TALENT!! YOU ARE TALENTED AND GREAT

With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.

“But it’s also been tarnished by the elites themselves, in the way that the media and political establishments have treated her.

What I think of that is — Poppycock! Double Poppycock!!

Andrew Jackson suffered many, many more slings and arrows, literally and figuratively, from his political and social opponents, and from British troops, then anything Sarah Palin has ever actually even potentially withstood, from gnats like “the blogosphere” or David Letterman, or some east coast syndicated pundit.

Good God — if you want to look at some HORRENDOUS and all too real “politics of personal destruction” — read up on Jackson’s wife Rachel. In Jackson’s successful (1828?) campaign for the White House, his political opponents had a grand time during the campaign of accusing his wife of bigamy (which was true enough) — and in fact she ultimately simply collapsed and died between the time of his electoral victory and his inauguration; Jackson always blamed the stress the campaign inflicted on his wife for her untimely death.

And Harry Truman had a saying you might recall — something about what to do if the heat in the kitchen became too great?

I think placing Palin in the same class as tenacious achievers like Jackson and Truman is simply…thoughtless poppycock

“In a recent Pew poll, 44 percent of Americans regarded Palin unfavorably. But slightly more had a favorable impression of her. That number included 46 percent of independents, and 48 percent of Americans without a college education.

“That last statistic is a crucial one. Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

“This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It’s been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.

“But it’s also been tarnished by the elites themselves, in the way that the media and political establishments have treated her.

“Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

“Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You’ll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You’ll endure gibes about your “slutty” looks and your “white trash concupiscence,” while a prominent female academic declares that your “greatest hypocrisy” is the “pretense” that you’re a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

“All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin’s gender and her social class.

“Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.

“But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don’t even think about it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/opinion/06ross.html

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/07/malia-obama-budding-fashionista.html

The Obamas, unlike Sarah Palin, have never used their children as political props. It’s summer, for god’s sake, I’d take them on a trip with me too. But that does not make their wardrobe newsworthy. If they stole the money from the DNC to outfit themselves, then yes. But not now.

I’m no Sarah Palin fan Bassett, but she does it for me. (I’m reminded of the art patron in a Seinfeld episode who described the portait of Kramer thusly, “I find it hideous … and yet … I cannot avert my gaze.”)

JTTMO, I think you give too much credit to the rationality of potential terrorists. I doubt that acts of terror are directed at “testing” a given politician. Terrorists would wreak havoc no matter who governed. I’m reminded of arguments for increasing prison sentences to deter crime. I think it misapprehends the true boneheadedness of someone who’d want to rob a gas station in the first place.

I don’t mind that she skipped from college to college or job to job. I don’t mind that she’s looking out for herself.

But I do mind that she’s intellectually sloppy and lazy and, in her own way, in-your-face arrogant.

Sadly, she has lots of company in the political arena.