Friday, September 19, 2008
Sarah Palin C List Celebrity
We know now that Sarah Palin is an A List celebrity with the Repug base and a B or C List celebrity with everyone else. She has good public speaking skills learned for a possible TV career, but take away the VP thing & she's no more interesting than Michelle Obama & Jill Biden, & in some respects not even as accomplished as those two women, with no advantages as a working mother & definite disadvantages in her education. It's altogether probable that Jill Biden knows more about just about everything than Sarah Palin, & what she doesn't know she could learn quickly. Even moose stew. If Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, so is Jill Biden.
Rachel Maddow made a case that Palin is nasty & dishonest enough to qualify as the next Dick Cheney, but I wasn't convinced. Cheney is an evil man of long government experience & extraordinary deviousness. You can't train Palin to replace him in a matter of months. Palin hasn't demonstrated that she has the skills to manipulate a president behind the scenes, destroy reputations, while insulating herself from accountability. Whether or not it is possible to learn these skills as the governor of Alaska, I don't know. Certainly not in less than two years on the job. She has no proven successes yet. For a start, she has to get off-the-hook on Troopergate.
So Sarah will continue to draw the adoring crowds at partisan events, & others will have a look at her out of curiosity. Perhaps the quasi-libertarians will wake up & realize she isn't Barry Goldwater with a vagina, she's a nutty pentecostalist who believes in demon possession. Conservative is inadequate to describe her. Staid Southern Baptist women who wouldn't dream of speaking in tongues are more tolerant & understanding of gay men just from regular contact with their local hairdressers, not to mention having better taste in gospel music, most of the Bible committed to memory, & an attitude that sin is sin & Satan more likely to manifest himself through a bottle of whiskey than via any supernatural forces.
When Jill Biden comes to town campaigning, quietly, meeting with smaller groups, women will immediately recognize her as the rock she is; a mother, grandmother, homemaker, teacher; a "Christian woman" if that's important. We have to compare Sarah with Joe. & it's no contest - Sarah wins on looks, Joe on experience, & they both enjoy the spotlight. But if Sarah is also running on her credentials as a "family values" mom, then she's running against Jill Biden, & comparisons are appropriate.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Rachel Maddow made a case that Palin is nasty & dishonest enough to qualify as the next Dick Cheney, but I wasn't convinced. Cheney is an evil man of long government experience & extraordinary deviousness. You can't train Palin to replace him in a matter of months. Palin hasn't demonstrated that she has the skills to manipulate a president behind the scenes, destroy reputations, while insulating herself from accountability. Whether or not it is possible to learn these skills as the governor of Alaska, I don't know. Certainly not in less than two years on the job. She has no proven successes yet. For a start, she has to get off-the-hook on Troopergate.
So Sarah will continue to draw the adoring crowds at partisan events, & others will have a look at her out of curiosity. Perhaps the quasi-libertarians will wake up & realize she isn't Barry Goldwater with a vagina, she's a nutty pentecostalist who believes in demon possession. Conservative is inadequate to describe her. Staid Southern Baptist women who wouldn't dream of speaking in tongues are more tolerant & understanding of gay men just from regular contact with their local hairdressers, not to mention having better taste in gospel music, most of the Bible committed to memory, & an attitude that sin is sin & Satan more likely to manifest himself through a bottle of whiskey than via any supernatural forces.
When Jill Biden comes to town campaigning, quietly, meeting with smaller groups, women will immediately recognize her as the rock she is; a mother, grandmother, homemaker, teacher; a "Christian woman" if that's important. We have to compare Sarah with Joe. & it's no contest - Sarah wins on looks, Joe on experience, & they both enjoy the spotlight. But if Sarah is also running on her credentials as a "family values" mom, then she's running against Jill Biden, & comparisons are appropriate.
Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election
