Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Epiphany: Everyone Knows Palin Is Bad News
A conversation with my daughter made me realize a true fact. The media has a stake in making the public think that Sarah Palin is a reasonable choice for Vice President of the United States. And the Rightwingnut faction of the Republican Party has a stake in making the public think Palin is okay. But the world knows Palin must not be allowed anywhere near the office of Vice President.
The media folks need to keep their jobs and fueling controversy is one way to do it. The Wingnut faction wants the Repubs to stay in office no matter if their choices and policies drive the United States into a deep hole of financial ruin and morally corrupt government.
However, the voters know exactly who Sarah Palin is. And the voters know she is unwholesome, unsavory, unethical, unstable and unelectable.
Sarah Palin’s modus operandi as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and as Governor of Alaska has been fully accessible to everyone who wants to find out what she is like since John McCain announced she would be his running mate.
If the McCain folks didn’t fully vet her, it’s because they were afraid to find out the nastiness that the rest of us now know. But of course they did fully vet her and they didn’t care. The other night Ari Fleischer (former Bush press secretary) said to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that he thinks Sarah Palin is a fine pick for Vice President. And CNN's Bill Bennett seems apt to choke on his words every time he acts as a Palin cheerleader, but he does it anyway. He says she’ll do fine.
Why these men are lying through their teeth, is something I cannot hope to fathom, but lying they are. Perhaps there is even more grotty info about both of them that could be released to the public. But they are lying about Palin and the voters know they are lying.
The information about Sarah Palin is available to all of us, and most of us who have a computer have accessed all the information we can find. And what the citizens of the United States have found out is that Sarah Palin is a liar, a cheat, a political blackmailer, a bully, a do-nothing, know-nothing hack, a born-again fool, a religious zealot and a nincompoop.
Sarah Palin will never go to jail for any of the above and she’s proud to boast that she’s done nothing illegal.
However her slate of accomplishments are all on the negative side of the ethical ledger.
I have read them all. The voters have read them all. Only the media and the Right Wingnuts are persisting in claiming that Sarah Palin is qualified to run for Vice President. And only the media and the Right Wingnuts are claiming that Sarah Palin is even a responsible human being or, come to that, a good mother.
Everything you and I know about Sarah Palin, the Republican Party knows and it simply does not give a damn. And the media, the pundits, the analyzers, and the talk show hosts just want to keep on serving up something to watch.
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1 comment:
I don't see a lot of media praising the capabilities of Sarah Palin, but maybe that's because I don't get or want to get CNN. (Faux Nooz doesn't count.)
I have long time opinionized that the Palin pick was the nadir of the McCain campaign, and argue that most of his campaign since has been damage control. Greg Sargent of TPM expresses shock that polling shows Palin such a liability, but there is nothing to be shocked about; the media are dumber than the people (and are, indeed, responsible for much of the apparent stupidity of the people). I think most analysts just don’t connect events well if they occurred at different times; they see the Palin pick as something good that went bad. Bah! They simply do not understand the notion of a process; the Palin pick, viewed as the beginning of a process, was never anything but a disaster.
For example, Randi Rhodes sees "The fundamentals of our economy are strong" as a pivotal time, without noting that "Gibson interviewing Palin" occurred just before that. Randi connects McCain's collapse in polls with something that occurred at the same time, but I say go back to an event that actually looked good in the polls when it happened, and so got lots of positive attention from stupid media types, but which made future disaster difficult to avoid.
[Pop quiz. What is the loveliest sight in South Florida? Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l Airport whizzing by faster and faster as you speed down the runway. Heh! Actually Broward's not so bad, but home proper is a land flowing with milk and maple syrup.]
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