One-time underdog beauty pageant contestant and VP candidate Sarah Palin had a rocky, some might rightly say unfair, relationship with the media during her short-lived aspiration to the second-highest office in the land. Instead of simply promoting herself, she’s picking at fresh scabs earned in battle against the media, mainstream and otherwise, seemingly unaware that the media still holds the same worldwide sway they did during her storied run, and that they still don’t much care for her or her unusual antics.
Traditionally, once a candidate has been counted out, they show the common courtesy of going away and letting the nation proceed without them, but Alaska Governor Sarah Palin chose instead to kick her personal profile to the next level. There have already been a number of easily located websites suggesting a Palin 2012 run for office, and the countless interviews on television show she has no intention of leaving the limelight just yet.
From the very minute the presidential race was over, it was evident she wasn’t ready to give up her rock star lifestyle. As ABC reported: “Palin left… in a motorcade stretching more than a dozen vehicles, flanked by a dozen more cops on motorcycles… joined by some 18 family members and friends who had made the trip from Alaska to Phoenix to watch Election Night returns.”
It was also mentioned in the same article that, “John McCain drove himself in his own gold Toyota Sequoia SUV.”
John McCain is a smart, honorable man, a hero, a national treasure, and when all else is said and done, he’s still the Senator from Arizona. What fancy things he feels he needs, he already has. If what he wants is power and respect, he knows he already has them. He doesn’t need a big show and luxury treatment at the taxpayer’s expense to make himself feel better, or earn the respect of his entourage.
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is still acting like a wealthy kid in a candy store, buying whatever she desires, even though it really isn’t what’s good for her.
So for better or for worse, this odd dredging of political backwaters continues, and I must assure you it’s entirely at Mrs. Palin’s request.
Sarah Palin has lashed out against the media thanks to the help of conservative barkers like the famously (and unabashedly) partisan John Zeigler. Palin may have been handled a bit roughly by the mainstream media, but there are two axioms to bear in mind:
1) She earned much of the scorn she suffered, if not all of it. To be a bit sharper on the point, she was the one patently unqualified and un-vetted candidate from the entirety of both parties for the whole of the campaign. Much of the push-back she faced may have been due, since she lacked any of the qualifications of even the quickest dismissed named presidential or vice-presidential candidates.
2) John Zeigler is many things, but he is not “news”, nor is he even modestly regarded in the journalistic field. That’s coming from me, and I’m a satirist on my best day. John Zeigler has some deep pockets backing him, he won’t disclose who they are entirely, and yet because he was a modestly high-profile west-coast DJ, he somehow counts as “media”, at least in Sarah Palin’s world.
Take that with a grain of salt, because we know what Sarah Palin counts as foreign policy experience (having international neighbors with whom she never had talks,) what she counts as executive experience (commanding a national guard she never called in,) and what she counts as a solid history of leadership (the veritable destruction of her own family while owning an airplane she won’t admit who flies, perhaps because no one close to her is licensed to.)
The lashing out at Katie Couric is, for lack of a better word, retarded.
That’s a word I use sparingly, since both of my son’s are developmentally delayed, and my step-son, what with his autism and myriad other medical maladies – this is not a word to be used lightly…
With that said, and I sincerely struggled half a day for a better word, Sarah Palin must be retarded. Not physically. I’m sure she’s strapping and rugged in those ways, but mentally. I mean that Sarah Palin must be mentally retarded.
If Obama takes the stand that the sky is blue, Sarah Palin is right there ready to shout on high that it’s actually green. The sky is not green, and facts will catch up with her soon enough, so at least in this analogy, she’ll come back raging on the defensive explaining that in Alaska the sky is usually gray, that her handlers told her the sky is seldom blue, and that reporters are pure evil for having even asked that question when we all know the sky is whatever color God made it to be, and God bless America, and gosh darn it, she believes in lower taxes, national security and fiscal responsibility from the federal government.
But that’s just my less-than-humble aside.
Even when asked in her puppet theater about why she didn’t answer Katie Couric about what newspapers she reads, her response was, “Because Katie, you’re not the center of everybody’s universe,”… really? That’s the response?
No wait, it gets better. Her follow up, and you can watch this on YouTube.com or HowObamaGotElected.com, she adds, “To me the question was more along the lines of ‘Do you read?’ ‘What do you guys do up there?'”
As if just saying that the American people are actually asking if Sarah Palin reads… Quick head count, how many people would think that was the question being asked.
And if it was, if you were the candidate, and you thought some reporter was getting all up in your grill wondering if you actually read, and he/she asked you what you read… wouldn’t you have an answer? Wouldn’t you want to put the rumors to bed? Wouldn’t you feel that this was your perfect moment to put to bed forever the question of whether or not you’re a backwater hick?
What I’m asking is, wouldn’t you prove your merit by telling the reporter what you read?
This question – and indeed this whole discussion – was one for shame and scorn of journalists back in October, but Sarah Palin refuses to let these media scabs heal over and demands we recover this area. I for one am completely fine with it, because I feel like I gave her a mulligan, and now she’s coming back demanding a fair match… alright, fair enough.
The McCain ticket was already doomed before Palin came aboard. It was hoped she might reinvigorate the ticket, but it didn’t work out. Palin is not the reason John McCain is not the president elect today (even if economics genius Mitt Romney or genuine conservative favorite Mike Huckabee is.)
No one in their right mind should fault Sarah Palin for John McCain’s defeat. Even if they fault her, she was John McCain’s choice, so let’s keep the Senator on the hook for his failure to mobilize even so much as his base.
I was happy to let Palin go, but Palin had other ideas in mind, so let’s let her bring herself back to our attention.
I want to see an open, honest, public (with full scientific chain of custody) DNA test to prove that Trig is in fact her baby, and not her daughter’s. Even conservative super-blogger Andrew Sullivan asked for that, and was intentionally snubbed for so much as an on-the-record verbal confirmation.
If it’s her grand-son, let’s get that out in the open. If it’s her son, however, let’s at least have the decency to shut up people like me.
When I catch my friend Jason in a lie, I assume there are another 50 lies I didn’t catch. But when I accuse him of lying and he proves me wrong, I shut my mouth and exercise extreme caution before casting doubt again in the future.
If Sarah Palin wants Andrew Sullivan to take her seriously, or a registered republican like myself, she needs to stop making up stories and excuses when every little thing goes wrong and just show us the proof… it’s right there. It’s exceptionally easy to attain. All she has to do is pay about $150 (and I’m sure there are countless who would spot the cash to sponsor it, myself included,) and give us the evidence we need that she is only a liar about the things we’ve already caught her lying about.
This is my open offer… if Sarah Palin would like to prove to the world once and for all that Trig is her baby, I will pay up to $500 for the test (assuming a proper chain of custody and other normally required test elements for a verifiable, legal study.)
But she won’t.
Does that make her a liar? No, of course not. All the other things she’s done and said on camera do plenty of that. What it makes her is a disingenuous person, possibly a fraud, but it doesn’t in and of itself make her a liar.
It’s like how she insists that a snowmobile is actually a snow machine… it isn’t, it’s a snowmobile.
It’s like how she insists that Bristol’s baby-daddy isn’t a high school dropout, even though he’s stopped attending school so he can get his GED through the internet… that’s right, he’s not even taking GED classes, he’s just doing it on the computer.
It’s like how she had a candid caught-me-in-the-kitchen interview with a small handful of reporters over the course of just a few days, all the while not showing up to her job as governor of the great state of Alaska.
Oh, and as for her balancing the budget? That relied on crude trading above $47 a barrel, which it isn’t, and hasn’t been since Obama became such a lock for the presidency that an Irish betting house began paying out on his victory.
Sarah Palin, if you’re reading this, and everything I’ve come to know about you says you are, I’d like to encourage you to keep up with this maverick business that serves your personal interests so well. You may get a second 7-figure book deal out of the journey, and you’re surely a lock for mega-compensation speaking tours for life, but as long as you fancy yourself the face of the GOP, and successfully assert it, you’ll forever assure the Dems will stay in power.
Oh, and when an “anonymous blogger” says something about you that isn’t true, the normal reaction is to refute it and say that it’s a lie. If you can’t do that, or you’re unwilling, it’s possible you are telling a lie yourself, or you’re completely oblivious to how the world works these days… in either case, you might find it hard to garner votes.
Because when it comes to common sense, never mind that the Palin crew has none and won’t take any lessons from those who do, the American people – and I do mean the real American people, have it in spades.