I told myself I would resist the urge to write about not-governor Sarah Palin this week, I really did. Even though she keeps “rearing her head” in the news cycle, to me she still feels like yesterday’s funny papers. But in the wake of the big week she had, I’m going to make an exception and kick a dead horse around a bit here.
First, let’s address Tard-Gate: after Rahm Emanuel used the phrase “fucking retards” to describe some fellow Democrats he saw as uncooperative, Palin called for his resignation. Okay — she has a special needs child; I can see how that would be an issue close to her heart. Maybe for once she isn’t just engaging in political posturing, I told myself; maybe he truly offended her (to his credit, Rahm did apologize in video format).
But then she bends over backwards to defend Rush Limbaugh using the exact same insult, minus the “fucking.” It seems that was acceptable — “I agree with him,” she noted, because “those people are kooks.” She may also have left it alone, because as Mike Steele knows: if you go against the leader of the G.O.P. he’ll feed you to his audience of demented neo-con zombies like so much bloody entrails. And Republicans fear losing that voter bloc the way they fear Americans receiving affordable health care.
Even Megan McCain dubbed Palin’s hypocrisy on Tard-Gate “exactly what’s wrong with politics today” before going on to claim that Palin “will continue to turn off young voters, and anybody who says different is smoking something." That girl is rapidly becoming my favorite Republican (and not just because she’s a stone-cold fox).
Next up is Sarah Palin’s keynote speech at the Tea Party convention. Never mind all of the logical problems with that. Never mind that most tea party-goers don’t seem too happy with Democrats OR Republicans, and YET their keynote speaker is last year’s G.O.P. VP candidate (I thought it was supposed to be a 3rd party?). Forget all about the fact that the whole movement is supposed to be about fiscal conservatism, and that was hardly mentioned by anybody. I heard a lot of Obama-bashing, evangelical-boosting, and anti-immigrant rhetoric that at one point seemed to call for a revival of Jim Crow laws, but I didn’t hear any ideas about to cut the deficit. This was the RNC Part Two: same talking points, same old broken-ass, retarded ideas. And forget that this “grassroots” movement of the common people was charging folks five-hundred-fifty-fucking dollars to attend their convention.
All of that horseshit is of secondary comedic value to me, because Palin actually wrote down some talking points on the palm of her hand, much like a fourteen year old cheating on a civics test. Because apparently, that’s much better than a teleprompter. The ink on her hand actually reminds her to "lift American spirits," which could either be a reminder to boost the nation's morale, or a reminder for her to drink only locally-distilled bourbon.
Though it’s long been clear to many observers that the Tea Party is an Astroturf organization funded by Dick Armey and other high level GOP operatives, that fact is actually becoming clear now to some of the Tea Partiers themselves, who are now actually protesting their own protest movement — which is itself only about a year old. It should be clear to all now that this has never been about cutting the deficit. If it had been, the Tea Party phenomenon would have cropped up when a (supposedly) evangelical Commander-in-Chief sent the deficit into the trillions with unconscionable spending on vast social engineering projects overseas.
The third and ballsiest bit of the half-governor’s amazing trifecta was her unambiguous admission on Faux News Sunday that she would consider a run for President in 2012. She even had the sack to equate her quitting as governor because the job got too hard as a “win.” Everyone was being a dick to her, so she quit — and that’s leadership. By that standard, Obama should just make some whiny noises about the opposition, step down next week, then claim “victory.”
I still kind of want the old girl to make a run for the White House — because I still have a measure of faith in the American people, and I feel that even they will see through the shit that Sarah is shoveling at them. But then again maybe they won't, because after all a lot of them are fucking retarded.
This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2010.