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David Harsanyi: The Palin Experience
These days, where you fall on the crucial issue of Sarah Palin tells the rest of us all we need to know about your character. You’re either a scum-sucking, terror-loving elitist, or a radical, tea bag-loving simpleton.
Yet believe it or not, one can — as I do — admire Palin’s charisma and roots, appreciate her dissent on the policy experiments brainy folks in Washington are cooking up and, at the same time, believe she has no business running for president in 2012.
In fact, all you haters out there motivate me to root for her.
There’s nothing wrong, for instance, with The Associated Press assigning a crack team of investigative journalists to sift through every word of Palin’s book, Going Rogue, for inaccuracies. You only wish similarly methodical muckraking were applied to President Barack Obama’s two self-aggrandizing tomes — or even the health-care or cap-and-trade bills, for that matter.
The widely read blogger and purveyor of all truth, Andrew Sullivan, was impelled to blog 17 times on the subject of Palin on the same day Americans learned that the Obama administration had awarded $6.7 billion in stimulus money to nonexistent congressional districts — which did not merit a single mention. To see what is in front of one’s nose demands a constant struggle, I guess.
And it’s not just bloggers. What choice do media outlets have but to provide comprehensive coverage of pistachio salesman and Playgirl-posing Levi Johnston, doltish erstwhile father of Palin’s grandchild, a man whose only discernible talents are the possession of operational sperm and the ability to humiliate the former vice presidential nominee?
How could a major magazine, such as Newsweek, be expected to use a cover photo of Palin campaigning or spending time with her child who has Down syndrome, when editors simply could borrow a shot of the 45-year-old mother of five decked out in her exercise tights — nudge nudge, wink wink — from a Runner’s World piece and slap the headline “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sarah?” onto it?
Newsweek must have a point. Palin is a populist dead-end. “Just over half of Americans,” a new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds, “have an unfavorable opinion” of Palin overall, “as many say they wouldn’t consider supporting her for president and more — six in 10 — see her as unqualified for the job.”
Similarly, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll recently found that 48 percent of Americans disapprove of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a woman busy writing policy that affects all of us. Does this not require a “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Nancy?” headline from the venerable magazine?
Who knows what is to become of Palin? Today, though, there is little doubt the left is using her to create ugly stereotypes and attack limited-government types across the country.
Palin claims that a presidential run is not on her “radar screen right now.” She may have gone rogue on John McCain — joining the rest of America — but Palin will have to work to articulate her positions, show more intellectual curiosity and fuse her magnetism with more substantive thinking.
But because of the stupendously nasty campaign waged against her, she might not get the chance.
At least, that’s this scum-sucking elitist’s opinion.
— David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of Nanny State. Click here for more information, or click here to contact him.
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» on 11.21.09 @ 09:29 PM
Thanks for the fair article. I too am not sure Sarah’s highest calling is “President” but let’s be honest. If Obama and/or Biden were submitted to the same scrutiny (right down to fact-checking Obama’s “books”) we’d be living in a different world.
Here’s a GREAT article about the Palin phenomenon…
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/palin-odes/
It contains some choice quotes like:
“Her supporters’ argument is that any woman who can have five kids, pull herself out of Wasilla to the national political scene, juggle job, husband, family, and press, and take on the old boy Republicans in Alaska while being an anathema to the liberal elite, must have brains and guts. Such experience will easily allow her, given the proper time and campaigning, to master the issues every bit as not well as do Barack Obama or Joe Biden.
Yet since many conservative elites imagine that a Harvard Kennedy School degree is superior to multifaceted knowledge of .357 Magnums, chain-sawing, skinning game, and fishing, they will judge her only in terms of a traditional cursus honorum—spiced up with invective about creationism and Christian fundamentalism. (I have some experience with such snobbishness: when I used to speak before hostile university audiences, I was often introduced along these lines: “Mr. Hanson is a raisin farmer from Fresno State of Jerry Tarkanian fame.” [and therefore, presto, must be an idiot].)
“I found the former [farming] harder to do than the latter [getting an advanced degree], the world of the one rather brutal and existential, of the other sheltered and protected. In other words, I would trust the judgment of someone with Palin’s background on matters of Iran or Honduras or Putin far more than I would someone of Obama’s resume. I would trust my neighbor who farms 180 acres more than I would a chairman of an academic department.”
» on 11.22.09 @ 01:57 AM
The bottom line is that we had 8 years of an idiot running our country, and the result was entirely predictable: we’re in deep doo-doo. These wanna-be intellectual types like Harsanyi think it’s cool to praise idiots, like it gives them some kind of, gosh I don’t know maverick cache and brings them more in touch with the common folk or something, but it really just shows what condescending snobs they are. Sarah Palin is an opportunistic, willfully ignorant attention addict. Her adult life has been a see-saw of monumental screw-up followed by cut-and-run, but so what. Let her write her books and make gobs of moolah from the slavering mobs of fools in the best American Snake Oil Salesman tradition, whatever… that’s captialism. But anyone, and I do mean anyone who takes her seriously as a potential public decision-maker has just eaten a stupid sandwich. Anyone who would actually vote for her is incapable of separating identity from merit.
» on 11.22.09 @ 06:02 AM
I wouldn’t be inclined to support her if it weren’t for the great opportunity to enrage all the insane libs and progressives. Your hatred tells me she has a great chance of winning :) I say Palin/Cheney 2012 !
» on 11.22.09 @ 06:07 AM
Until 6 in 10 open their eyes to the truth that Obama is unqualified for the job.
» on 11.22.09 @ 06:15 AM
Noleta just provided a perfect example of what the article talks about - I want to vote for her more now just to watch people like noleta erupt! Go sarah! The mooses and the liberal progressives worst nightmare! Go halliburton! Torture!! Gitmo! Enron! Corporate greed! Palin Cheney!woo hoo Let’s see what are the other keyword triggers? This could be great fun! And I thought Bush was as fun as it gets! I love watching progressives having meltdowns! Its absolutley comic! Could you grab me another beer and some popcorn?
» on 11.22.09 @ 05:03 PM
So you support Sarah Palin because A) Liberals don’t like her, and it’s fun to watch us get mad, or B)well, you don’t really have a B) and that’s even more pathetic. If that’s what it takes to get your vote then you really don’t think much about voting, then do you? Y’all just prove my point, and you don’t read so well, either. I don’t hate Sarah Palin, I just describe her the way she is. She has every right to sell a book and she makes it plain as day that she’ll do anything, including running out on her entire home state just to make some dough. God bless marketing, and Lord knows she needs the money. I watched a little C-Span bit about a book signing event in Cincinatti, and it’s the same thing: people just like her because they identify with her. “She’s one of us”, “she’s a real person”, “she tells it like it is”, etc, etc. Right, and if you have an extra $60,000 you can have dinner with her. Nothing but cliches without a shred of substance from her or her supporters. Here’s another choice quote from the PajamasMedia article sbnative cited:
“She is quite attractive, fertile, and married to a Jack-Armstrong 19th-century man.”
Boy, she’ll get my vote for that!
Allow me just a moment of despair for our people when I read crap like that.
Posters here have even less valid reasons for supporting her: because liberals don’t like her, or just to watch lefties like me “erupt”? Wow, you must have eaten a whole stupid casserole, not just the sandwich.
» on 11.23.09 @ 12:19 PM
Funner than I thought - Libs have no sense of humor and they are vewy sensitive and defensive when they get picked on…let me go get my kid gloves. Thanks for falling into the trap, providing us with an example of exactly what I was talking about - a lib melt down and another great laugh :0 Another beer please!
Sarah Palin Sarah Palin Sarah Palin Hee heee woo hooo!!
You crack me up. A little sensitive? Can’t take a little ribbing? Hmm what else have I got -ohh!! Water boarding water boarding!! Ha HAAAAA heee omg ho ho ha ah this is GREAT!!
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