Sarah Palin Does As She Damn Well Pleases–UPDATED
July 5, 2009 / 12:17 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierOnce again, everyone is angry about Sarah Palin’s choices. Well, time will tell if she’s making a brilliant choice or a Guiliani jump into oblivion. After the treatment she’s received at the hands of the insiders, pundits, strategists, media, fellow women and everyone else, I don’t give a shit what any of them thinks. She’ll be pilloried by everyone no matter what she decides, no matter why she decides it, so she might as well do what she wants.
This woman taps some deep-seated Freudian place that still confounds me as an observer. She’s beautiful. She’s smart. She’s a mother. She’s flawed. She’s sexy. She’s ambitious. She’s married. She’s a regular person. She’s an outsider. She’s a spoiler. She has, gasp!, long hair.
How many iconic images can one woman conjure? Well, that imagery links energetically to the common person’s hopes and fears. She brings out the clucking church ladies, yes, I’m talking about feminists, wanting to brand her with the scarlet letter for being powerful, sexual, female, beautiful and most of all, feminine. The fangs and claws are bared and it’s as transparent as the politics of a sixth grade dance. Make no mistake: If she were butch, we would not be having this discussion.
There are men who grate at the unfairness of an identity-politics choice like Sarah Palin. We’ll talk when money and name (Romney, McCain, Bush) cease to be part of the political process. Puhleeeze. It’s not like John Q. Public has an ice cube’s chance in Hade’s hottest room of becoming president. Sarah Palin at least became Governor on her own accomplishments. The three listed men all had a name built from their fathers and their father’s fathers. So enough with that argument. If her femaleness helps her, fine. Life, and politics, and war, ain’t fair. Deal.
For the press, you deserve shit. If Sarah Palin never does another interview with your unfair, biased asses, it’s no more than you deserve. She serves to bring you ratings and you indulge your mental masturbation by giving her questions that Barack Obama wouldn’t expect on Helen Thomas’ worst day. That you’re so blinded by your hate that you can’t see your bias just demonstrates how much you all wash in the same dirty pond.
And if you special interest groups: DC insiders, the Press, the feminists and the rest of the elites, don’t understand that the American citizenry is sick of your holier-than-thou attitude and disgusting derision for the common man, you have another thing coming. Sarah Palin’s success is a direct result of your consistent, unrelenting, condescending arrogance. Had one shred of fairness or responsiveness been demonstrated toward the American people, I don’t think Sarah Palin would be tapping into any of this sentiment.
But you guys are so insufferably pompous and predictable. Like Napolean’s court: dirty, back-stabbing, churlish, insiderish, insular and blind to the world around you.
I’m not a huge fan of populist revolutions, but hells bells, AMERICA was a populist revolution. We were never intended to be a RULED nation, yet that’s exactly what we’ve become. Harvard educated, czar appointing Barack Obama is no different. Everyone hoped he would bring hope and change. He was elected on that promise. As his policies destroy hope and the economy, people will resent the changes he wrought.
The time may just be right for a plucky, awkwardly speaking gal from Alaska. You betcha! Behold, your worst nightmare.
UPDATED:
Late to The Anchoress’ party. She has a thoughtful round-up and says:
It’s tough to govern and not go broke when the other side has decided to nibble you to death – and to build up a “record of questionable ethics” against you while they do so. The left and the press, who one might characterize as “at war” with Palin and her family, have tossed together a mess of Palin narratives (she’s “stupid,” they’re “trailer-trash,” the daughters are “sluts,” she looks like a “slutty flight attendant,” they are cornpone, she is inept, she “can see Russia from her window” and oh, yeah, she’s really her son’s grandmother, and one of her “slutty” daughters got pregnant just a few weeks after giving birth to that retarded kid that everyone wishes she [or her daughter, winkwink] had aborted) and they have created an enormous battle-hill out of all of that.
And I suspect Sarah Palin has looked around and decided, no – she is not going to die on that hate-constructed hill. I think she’s going to do her thing, forge her own path by her own lights, and eventually head back into politics on her own damn hill – and with (one fervently hopes) a hum-dinger of a speech-writer.
Amen on the speech-writer thing.
More from Patterico who asks, “Is it verboten to criticize Palin?” Evidently. The thing is, IF she’s going for higher office, people are going to have to ferret out fair-minded feedback from the slash and burn journalism.
I just do not get Icon worship–whether it be Sarah Palin, Michael Jackson, or Barack Obama. These are PEOPLE. Fallible, human, selfish, emotional, …..people. No man is God. Since the time of Israel, people have been looking for a human leader to fill that bill. Hello? Not going to happen.
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