Topic: Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin and the Politics of Elitism -- II The election's over, but the elites continue their pile-on. Why are they afraid of her?by Phil Manger
(libertarian)
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Sarah Palin just won't go away.
The election is now two weeks behind us, and the news media can't seem to get enough of her. Last week she was interviewed in her Wasilla kitchen by Fox's Greta van Susteren (while making moose chili), and by NBC's Matt Lauer (while making a halibut-and-salmon casserole). CNN's Larry King also interviewed her, but it was by remote hookup, so he didn't get to sample the governor's home cooking. Maybe he can drop by the next time he's in Wasilla.
Gov. Palin clearly was the star of last week's Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami. In fact she turned this normally dull conclave into a major media event that rivaled the doings of President-elect Obama's transition team in Washington. And early this week the news media were reporting stories of a purported $11 million book deal for the Alaska governor.
The apparent reason for all this post-election attention to Gov. Palin was that the pre-election attacks on her never stopped. About a week before the election, one or more unidentified members of Sen. McCain's campaign staff reportedly leaked stories to the news media about divisions within the McCain campaign centering around the Alaska governor. The anonymous leaker or leakers described her as a "rogue", a "diva" and a "whack job".
After the election the attacks got uglier, with the anonymous leakers claiming that Palin did not know that Africa was a continent and not a country, that she could not name the three countries that were part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, that she once greeted two top McCain aides wrapped in nothing but a towel, and that she and her family spent far more than the $150,000 originally reported on clothing, behaving like "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast".
While some members of the mainstream media acknowledged the underhandedness of these preposterous allegations — they seemed to be part of an attempt by some McCain staffers to deflect blame for the failed campaign they had just managed — they nevertheless took them seriously because they fit the caricature of the Alaska governor the media had constructed during the campaign. Having convinced themselves, and much of the public, that Gov. Palin was just a dumb former beauty queen, they had no trouble believing the stories.
Refuting this nonsense — does anyone seriously believe she didn't know Africa was a continent? — was at least part of Gov. Palin's motivation for agreeing to last week's lengthy interviews with van Susteren, Lauer and King. And, freed from her campaign handlers, she — at least in my opinion — acquitted herself well. However, that opinion isn't shared by everyone.
Dick Cavett, that annoying television host from the '60s who just won't go away — he just keeps showing up on networks with smaller and smaller audiences — weighed in last Friday with a New York Times opinion piece in which he took Gov. Palin to task for answering an interview question with a run-on sentence.
But Cavett's attack was a mere spitball compared to Kathleen Parker's hit piece in Wednesday's Washington Post. Parker, a putative conservative columnist who's dislike of Palin has become something of an obsession, faulted the Alaska governor for talking about her faith in public. Parker not only thinks this is bad, she thinks it is going to relegate the Republican Party to permanent minority status.
So, why does Sarah Palin get all this attention? Why do the elites abandon all pretense at rational thought when the subject of Palin comes up?
There can be only one reason: Sarah Palin has become the flash point of the culture wars. A pro-life evangelical Christian, Palin has managed to be successful in a man's world without in any way sacrificing her femininity or her role as a wife and mother. Furthermore, she actually lives her pro-life views, choosing to carry a Down syndrome baby to term and encouraging her unmarried teenage daughter to continue her own pregnancy. In the eyes of the elites, this is heresy. The modern, liberated woman of the elites' stereotype would have chosen abortion in both cases.
Over at salon.com, Camille Paglia, a pro-choice feminist (and Obama supporter) has written about the "atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation" directed at Palin "merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views". Says Paglia:
How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.
Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.
I have written elsewhere on this site about the irrationality of "conservative" elitists' disdain for Sarah Palin. I also expressed the view that this disdain springs from the elitists' insufferable snobbery. Palin's crime is that she is not one of them. She doesn't think like them, she doesn't talk like them, she doesn't act like them. She is a gun owner who likes to hunt, a homemaker who can make a meal of the game she kills, a mother who can raise five children, a wife whose husband works on an oil rig.
But, most importantly, Sarah Palin is a religious person who is not afraid to live her faith or talk about it in public. And when she does, it's not in the manner of someone pandering to a religious audience. She really means it.
And that's why they're afraid of her.
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The views expressed in this
article are those of Phil Manger only and do not represent
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What a SOB story! Sarah Palin tried to jump in the limelight without any talent and found that there was lots of APPLAUSE but she just couldn't SING!
Yes, I believe she REALLY didn't know Africa was a continent, and I believe she couldn't name 10 world leaders if her life depended on it. Your defense of her deep religious views only seems to show how INSISTENT she is that HER views prevail over those of the rest of us who may not believe as she does. Is this just the RELIGIOUS RIGHT stomping into the forefront again to impose their harsh and uncompromising views on stem cell research, abortion, gay marriage, birth control, and parental notification? And, I DID hear her imply that our (so-called) war in Iraq was something that God wanted us to do.
Her meager political career with no prior national exposure was an INSULT to the American people who were asked to accept her as someone capable of being PRESIDENT. She's much more a cheerleader than a coach, she's much more a mud-slinger than a problem-solver, and she's much more a RANCH HAND than she ever was a MAVERICK.
People don't pick on her because of who she is, they pick on her because she isn't all she's made out to be. Anyone who thinks she can beat Guiliani, Hucklebee, Mitt Romney ~ or even RON PAUL ~ in an election ought to take that BRIDGE TO NOWHERE that she bragged about discontinuing, because that's where you're going to end up.
I like Camille Paglia, but I sure don't know what she's talking about. Palin was beaten up and criticized more by REPUBLICANS than she ever was by DEMOCRATS, and it certainly wasn't because of her views on abortion.
She's just a LIGHTWEIGHT whom some are trying to say is not. But, if you ask me, she's so full of HELIUM she'll float away before we ever hear about her doing anything important here, on Earth.
You call her "a gun owner who likes to hunt, a homemaker who can make a meal of the game she kills..." What a kool-aid drinker! They claim she shot (at) a moose when she was a young girl out with her dad. That doesn't make her a hunter. And, I sure don't believe she could dress a moose ~ or even a rabbit! Anyone for DINTY MOORE?
I'll bet Alaska politics will gobble her up like a turkey on Thanksgiving with the calamity they face with falling oil prices. She isn't bi-partisan, she isn't a thinker, and she sure isn't fit for national office. Her husband was a SECESSIONIST and you applaud him for being an oil man!
The next thing we'll hear is that you think that SNOWMOBILE he/she drives is GOOD for the environment!
More criticism of Palin was on the experience rather than the Pro-Life thing. Romney and Huckabee had very strong religious views as well. The difference is that they were tested in the primaries; we got to know them. No one knew her name until half way through the convention. Palin in 2012? I don't think so. I don't want "Mavericky." I want a plan and a clear vision of the future.
The VP is supposed to assume the duties of the presidency if necessary. Palin as president? Very scary. But most of the time, the VP is seen, and not heard, like Dan Quayle on a good day. She thought she was going to run the Senate. At least Joe Biden knows where the Senate is.
Oh, wait. It's all about jobs! /* twilight zone music here*/
Posted By: William Shipley
Date: 2008-11-21 22:53:23
One of the things that people who haven't looked at her record miss is that while she is personally a conservative, she governs from a more libertarian posture. This is probably due to the independent, self-reliant, aspect in the Alaskan culture.
Posted By: Independent from Massachusetts
Date: 2008-11-22 21:39:45
The latest attack on Palin was the "turkey set-up", where the so-called professional, impartial, objective media were focusing more on Palin's backstage than on herself. One reporter in Massachusetts said that even he could run in 2012 if her publicity stays so negative...
Welcome to vegetarian Thanksgiving Dinner.
The ultimate target of a deeply misogynistic press, Sarah Palin will remain a powerful force in the US politics, representing millions of hard working Americans that do not take things for granted.
She may have views that many do not share, but she is not forcing anyone to change his/her and in a free country she is welcome to keep her views, fight for them and attempt to shatter the highest glass ceiling.
I find it helpful to know to know the makeup of people running for public office, so understanding the sort of things that motivate and them and having them disclose who they are is a desirable trait at least to me. Never in any of her interviews our statements did I hear anything that fit the bill "INSISTENT she is that HER views prevail over those of the rest of us who may not believe as she does"
I think many people when they hear how important another person's faith is, immediately feel threatened and suspect some one is going to attempt to change them. I never felt Palin was motivated to force others to accept her beliefs but rather felt others should understand just who she was.
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