation on earth, and historically this kind of outrageous distribution and concentration of wealth has usually been associated with African dictatorships and banana republics and Iron Curtain oligarchies during the middle of the last century.

In her newest book (according to excerpts leaked this week before the book’s publication) Sarah Palin has said that Barack Obama sees America as unjust and unfair. Since this wasn’t meant to compliment the President, the clear implication is that Sarah sees America as just and fair, and this isn’t surprising given the fact that she is being paid a million dollars per episode for her new reality show featuring the Tundra Tootsie and her family frolicking in their home state of Alaska. Sarah is rapidly worming her way into that top one percent, and I’m sure that this looks perfectly just and fair to her.

What we are seeing in America is, in the light of history, a familiar picture. Nations in decline always show the same indicators. The flags get more numerous (yes, the definition of flags includes all those obnoxious little ribbon loops plastered on the back of automobiles). The patriotic parades and celebrations get larger and more passionate. The rhetoric gets more disconnected from reality, and eventually a dangerous, and often cartoonish, demagogue emerges promising to lead the failing nation into a new dawn. Enter Sarah Palin. Following in the footsteps of Imelda Marcos or Eva Peron, insisting all the while that she's not really a diva, Sarah Palin seems to see herself fulfilling some kind of queen-like destiny as she exhorts the peasants to take up their torches and pitchforks so she can lead them out of modern American serfdom. The thing is, most Americans are just dumb enough to go along with it. I wouldn't bet against her.

Restoring the Honor of America

The Beck - Palin rally at the Lincoln Memorial last Saturday seemed to be all about restoring our nation's honor, so why am I so disgusted?

At the rally in Washington D.C. on August 28th, Glenn Beck wasted no time in bringing God on board to help solidify his cause, and while he didn’t specify which God, it was a sure bet that he meant the one who goes by the name of Jesus Christ. This isn’t the first time that these two forces, the white Christian conservatives and the Lord and Savior of All Mankind, have teamed up to restore the honor of the United States. In the past, their cooperative efforts involved the wearing of white robes and hooded masks and the burning of crosses. The cross burning was to let everyone know that Jesus was OK with the whole “honor restoration” thing. Of course, The Prince of Peace and Son of the Everlasting God never actually showed up at any of these old-time cross burnings, but that never mattered. It was always well understood that white conservatives were empowered to speak and act on His behalf. It's still that way today.

It’s just a little curious to me that these people choose to restore America’s honor at the very time when the nation elects the first black man to the Presidency. Where was their concern about honor during the Bush administration when the entire world considered the United States of America to be something of a “scumbag” country? Oh wait. Now I remember. Bush was white and Christian.

Palin – Beck, 2012

Last week on the main street of Golden, Colorado, my wife and I saw a 1984 Ford pickup truck with hunting rifle in the back window and a bumper sticker that read, Palin-Beck 2012. My wife asked me if I thought that such a ticket had any chance of becoming a reality. I told her that I would answer that question after the Beck-Palin pep rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, August 28th, and now, after that event last Saturday, I’m convinced that Palin and Beck could well become the future of the Republican political leadership. For white conservatives, it’s hard to disagree with their message of restoring the honor of the United States, which basically is just euphemistic wording for a call to recapture the America of the 1950s when they were freely allowed to trounce on Negros and communists.

There’s one small problem. Anyone who isn’t black-skinned or communist would love to go back to those prosperous and optimistic days before Vietnam and Watergate when everyone could find a well-paying job and immigration wasn’t a dirty word. But those days are gone forever. Somewhere between the 1965 escalation in Vietnam and the criminally unlawful invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States of America lost its virginity. And virginity never can be regained. It’s wishful thinking to look at a drug-addicted, middle-age whore and think that she can go back to her adolescence of sweet innocence.

The Palin-Beck crowd seems to think that flag waving patriotism and ubiquitous Christianity can carry America back to greatness, and with 30% of young Americans lacking a high school education, and about 14% of all Americans unemployed, a gullible and frustrated pool of eager believers is certainly there to receive the Palin-Beck message. Only time will tell if there are enough of these people to win a major election for a populist ticket like Palin-Beck, but at this point I wouldn’t bet against it.

I’ve Always Been Half Wrong

I’ve come to see that ideologies and belief systems are like sub-atomic particles in the way that they seem to exist in a world of duality where everything has a mirror image. Just like the proton has its anti-proton, every belief or ideological value is almost pre-destined to have a polar opposite, and this inevitably makes each pole seem extreme to the opposite twin. When abortion stopped being a medical issue and became a political issue, it was an automatic certainty that there would be pro-abortion and anti-abortion sides to the issue.

The immediate result of this is that nothing ever really changes, regardless of whether the “pro” or the “anti” view of anything holds sway, and the extreme right is fundamentally indistinguishable from the extreme left. As I watched the Tea Party Convention last month, and then the CPAC gathering two weeks ago, I realized that I was watching modern versions of the 1960s SDS and Weather Underground groups, polar opposites in their political affiliations but identical in their radical approach to self-righteousness. There isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between the 1960s version of Tom Hayden and the 2010 version of Sarah Palin.

I don’t think that this is any byproduct of modern life in America where everything is stressed to the max, and then exploited by the media. My own theory is that we’re hard wired this way, and by “we” I don’t mean modern Americans, but Homo Sapiens. This tendency to split ourselves into opposite camps probably evolved along with everything else that makes us human because it had survival value. When our technology and high-level co-operative group-tasking ability finally gave us mastery over the entire lower animal kingdom, then our primary threat to daily life came from our fellow man. And at this stage of development, it probably benefitted us in a survival way to be able to quickly differentiate between friend and foe, and then to take sides and defend a position at all costs. Early cultural evolution was probably not kind to the fence-sitters and the appeasers, and the tragedy in this is that true intellect and wisdom tends to aggregate in the middle rather than at the extremes.

Speaking personally, in the last forty-plus years, I’ve flip-flopped in my political beliefs, establishing for myself a reputation as something of an iconoclast, first on the extreme right, and more recently on the extreme left. Thinking that radical views would produce quicker results, I never seemed to be smart enough or patient enough to be satisfied in the middle, but I’ve always been wise enough to know down deep in my heart that about half of everything that I’ve ever believed was just dead wrong.

Examining Just Why, Exactly, Sarah Palin is Electrifying

From the years 1932 until roughly 1964, citizens of the U.S.A. felt positive about their Federal government, and for the most part they invested trust in their elected leaders. But this was only a brief anomaly in the long history of our country, and it ended with Watergate and the Vietnam War before it could take hold and flourish. For most of our national history, the opposite sentiment toward Washington has prevailed and from the earliest years of our Republic, Americans historically viewed their government with suspicion, and even outright contempt. So I guess you could say that the Tea Party movement is really a throwback to another time. What’s new is the emergence of Sarah Palin.

Given this high percentage “anti-government” sentiment, it’s surprising that Sarah Palin hasn’t gained more traction with her message of suspicion and distrust of Washington. Recent polls put her disapproval rating at 55%, with fully 71% of Americans saying that she is unqualified to be the next President. Perhaps the reason for this can be found in the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville.

Never, in my recent memory, has so much adulation and applause been given to such simple utterances about simple-minded solutions to galactically unsolvable problems. Evidently, to be in lockstep with the Tea Party, one needs to believe that a speaker is “electrifying” and “galvanizing” when they observe that the United States Government spends too much, by borrowing too much, in order to deliver too little in the way of problem solutions. Knowing this, Sarah Palin is able to rally her troops by overstating the obvious about Washington. Okay, now we know that the Tea Party “gets it” — the Federal Government is inefficient, and generally doesn’t work as well as it did in the past. The thing is, mainstream Democrats and Republicans “get it” too. The only difference is, Republicans and Dems don’t feel that such self-evident truths are “electrifying.”

My politics are, admittedly, schizophrenic. My objection to Bill Clinton molded me into a rabid Conservative, then eight years of George W. Bush transformed me into a flaming Liberal. And after a year of Barack Obama, I’m now a dejected cynic who believes that America is basically ungovernable, and that even an outwardly decent and intellectual person in the Presidency can have very little positive effect on the problems that face the country today. Sarah Palin, we are told by the Tea Party members, should be elected as our next Chief Executive because she shares a certain folksy commonality with the average person. To this I reply, “Not so fast.” My advice is to go out into the street and talk to a lot of common, average Americans, and then ask yourself if you want your grandchildren to inherit a world that is shaped by the common, average American.

For the record, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and all the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were considered to be aristocratic at that time, and there wasn’t a single man among them who would have qualified today as a common average American. I suspect that none of these founding fathers of our country would fare very well in today’s modern Tea Party, and as the Tea Party goes, so goes Sarah Palin.

Is Sarah Palin Trying to Correct God’s Mistake?

It’s a catfight. Eowww. Ever since Sarah Palin’s unsuccessful bid for the nation’s second highest office, she has been in the crosshairs with animal rights activists for her promotion of the slaughter of Alaskan wolves. What was lacking, until now, was a public face to represent the people trying to save the wolves, but that gap has now been filled by actress, Ashley Judd, and the cat fight is on between these two fetching women.

Palin, in her role as governor of Alaska, believes that the wolf population has grown to the point where it threatens the elk and caribou herds, and in her role as a celebrated hunter she believes that shooting wolves from helicopters is the answer. In her role as a born again Christian, she also claims to believe in creation and a creator God. All of these different roles are confusing to me, and evidently to Palin as well. The situation in Alaska, with the wolves preying on the elk and caribou, is something called the “balance of nature,” and for people like Palin who believe in a creator God, this balance of nature is something that was set up by The Lord. Granted— sometimes nature can get out of balance. In Africa, where the human population and human environmental effects are now exploding exponentially, the balance of nature has been thrown off kilter, and the wildlife in Africa is now threatened. This doesn’t hold true for Alaska, however, where the human footprint on the land is comparable to what it was in Africa 200 years ago. So whatever is happening there in Palin country, with the wolves and the meat-on-the-hoof, is happening pretty much the way that God intended, if you believe in that sort of thing.

From her first day at the side of John McCain, it was obvious that Sarah Palin had a very high opinion of herself. It now appears that— just as she thought she was in a position to save McCain from himself— she now feels the same way about her God. Shooting wolves from helicopters is just her way of making God’s balance of nature work a little more to her liking.

“Sweet Caroline”— an Early Review of the Upcoming Sarah Palin Interview

She’s back. Sarah Palin has done a video interview with media Conservative, John Ziegler, to be televised next month. The thrust, here, is to make the case that Liberal media bias does exist, and that this bias, focused against Palin in the election, gave the victory to Obama. The accusation is nothing new, but there’s a new wrinkle in it that didn’t exist before election time— namely, the candidacy of Caroline Kennedy for the open New York Senate seat. Palin compares herself— rural, middle class, relatively unknown, and Conservative, with Kennedy— urban (Manhattan), very wealthy, famous, and Liberal. Like Palin before the election, Kennedy has recently had some major gaffes in her response to media questions, but according to Palin, the media is giving Kennedy a pass because of her urban, wealthy, Liberal status.

Sarah Palin actually has some of it right. The mainstream media really is treating Caroline Kennedy with more gentleness than it showed to Sarah Palin, and that’s not counting the lampoons from SNL that helped torpedo the “Tundra Tootsie.” Where Palin has it wrong is in blaming the attributes cited above for the differences in media attention. None of this has anything to do with rural vs. urban, or Conservative vs. Liberal. What accounts for the difference in media treatment is the personality differences in the two women. It all comes down to personal style.

Presidents are selected by the American voters in the very same way that Junior High School students select their class officers. The contest is decided on the popularity of the candidates, and the popularity is based on their personality. It’s all about personality, and nothing more. Sarah Palin presented an image to the voters of a wise-cracking hipster, with flirtatious winks and elements of stand-up comedy in her speeches. I don’t know if all of this came from her, or if much of it was orchestrated by her handlers and advisers. By itself, it wasn’t a glaring negative, but even in Junior High School, a hipster can’t get elected if he or she is a phony. And a person pretending to be hip needs to be able to tell someone where they get their news. If they can’t name a newspaper, then they should say they use the Internet. But if they’re totally clueless about news, then they’re phony. Even worse, if they adopt a “how-dare-you-ask-that-question” demeanor, and bitch about the person asking the question, then they’re just plain lame.

Caroline Kennedy presents an image of shyness, and sincere humility about not being able to answer some essential media questions. She seems like a genuinely nice lady, and that’s not a public image that motivates SNL to do a nasty parody. Her shied isn’t Liberalism, it’s that she’s slightly boring to watch. By contrast, Sarah Palin is a lightening rod who is always fascinating to watch, in the same way that we were fascinated to watch Roseanne Barr singing the National Anthem at the baseball game in 1990. Palin needs to let this go. She lost the election fair and square.

Media Bias— Is It Real?

As January 20th approaches, the Right Wing radio ayatollahs are even more fanatic and livid than they were on election night. It’s not so much Limbaugh and Hannity who are seething as it is the local Conservative Rush wannabes that bombard their listeners in every large urban market outside of Oregon and New England. Having failed to gain traction with the Antichrist and the born-in-Kenya accusations against Obama, these modern-day Father Coughlins are now obsessed with the notion that Obama was elected only because of Liberal media bias. It’s inconceivable to them that the majority of the American people rejected the Conservative position based on fact rather than misinformation. Here’s my question. What— exactly— is their notion of media bias?

The Katy Couric interviews with Sarah Palin got a lot of television time, and the fact is that Palin’s performance was not digitally altered. What TV viewers saw was reality. Palin suffered greatly for her pathetic attempt to look well-informed, but the same can be said for Caroline Kennedy now that it’s her turn on the target end of the turkey shoot. Palin is Conservative and Kennedy is Liberal, so where’s the bias? Was Jon Stewart considered a media guy or a comedian? Was SNL parody considered media coverage? I would suggest that these comedy outlets lack any kind of political bias, and before the election they went after the candidates based on how ridiculous the candidates looked. I’ve always said that Conservatives just don’t do well with humor.

As for George W. Bush, the worst (and in my opinion, the truest) thing ever said about him didn’t come from the media. “Bush,” it was said, “Is like a combination of the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow, and the Lion in the Wizard of OZ. He has no heart, and no brain, and no courage.” The man who said this was John McCain in the 2000 primary election. McCain isn’t exactly a media mouthpiece.

Democracy depends on having the losing side in an election accept defeat. The Conservatives need to get over themselves.

“Barack the Magic Negro”— Is it Lighthearted Political Parody?

Conservative comedian, Paul Shanklin, perpetual water boy for Rush Limbaugh wrote a little ditty titled, “Barack the Magic Negro,” (set to the tune of “Puff, the Magic Dragon”) and fed it to the insatiable Right Wing comedy machine just in time for Christmas. Republican apologists immediately dismissed this as lighthearted political parody. In the past, Conservative Christians (a group renowned for mirth and merriment) have showcased their taste in humor with side-splitting, knee-slapper parodies like “Mission Accomplished,” fun and games at Abu Ghraib, and “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Brownie.” Additionally, the candidacy of Sarah Palin erased, once and for all, the notion that Republican Conservative Christians are not ardent jokesters. The Shanklin parody, we are told, is just another lighthearted joke.

Paul Shanklin dropped his donation into the lap of Rush Limbaugh at an awkward time. The entire nation was freezing in some of the deepest cold in memory, and Limbaugh was using this inordinately bitter weather to disprove global warming. If that wasn’t enough, Liberal Caroline Kennedy was seeking Liberal Hillary’s vacant Senate seat. Limbaugh’s plate was already piled high with red meat. Nevertheless, he found time to have a little fun with the so-called parody.

Chip Saltsman heard the parody and decided to give out CDs containing the tune for Christmas stocking stuffers. For those unfamiliar with Chip Saltsman, his credentials as a first-class joke promoter were established when he ran Mike Huckabee’s Presidential primary campaign. Evidently, the only Right Wing honcho who lacks a sense of humor is the RNC Chairman, Mike Duncan. Duncan denounced the parody, and already Christian Conservatives are wondering if he might not be a closet Liberal.

You can tell from reading this that I’ve had a lot of fun writing it, but I’d like to shift gears and move away from this delightful sarcasm. The truth is that Christian Conservative Republicans are not lighthearted in the least, and they’re deadly serious about their bigotry and their ideology. When they delight in a song about a negro, there’s nothing humorous or innocent or cute about it.

It's Now Official

It’s now official. Yesterday, the members of the Electoral College met inside the 50 statehouses around the U.S.A. to certify the results of the November 4th election. This is a routine procedure that takes place every four years, and yesterday the event was remarkable only for what DIDN’T happen. The electors didn’t hesitate in the least.

For the last five weeks, the legislators who make up the Electoral College have been besieged with mail urging them not to ratify the election of Obama, on the basis that he was allegedly born in Kenya and is, therefore, ineligible to hold the office of President (see my blog of 11/11). This mail was generated by “the usual suspects”— those members of the political fringe who always think they have the inside track to the truth because they’re tuned into the voice of God, or the EIB network, or short wave radio. On one of last Sunday morning’s political talk shows, a pundit completely astonished me by giving a name to this fringe element, calling it “the Palin, Hannity, Limbaugh crowd.” Those of us who rant in the realm of blogs can get away with labels like this, but I never imagined that a mainstream TV talking head would utter such a phrase. If the fringe can actually be marginalized, maybe there’s hope for national unity, after all.

See also: Was Obama Born In Kenya? (11/11)

Was Sarah Palin The Victim Of Biased Media?

Now that deconstructing the Palin candidacy has become a kind of national pastime, the question of liberal media bias keeps coming up. Did the media treat her unfairly? I think not.

In dealing with the media during my career, I came away with the certainty that most reporters and journalists tend to be lazy in their craft, but they do NOT tend to be stupid. For a journalist, conducting a personal interview is hard under any circumstances, but especially when the person being interviewed plays difficult with the game. Avoidance tactics like using spin to dodge questions is always considered part of the process, and while it offends the lazy component in the interviewer, making them need to work harder to get a straight answer, it is generally accepted as part of the job. But when a person grants an interview to get media exposure, and then flat-out refuses to answer any and all questions, sometimes by totally changing the subject, it offends the intellectual component of the interviewer. This is the essence of the Palin problem and her treatment by the media. Given the choice of being seen as devious, or being seen as ignorant, Sarah Palin wisely chose to be devious in most of her interviews. It masked the fact that she is ignorant about a great many subjects, and not subjects that are inconsequential. Supreme Court decisions and Foreign Policy doctrines in a time of war are things that should be on the mind of a person seeking the nation’s second highest office. Put simply, Sarah just doesn’t know a lot of stuff. After a while, the media tired of her game where every question was dismissed as a “gotcha” question, unworthy of an answer. Eventually, the majority of the voters tired of it too.

There was further evidence of a lack of deep substance in her non-verbal performance as well. Striding onto a public stage while winking and blowing kisses and pointing a finger to give recognition to special people in the audience— these are characteristics of outright flirtation, not of professional personal presentation. This is the way that Oprah enters the studio set on her television program because Oprah is a TV personality. The thing of it is, if Oprah was walking onto a stage to participate in a vice-presidential debate, Oprah would present herself like Madeline Albright or Margaret Thatcher, because Oprah is smart enough to know that the American people want more than a flirtatious TV personality in a high national office with a lot of power.

So, was the media unfair to Sarah Palin? The media was simply being logical. If it looks like fluff, and it moves like fluff, and it sounds like fluff, and it acts like fluff— then it probably is nothing but fluff.

Why Some Of Us Voted Against Our Own Self-Interest

Growing up in the 1950s, I was aware of a group of adults who were known as “The Country Club Set.” For the most part they were college educated, working at very high paying jobs, and they always voted Republican. They were the opposite of the poor blue-collar working class, and while my father toiled within this latter group and never belonged to a country club, he nevertheless always identified with the upper strata of society, probably because he was very intelligent. Intelligence seemed to be another quality of the Country Club Set, at least to the uninformed mind of a child in the 1950s, and for that reason I wanted to grow up and be a member of that group. Last Tuesday, the Country Club Set did an amazing thing. They voted for a man who will deliberately raise their taxes, probably by quite a lot. Understanding why these people voted against their own financial self-interest by switching their vote from Republican to Democrat is the key to understanding why the Republicans are in deep trouble.

Now that the election is over, the media pundits have been unusually candid and free in using the word, “incompetent,” to describe the Bush administration, although they are still reticent to use the other appropriate adjective, “stupid.” Whether or not the Country Club Set is truly intelligent I can’t say, but I do know that they understood at some gut level that the Bush incompetence was directly caused by his fundamental personal stupidity. I can say this since I’m not an official pundit, and speaking for myself, I can also say that it would be difficult to overstate the sheer dreariness and embarrassment of living for eight years in a nation governed by a globally-recognized fool. I don’t speak for the Country Club Set, but I myself finally came to the point when I wanted smart, intelligent governance more than I wanted governance which would be financially advantageous to me. The other alternative was to pick up and move to the Cayman Islands.

This discussion about intelligence leads back to the Republican Party. In the GOP, the Country Club Set was, until the last election, one of the two fundamental “base” groups that could always be counted on to pull the “R” lever. The other GOP base group has always consisted of those who are content to let James Dobson define the Word of God for them, and let Rush Limbaugh explain the Constitution as well as everything else. It was this latter group that was appeased by the pick of Sarah Palin, and was made to feel especially comfortable with the realization that she could never make them seem intellectually inferior. She was, after all, one of them, and it was good riddance to those intellectuals who were driven away by just her wink and a smile. The Republicans are now openly predicting that Palin will be a major force in their party in 2012, and this sends the message that the GOP is casting their lot with the dittoheads who tune in the EIB on radio stations down there below the Mason Dixon Line. I just can’t see this having much appeal for the rest of us, especially after we have four years to see a glow of grace and intellect in the White House.

Keeping The Tundra Tootsie Looking Good

It’s been 60 days since McCain picked the Tundra Tootsie as his Vice-Presidential running mate, and there’s still a dozen days to go until the election. Assuming that she never wears any piece of clothing more than once, and that she changes complete outfits twice a day, that means that Palin will go through about 150 dress-up cycles during her run for the nation’s second highest office. What makes this relevant is that we now know that the RNC has spent $150,000 to make her look good, or $1,000 per wardrobe change. Since she never does sit-down interviews, it’s unlikely that she gets a lot of wrinkles.

Hillary Clinton spent her own money to keep herself in pants suits because, being a Democrat, she probably had some understanding of the kind of American family that could buy clothing to last a lifetime for less than $150,000. In a normal election year, none of this would make much difference, But now, there are people—and a lot of them— who have lost their home, and who have gone on food stamps for the first time. This is not a normal election year. I’m not suggesting that the Tundra Tootsie should be given the old Marie Antoinette treatment for her wardrobe excess. Simply sending her back to live among the rapidly-diminishing polar bears will be sufficient.