I think she is more needed now than ever, reason: Our new president don't have much dumbness in him--thus, comedy will be death. Bush was a stimulus for those in the comic business. We do seriously need JTP and the home girl from Alaska to stick around.
The scariest thing about Palin is not that's she a moron - which she may or may not be, I have no idea how I would look under a national spotlight, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt - it's that she is totally untethered to any sense of fact-based reality. This is a common theme for Bush/Rove Republicans, I guess. Just as she did with the Bridge to Nowhere, she will not drop this absurd claim that Katie Couric asked her "what do you guys read up there in Alaska?" instead of "what newspapers do you read." I understand that the first version of that question could be taken as condescending but since, you know, it was never actually asked, the point is moot (as Jesse might say). She - like Bush before her - just creates this artificial cocoon where she has done nothing wrong and little things like videotape and voting records can do nothing to disturb it. It's mildly amusing when she is a largely impotent governor of a small (population-wise) state, but it would be unspeakably horrifying if that was the person we had dealing with Putin or Hamas. I really don't think the average American has fully digested just how dangerous that would be. Even Bush does not compare.
I gotta agree with D-Sel. She's also incapable of admitting any fault of her own. Tina Fey didn't even have to make up new lines to make fun of her. Gov. Palin is beyond lost. What's worse is that she's still clinging to the culture war thing. This is one of those rare times I get to completely agree with Andrew Sullivan: you can't be voted Vice-President without doing press conferences. Gov. Palin is walking proof that Sen. McCain's campaign was completely off kilter.
a) Still lacking a First Puppy, we need something inconsequential yet political to talk about.
b) It involves Republicans being stupid, which takes a bit of the pressure off the painful cage match that is Blago v Reid. Would-be RNC chairs trying to one-up each other's Facebook profiles just wasn't doing it.
c) There is a core of people who still love her, who are still convinced that the only problem was she didn't get a fair shake. Thus I wish her to continue to send the message "I am ignorant, and I am proud to be ignorant, and I shall maintain that ignorance at all costs, and I will never, never take Deborah's advice about claiming to read the Alaskan dailies like a normal person because they're a bunch of liberal snobs who look down on my deliberate ignorance because learning stuff is, basically, blinking, and I don't blink." It is not outside the bounds of possibility that she would hire a competent pr flack and then actually listen to his or her advice about learning a little something before expounding on the issues of the day. If that happens, we need a lot of these follow-up answers ready to go.
I'm with tobby. I think we have to keep her in a relatively harmless position, and then make sure she's given plenty of media time. She sure gives everyone plenty of material at a time when the president-to-be makes a lousy punchline.
I understand that the first version of that question could be taken as condescending but since, you know, it was never actually asked, the point is moot.
And this, D-Sel, is why you will never get mash notes from Rich Lowry.
I agree with D-Sel that she is not precisely a moron--we can't tell--but that the issue is how uninformed she is, deliberately uninformed, working to stay uninformed, disdaining those who think you should be informed about issues you plan to lead your state or country on...That she is so badly informed and never grasps that that could be a problem, for it's someone else's fault--if they never asked her the question she wouldn't have failed to know the answer. (Personal bete noir was when she talked about oil being "fungible," tossed around a snippet about not tagging the individual molecules, and went on to suggest if we just drilled enough for US domestic needs we'd have no issues--that's exactly what being a fungible commodity with a global market does not mean, you ignoramus.)
This is fun. Maybe she can keep us going through the inauguration?
Her desperate attempt to stay in the national spotlight is as sad as it is transparent. She should be a trivial pursuit answer, not a national political figure. Any entertainment value she provides is far outweighed by the terrifying prospect that she could actual win. I just want her to go away.
I hate to differ but I really hope she vanishes sooner rather than later. If she stays around, people will get familiar with her. And if they get familiar with her, she will seem less scary. And if she is less scary, she becomes more electable. And that is the scariest thought in the world to me.
What if she shows enough good judgment (I know, this is unlikely based on what she has exhibited so far) to have some fun with the way she was portrayed - maybe go on SNL again and joke about it. This could be catastrophic. If she shows she's "in" on the joke, it really begins to just look like nothing more than a joke. This could neutralize very real questions about her capabilities. I cannot repeat this enough: Americans need to be horrified of this woman. Not merely amused, but horrified.
I love the Daily Show. I have faith that they will find enough absurdity to keep churning out great material for the next four (hopefully, eight) years even sans Palin. And, as sad as it would be, I'd rather lose the Daily Show than lose my country back to these nutjobs.
I was going to write about this over at my house, but since I'm here already.
She is a specific example of the common Christainist complaint of persecution. Being a victim is important to her world view. It gives her something to overcome and a sense of righteousness in the face of struggle. In this case, a struggle to overcome a world-class absence of clues.
It wouldn't matter if you showed her exactly what Katie asked. Her answer would be that it was implied.
But, and here is the bright spot for me, she is going to get a lot of money and support in the Republican primaries. My supposition is that she will pull every other candidate further to the Right, making Obama's re-election even more certain.
KevDog nailed it with the Christianist persecutiion complaint, because we all know that white, North American Christians (disclaimer: I'm sort of one of them) are among the most persecuted people on the planet.
Palin needs to go away. If the Republicans can't see that promoting her as a serious candidate only kills their hopes for the future, then they deserve to be in the political wilderness forever.
Was anybody surprised to see it was John Ziegler that gave the interview? One of you bloggers of note needs to pick a fight with this guy Nate Silver style. That guy is too goddamn funny for words when he tries to counter an intelligent arguement through the time tested strategy of yelling really loudly at the person.
If the Republicans can't see that promoting her as a serious candidate only kills their hopes for the future, then they deserve to be in the political wilderness forever.
These people are presently making arguments like "we shall embrace the twittering to share our message" so they have a ways to go. (Despite The Plank's contention that Congressional Republicans are not sounding confident about 2010 I assume they shall stagger back into competency at some point. If they actually embrace Palin, though, look for the rise of a Conservative, but Not Crazy party. Around Paul, probably, so still really weird.)
Sassy, sexualized (wink, wink) conservative Daddy's girl who loves to zing the opposition suddenly realizes the attention is slipping away. "Hey, hey, over here! The 9/11 wives are whores! Hey, hey-- there's class bias from those bitches Fey and Couric! Look, look, let me pull up my ermine hemline a little bit-- come on, guys, you know you want me!"
She is COMPLETELY misjudging the mood of the country. This kind of Coulterish silliness only play's in certain environs...7% and climbing unemployment ain't one!
I fear her and Mitt Romney. Like at night with the lights off and you wake up in a sweat fresh from a nightmare type fear.
They may seem clownish, but their kind of opportunistic demagoguery just might squeak into office. And their kind of blind idealism just might bring about the kind of change in America that ends it, in spirit.
I hope they fail soon, but wingnuts will probably keep them in attention just enough for them to stay pseudo-relevant eternally.
She's finished. Now, I know you're going to ask, "Didn't people say the same thing about Obama several times during the campaign?" But Obama exceeded people's expectations; Sarah Palin did precisely the opposite.
While it's true that a substantial number of Republicans love her, she has not only utterly failed to attract anyone outside the base, she has become a complete laughingstock. It's rare for an unsuccessful vice-presidential candidate to later be nominated for president. In the twentieth century, only FDR and Bob Dole achieved that feat, and neither endured anywhere near the negative press that Palin did in a few short months.
We are only a few months after the election, and it will take some time for base Republicans to move out of their denial. I think most of them will come around to realize that Palin, no matter how much they love her, is unelectable. The only scenario I could see them nominating her in 2012 is if Obama is still popular and they want a sacrificial lamb.
I am not underestimating her. If anything, I overestimated her. She has already been tested as a candidate, and failed in a way that is not likely to be forgotten soon.
I like the part in the linked to article where she tries to say that she is not criticizing Caroline Kennedy, or her creditials for the Senate, "but rather on the seemingly arbitrary ways in which news organizations determine the level and kind of scrutiny given to those who aspire to public office." Um, yeah, scrutiny level for a Senator and a FREAKIN' VICE PRESIDENT should be different. A Senator from New York is not one cancer diagnosis or heart attack away from LEADING THE FREE WORLD!
see the part where she says, oh will they treat Caroline Kennedy as badly? Just to set up the right wing self-confirmation of media bias. Kennedy isn't exactly qualified to be a senator, but her public persona is also obviously less ridiculous than Palin's, what with the fake hokey accent and hilariously transparent pandering and all. A young conservative Republican friend of mine was more thoroughly disgusted and insulted by her than any of my "L"iberal friends were.
This is probably not a wholly original idea -- but I think that if Palin seems to have life going into 2012, Tina Fey should change her name to "Sara Palen" and enter all the primaries.
As KevDog would say, I've talked about this at my house, too, but I have an additional thought.
Palin cannot succeed as a national politician because she will be instantly polarizing. Many people made the same claim about Hillary Clinton, but the difference is that Clinton went out of her way to make inroads with conservatives. She even made nice with Rupert Murdoch, which ended up paying big dividends (though ultimately not enough).
There is no way that Palin will make the same kind of gestures to the Left. She evinced nothing but disdain for liberals, and her entire appeal as a candidate boiled down to playing to the basest part of her base. Those rallies were for the true believers, and a huge middle finger to the rest of us. You cannot succeed as a national figure when so many people will instantly hate you the next time around unless you're willing to obviate that in the meantime. And, as this post shows, she won't.
Sarah Palin is represents a certain type of Republican that is proudly ignorant. I don't believe she is stupid. I don't believe George W Bush is stupid.
I do believe that they believe that "belief" is enough. Why let any facts get in the way of all those thoughts you are having.
She's a dumbed down version of Richard Nixon with his sense of class resentment and deceit, yet none of the brains. As Kissinger said about Nixon, and I hope Hitchens doesn't read this thread, "Can you imagine what he could have accomplished if he had been loved."
I think of her as Nixon with tits, a ridiculous accent, and 30 fewer IQ points.
Poor Governor Palin was forced to go back for more than one session with that meanie, Katie Couric. I guess that shows that she was victimized by the McCain campaign and the press. After all, if you have a session that doesn't "go well," the interviewer and your campaign staff should just let you sit in the corner and never talk to any member of the non-Fox media again.
No! I want her to keep coming back over and over again! I want her to excite her "Republican Conservative base". I want her "populist messaging" to work. I want them to nominate her for Republican president candidate 2012. I would jump up and down with glee!
rikyah, i mostly agree with you, especially with regard to the glaringly obvious lowering of ordinary standards in her case. The GOP has sunk real low with this identity politics / class warfare stuff (gee, i thought class warfare was a commie thing...).
however I have to take issue with the racial insults. calling somebody white trash is applying a stereotype and i think it's too dismissive; i dont know but i wouldnt be surprised if some of our white fellow-travelers here feel insulted by it.
besides, there's just so much to take her down on, not just her total lack of knowledge or thoughtful policies, but her laughable and transparently phoney attempts at exaggerating her persona to be all 'proud redneck' or alternately all 'folksy north dakota'; why go there, into the identity politics BS, and play the same game she tries to play? she's just a treasure trove of silliness to hit today's sad Republican party with. conservatives i know are disgusted by it and i would bet that for every 'working white class "C"onservative' or whatever who went for it, two thought it was ridiculous and sort of insulting. i mean how dumb do they think people are..
Bill Clinton was white trash too. Obviously there's no comparison between him and Sarah Palin, but they both got a lot of ridicule that you don't see privileged frat-boy types like Bush experiencing. Our society wants to put them under glass, like it's the Jerry Springer show, and gape at their primitive, lower-class antics.
Of course, black folks have it even worse, to the point where a black version of Sarah Palin (unmarried teenage daughter? yeah right) wouldn't have the tiniest shot at national office.
Why does Palin keep insulting herself? Even if Katie Couric asked her some mean questions, she needs to be able to handle it smoothly. Even if Couric *did* ask her questions like "What do you guys do up there?", Palin should be able to handle them with grace and wit. She certainly shouldn't lose her shit and spew word salad over it. If she can't handle Couric, why should I think she'll do well against Putin?
Saturday Night Live makes fun of *all* major politicians. It's their job, it's what they're supposed to do. Shrug it off, stop holding grudges.
My Mom was on welfare as a kid and my Dad was born in California of Arkansas mountainfolk who went to pick fruit. So I suppose I could see "white trash" as insulting, but mostly I only see it that way in a rather abstract manner. Part of this might be that I was middle-class after age 5 or 6.
Still I would say a part of me thinks it'd be good if "white trash" was seen as something like an ethnic or racial slur. The problem with doing that though is that it's really more about classism than racism. As I recall, it was traditionally used more by whites against other whites they deemed beneath them. Even if said whites were basically identical in ethnic origin.
Now "redneck" is plausibly anti-ethnic in origin. It may have referred to either the scarves Scottish/Ulster descended coal-miners wore or to Scottish Protestants who wore red-pieces of cloth to signify their preference for a Presbyterian form of church governance. So the more English-desceded Southern aristocracy may have had religious/ethnic tension to the Scots descended backwoodsers. I don't think Palin would be redneck, using this terminology, as I think she's Austrian descended or something. Plus nowadays the word has largely lost whatever ethnic/religious connotations it may have had. (Even those connotations are disputed)
"White trash" and "redneck," while cathartic, are means of outsourcing white supremacy. You denigrate these white folks and then they turn to white supremacy as a way to bolster themselves. It's a way for elite whites to keep their hands clean, all the while benefiting from the racial hierarchy. Look at W. He doesn't have to be racist-- he lets his Southern Larry the Cable Guy supporters, who feel condescended to and insulted, do it for him.
It always amazes me that more people don't get this. It's like Dick Gregory repeatedly says, the KKK isn't making policy and running things.
Still I would say a part of me thinks it'd be good if "white trash" was seen as something like an ethnic or racial slur. The problem with doing that though is that it's really more about classism than racism.
It has racist undertones. It implies that nonwhites are presumed to be in that sort of degraded position by default, so that you wouldn't need a term like "black trash."
That's a reach. Whites back in Renaissance England I'm pretty sure had classist terms for other whites. Whites in West Virginia used terms like "white trash" even though the state is 90% white anyway. Asians and African Americans also had classist terms amongst themselves.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I think she is more needed now than ever, reason: Our new president don't have much dumbness in him--thus, comedy will be death. Bush was a stimulus for those in the comic business. We do seriously need JTP and the home girl from Alaska to stick around.
The scariest thing about Palin is not that's she a moron - which she may or may not be, I have no idea how I would look under a national spotlight, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt - it's that she is totally untethered to any sense of fact-based reality. This is a common theme for Bush/Rove Republicans, I guess. Just as she did with the Bridge to Nowhere, she will not drop this absurd claim that Katie Couric asked her "what do you guys read up there in Alaska?" instead of "what newspapers do you read." I understand that the first version of that question could be taken as condescending but since, you know, it was never actually asked, the point is moot (as Jesse might say). She - like Bush before her - just creates this artificial cocoon where she has done nothing wrong and little things like videotape and voting records can do nothing to disturb it. It's mildly amusing when she is a largely impotent governor of a small (population-wise) state, but it would be unspeakably horrifying if that was the person we had dealing with Putin or Hamas. I really don't think the average American has fully digested just how dangerous that would be. Even Bush does not compare.
Good riddance.
I gotta agree with D-Sel. She's also incapable of admitting any fault of her own. Tina Fey didn't even have to make up new lines to make fun of her. Gov. Palin is beyond lost. What's worse is that she's still clinging to the culture war thing. This is one of those rare times I get to completely agree with Andrew Sullivan: you can't be voted Vice-President without doing press conferences. Gov. Palin is walking proof that Sen. McCain's campaign was completely off kilter.
I'm with tobby for slightly different reasons:
a) Still lacking a First Puppy, we need something inconsequential yet political to talk about.
b) It involves Republicans being stupid, which takes a bit of the pressure off the painful cage match that is Blago v Reid. Would-be RNC chairs trying to one-up each other's Facebook profiles just wasn't doing it.
c) There is a core of people who still love her, who are still convinced that the only problem was she didn't get a fair shake. Thus I wish her to continue to send the message "I am ignorant, and I am proud to be ignorant, and I shall maintain that ignorance at all costs, and I will never, never take Deborah's advice about claiming to read the Alaskan dailies like a normal person because they're a bunch of liberal snobs who look down on my deliberate ignorance because learning stuff is, basically, blinking, and I don't blink." It is not outside the bounds of possibility that she would hire a competent pr flack and then actually listen to his or her advice about learning a little something before expounding on the issues of the day. If that happens, we need a lot of these follow-up answers ready to go.
I'm with tobby. I think we have to keep her in a relatively harmless position, and then make sure she's given plenty of media time. She sure gives everyone plenty of material at a time when the president-to-be makes a lousy punchline.
I understand that the first version of that question could be taken as condescending but since, you know, it was never actually asked, the point is moot.
And this, D-Sel, is why you will never get mash notes from Rich Lowry.
I agree with D-Sel that she is not precisely a moron--we can't tell--but that the issue is how uninformed she is, deliberately uninformed, working to stay uninformed, disdaining those who think you should be informed about issues you plan to lead your state or country on...That she is so badly informed and never grasps that that could be a problem, for it's someone else's fault--if they never asked her the question she wouldn't have failed to know the answer. (Personal bete noir was when she talked about oil being "fungible," tossed around a snippet about not tagging the individual molecules, and went on to suggest if we just drilled enough for US domestic needs we'd have no issues--that's exactly what being a fungible commodity with a global market does not mean, you ignoramus.)
This is fun. Maybe she can keep us going through the inauguration?
Her desperate attempt to stay in the national spotlight is as sad as it is transparent. She should be a trivial pursuit answer, not a national political figure. Any entertainment value she provides is far outweighed by the terrifying prospect that she could actual win. I just want her to go away.
I hate to differ but I really hope she vanishes sooner rather than later. If she stays around, people will get familiar with her. And if they get familiar with her, she will seem less scary. And if she is less scary, she becomes more electable. And that is the scariest thought in the world to me.
What if she shows enough good judgment (I know, this is unlikely based on what she has exhibited so far) to have some fun with the way she was portrayed - maybe go on SNL again and joke about it. This could be catastrophic. If she shows she's "in" on the joke, it really begins to just look like nothing more than a joke. This could neutralize very real questions about her capabilities. I cannot repeat this enough: Americans need to be horrified of this woman. Not merely amused, but horrified.
I love the Daily Show. I have faith that they will find enough absurdity to keep churning out great material for the next four (hopefully, eight) years even sans Palin. And, as sad as it would be, I'd rather lose the Daily Show than lose my country back to these nutjobs.
I was going to write about this over at my house, but since I'm here already.
She is a specific example of the common Christainist complaint of persecution. Being a victim is important to her world view. It gives her something to overcome and a sense of righteousness in the face of struggle. In this case, a struggle to overcome a world-class absence of clues.
It wouldn't matter if you showed her exactly what Katie asked. Her answer would be that it was implied.
But, and here is the bright spot for me, she is going to get a lot of money and support in the Republican primaries. My supposition is that she will pull every other candidate further to the Right, making Obama's re-election even more certain.
Run, Sarah, Run!
KevDog nailed it with the Christianist persecutiion complaint, because we all know that white, North American Christians (disclaimer: I'm sort of one of them) are among the most persecuted people on the planet.
Palin needs to go away. If the Republicans can't see that promoting her as a serious candidate only kills their hopes for the future, then they deserve to be in the political wilderness forever.
Was anybody surprised to see it was John Ziegler that gave the interview? One of you bloggers of note needs to pick a fight with this guy Nate Silver style. That guy is too goddamn funny for words when he tries to counter an intelligent arguement through the time tested strategy of yelling really loudly at the person.
If the Republicans can't see that promoting her as a serious candidate only kills their hopes for the future, then they deserve to be in the political wilderness forever.
These people are presently making arguments like "we shall embrace the twittering to share our message" so they have a ways to go. (Despite The Plank's contention that Congressional Republicans are not sounding confident about 2010 I assume they shall stagger back into competency at some point. If they actually embrace Palin, though, look for the rise of a Conservative, but Not Crazy party. Around Paul, probably, so still really weird.)
Ann Coulter Syndrome 2.0.
Sassy, sexualized (wink, wink) conservative Daddy's girl who loves to zing the opposition suddenly realizes the attention is slipping away. "Hey, hey, over here! The 9/11 wives are whores! Hey, hey-- there's class bias from those bitches Fey and Couric! Look, look, let me pull up my ermine hemline a little bit-- come on, guys, you know you want me!"
It's funny how the woman who basically said Hillary was whining about sexism has now morphed into full-blown waahmbulance mode herself.
She is COMPLETELY misjudging the mood of the country. This kind of Coulterish silliness only play's in certain environs...7% and climbing unemployment ain't one!
k1
ryanculver.blogspot.com
I fear her and Mitt Romney. Like at night with the lights off and you wake up in a sweat fresh from a nightmare type fear.
They may seem clownish, but their kind of opportunistic demagoguery just might squeak into office. And their kind of blind idealism just might bring about the kind of change in America that ends it, in spirit.
I hope they fail soon, but wingnuts will probably keep them in attention just enough for them to stay pseudo-relevant eternally.
She's finished. Now, I know you're going to ask, "Didn't people say the same thing about Obama several times during the campaign?" But Obama exceeded people's expectations; Sarah Palin did precisely the opposite.
While it's true that a substantial number of Republicans love her, she has not only utterly failed to attract anyone outside the base, she has become a complete laughingstock. It's rare for an unsuccessful vice-presidential candidate to later be nominated for president. In the twentieth century, only FDR and Bob Dole achieved that feat, and neither endured anywhere near the negative press that Palin did in a few short months.
We are only a few months after the election, and it will take some time for base Republicans to move out of their denial. I think most of them will come around to realize that Palin, no matter how much they love her, is unelectable. The only scenario I could see them nominating her in 2012 is if Obama is still popular and they want a sacrificial lamb.
I am not underestimating her. If anything, I overestimated her. She has already been tested as a candidate, and failed in a way that is not likely to be forgotten soon.
I like the part in the linked to article where she tries to say that she is not criticizing Caroline Kennedy, or her creditials for the Senate, "but rather on the seemingly arbitrary ways in which news organizations determine the level and kind of scrutiny given to those who aspire to public office." Um, yeah, scrutiny level for a Senator and a FREAKIN' VICE PRESIDENT should be different. A Senator from New York is not one cancer diagnosis or heart attack away from LEADING THE FREE WORLD!
see the part where she says, oh will they treat Caroline Kennedy as badly? Just to set up the right wing self-confirmation of media bias. Kennedy isn't exactly qualified to be a senator, but her public persona is also obviously less ridiculous than Palin's, what with the fake hokey accent and hilariously transparent pandering and all. A young conservative Republican friend of mine was more thoroughly disgusted and insulted by her than any of my "L"iberal friends were.
This is probably not a wholly original idea -- but I think that if Palin seems to have life going into 2012, Tina Fey should change her name to "Sara Palen" and enter all the primaries.
As KevDog would say, I've talked about this at my house, too, but I have an additional thought.
Palin cannot succeed as a national politician because she will be instantly polarizing. Many people made the same claim about Hillary Clinton, but the difference is that Clinton went out of her way to make inroads with conservatives. She even made nice with Rupert Murdoch, which ended up paying big dividends (though ultimately not enough).
There is no way that Palin will make the same kind of gestures to the Left. She evinced nothing but disdain for liberals, and her entire appeal as a candidate boiled down to playing to the basest part of her base. Those rallies were for the true believers, and a huge middle finger to the rest of us. You cannot succeed as a national figure when so many people will instantly hate you the next time around unless you're willing to obviate that in the meantime. And, as this post shows, she won't.
With Blago being impeached today, his hair will stay in the news for many cycles, so the pressure on comics is dissapating.
Sarah Palin is represents a certain type of Republican that is proudly ignorant. I don't believe she is stupid. I don't believe George W Bush is stupid.
I do believe that they believe that "belief" is enough. Why let any facts get in the way of all those thoughts you are having.
She's a dumbed down version of Richard Nixon with his sense of class resentment and deceit, yet none of the brains. As Kissinger said about Nixon, and I hope Hitchens doesn't read this thread, "Can you imagine what he could have accomplished if he had been loved."
I think of her as Nixon with tits, a ridiculous accent, and 30 fewer IQ points.
w00t!!!!
To quote Peter Griffin from The Family Guy: That is enough Sarah Palin.
She's too stupid to realize what a pass she got. She actually thought she was attacked?
G-T-F-O-H
Yes, there's a class issue. She's White Trash. Period.
I told you, the reason why she drove me up a wall was because it's one thing to KNOW about White Privilege - in theory.
It's altogether another to see it shoved in your face in the personage of the mediocre Sarah Palin.
If the Democrats had been the Republicans?
Oh HELL NO. ...her FAMILY would have disqualified her from jump street.
Fareed Zakaria nailed it with regards to Caribou Barbie:
It's not that she doesn't know the answers to the questions. It's that she doesn't even know the questions.
Poor Governor Palin was forced to go back for more than one session with that meanie, Katie Couric. I guess that shows that she was victimized by the McCain campaign and the press. After all, if you have a session that doesn't "go well," the interviewer and your campaign staff should just let you sit in the corner and never talk to any member of the non-Fox media again.
No! I want her to keep coming back over and over again! I want her to excite her "Republican Conservative base". I want her "populist messaging" to work. I want them to nominate her for Republican president candidate 2012. I would jump up and down with glee!
rikyah, i mostly agree with you, especially with regard to the glaringly obvious lowering of ordinary standards in her case. The GOP has sunk real low with this identity politics / class warfare stuff (gee, i thought class warfare was a commie thing...).
however I have to take issue with the racial insults. calling somebody white trash is applying a stereotype and i think it's too dismissive; i dont know but i wouldnt be surprised if some of our white fellow-travelers here feel insulted by it.
besides, there's just so much to take her down on, not just her total lack of knowledge or thoughtful policies, but her laughable and transparently phoney attempts at exaggerating her persona to be all 'proud redneck' or alternately all 'folksy north dakota'; why go there, into the identity politics BS, and play the same game she tries to play? she's just a treasure trove of silliness to hit today's sad Republican party with. conservatives i know are disgusted by it and i would bet that for every 'working white class "C"onservative' or whatever who went for it, two thought it was ridiculous and sort of insulting. i mean how dumb do they think people are..
Bill Clinton was white trash too. Obviously there's no comparison between him and Sarah Palin, but they both got a lot of ridicule that you don't see privileged frat-boy types like Bush experiencing. Our society wants to put them under glass, like it's the Jerry Springer show, and gape at their primitive, lower-class antics.
Of course, black folks have it even worse, to the point where a black version of Sarah Palin (unmarried teenage daughter? yeah right) wouldn't have the tiniest shot at national office.
i mean how dumb do they think people are..
SV, based all the evidence of the last 40 odd years of conservatives in action? I'd say there is no bottom to that well...
Why does Palin keep insulting herself? Even if Katie Couric asked her some mean questions, she needs to be able to handle it smoothly. Even if Couric *did* ask her questions like "What do you guys do up there?", Palin should be able to handle them with grace and wit. She certainly shouldn't lose her shit and spew word salad over it. If she can't handle Couric, why should I think she'll do well against Putin?
Saturday Night Live makes fun of *all* major politicians. It's their job, it's what they're supposed to do. Shrug it off, stop holding grudges.
My Mom was on welfare as a kid and my Dad was born in California of Arkansas mountainfolk who went to pick fruit. So I suppose I could see "white trash" as insulting, but mostly I only see it that way in a rather abstract manner. Part of this might be that I was middle-class after age 5 or 6.
Still I would say a part of me thinks it'd be good if "white trash" was seen as something like an ethnic or racial slur. The problem with doing that though is that it's really more about classism than racism. As I recall, it was traditionally used more by whites against other whites they deemed beneath them. Even if said whites were basically identical in ethnic origin.
Now "redneck" is plausibly anti-ethnic in origin. It may have referred to either the scarves Scottish/Ulster descended coal-miners wore or to Scottish Protestants who wore red-pieces of cloth to signify their preference for a Presbyterian form of church governance. So the more English-desceded Southern aristocracy may have had religious/ethnic tension to the Scots descended backwoodsers. I don't think Palin would be redneck, using this terminology, as I think she's Austrian descended or something. Plus nowadays the word has largely lost whatever ethnic/religious connotations it may have had. (Even those connotations are disputed)
"White trash" and "redneck," while cathartic, are means of outsourcing white supremacy. You denigrate these white folks and then they turn to white supremacy as a way to bolster themselves. It's a way for elite whites to keep their hands clean, all the while benefiting from the racial hierarchy. Look at W. He doesn't have to be racist-- he lets his Southern Larry the Cable Guy supporters, who feel condescended to and insulted, do it for him.
It always amazes me that more people don't get this. It's like Dick Gregory repeatedly says, the KKK isn't making policy and running things.
Still I would say a part of me thinks it'd be good if "white trash" was seen as something like an ethnic or racial slur. The problem with doing that though is that it's really more about classism than racism.
It has racist undertones. It implies that nonwhites are presumed to be in that sort of degraded position by default, so that you wouldn't need a term like "black trash."
That's a reach. Whites back in Renaissance England I'm pretty sure had classist terms for other whites. Whites in West Virginia used terms like "white trash" even though the state is 90% white anyway. Asians and African Americans also had classist terms amongst themselves.