CWOJackson
10-07-2008, 04:50 PM
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
By Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Those of us with vivid memories of middle school have seen Gov. Sarah Palin's type before. She was the girl who was always the first to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and the last to stop instigating fights in the cafeteria.
She was the girl who always had just enough self-awareness to know when the boys were paying more attention to her than to other girls. Her specialty was flattering the alpha boys around her. Terrified of losing her exalted place, she quickly perfected the art of saying nothing of consequence. She rambled because the boys thought it was cute. If she ever had an original thought in her head, she was discreet enough to keep it to herself. She was the conformist who fancied herself a leader.
From an early age, she knew the power of a strategically placed hand on the bicep of some jock. Girls like Sarah Palin knew how to secure a place with the "in crowd." After all, she was the girl with the iridescent smile who provided the laugh track for the meatheads roaming the halls pulling wedgies on those who would never qualify as "their kind of people."
Like a lot of bullies, Sarah Palin talks tough when she's surrounded by people of like mind and even less imagination; the more gullible the mob of admirers, the better. That has always been the case with demagogues. Sarah Palin subscribes to the same strain of American anti-intellectualism and fake populism as Huey Long, Spiro Agnew and other media-savvy scoundrels from the last century.
The best that could be said for her is that she is made out of a lot more corn, chutzpah and plastic than earlier models -- she's Demagogue 2.0 for a new century.
In a much ridiculed post on its Web site last week, National Review editor Rich Lowry described Ms. Palin's performance against Joe Biden in terms best reserved for risque infomercials hawking male enhancement pills:
"Palin ... projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, 'Hey, I think she just winked at me.' And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it."
For some conservatives, the Sarah Palin effect lasts longer than the four hours the doctors warned them about. While many Americans cringe in embarrassment at her coquettishness wrapped in a gauze of hubris and religious sanctimony, Ms. Palin's admirers insist she's the most exciting political aphrodisiac since Reagan.
Because she didn't vomit, faint or run off the stage crying, to paraphrase Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifill on "Saturday Night Live," Sarah Palin was once again declared a viable No. 2 to the oldest Republican presidential candidate in American history. With the Biden debate behind her, she flexed her political muscle over the weekend. In cadences that wouldn't have been out of place on "The Little Rascals," she repeated her claim that Barack Obama started his political career in a terrorist's living room.
And wasn't she adorable as she damned the Democratic presidential nominee for being an unindicted co-conspirator of William Ayers' Weather Underground? Never mind that he was a child when Ayers and his fellow Weathermen were at work.
"And I am so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," Sarah Palin said whipping up a crowd in Florida yesterday the way bullies did in high school. "[We] see America as the greatest source for good in the world. I'm afraid [Obama] is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country."
It was the kind of sleazy, reprehensible charge that only a desperate candidate would stoop to a month before Election Day. Still, Sarah Palin relished the theatricality of the moment. She made the charge several times over the weekend, too.
While the financial system as they knew it was falling down around their ears, Sarah Palin insisted that a nonexistent relationship between her opponent and an aging '60s radical was the biggest problem facing the Republic. That didn't matter to her. She was the biggest demagogue in America, for all the good it did her sputtering, drifting campaign.
It's times like these when I get nostalgic for old coots like Spiro Agnew, a raging ideologue who had the sense to know when he was lying to the American people. He would have been charmed, but horrified by Sarah Palin. He would have dubbed her the Paleolithic Princess of Parsimonious Patriotism. And it would have stuck, too.
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Sounds like Tony Norman was/is a mommies boy who got beat up regularly on the playground...by a girl.
By Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Those of us with vivid memories of middle school have seen Gov. Sarah Palin's type before. She was the girl who was always the first to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and the last to stop instigating fights in the cafeteria.
She was the girl who always had just enough self-awareness to know when the boys were paying more attention to her than to other girls. Her specialty was flattering the alpha boys around her. Terrified of losing her exalted place, she quickly perfected the art of saying nothing of consequence. She rambled because the boys thought it was cute. If she ever had an original thought in her head, she was discreet enough to keep it to herself. She was the conformist who fancied herself a leader.
From an early age, she knew the power of a strategically placed hand on the bicep of some jock. Girls like Sarah Palin knew how to secure a place with the "in crowd." After all, she was the girl with the iridescent smile who provided the laugh track for the meatheads roaming the halls pulling wedgies on those who would never qualify as "their kind of people."
Like a lot of bullies, Sarah Palin talks tough when she's surrounded by people of like mind and even less imagination; the more gullible the mob of admirers, the better. That has always been the case with demagogues. Sarah Palin subscribes to the same strain of American anti-intellectualism and fake populism as Huey Long, Spiro Agnew and other media-savvy scoundrels from the last century.
The best that could be said for her is that she is made out of a lot more corn, chutzpah and plastic than earlier models -- she's Demagogue 2.0 for a new century.
In a much ridiculed post on its Web site last week, National Review editor Rich Lowry described Ms. Palin's performance against Joe Biden in terms best reserved for risque infomercials hawking male enhancement pills:
"Palin ... projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, 'Hey, I think she just winked at me.' And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it."
For some conservatives, the Sarah Palin effect lasts longer than the four hours the doctors warned them about. While many Americans cringe in embarrassment at her coquettishness wrapped in a gauze of hubris and religious sanctimony, Ms. Palin's admirers insist she's the most exciting political aphrodisiac since Reagan.
Because she didn't vomit, faint or run off the stage crying, to paraphrase Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifill on "Saturday Night Live," Sarah Palin was once again declared a viable No. 2 to the oldest Republican presidential candidate in American history. With the Biden debate behind her, she flexed her political muscle over the weekend. In cadences that wouldn't have been out of place on "The Little Rascals," she repeated her claim that Barack Obama started his political career in a terrorist's living room.
And wasn't she adorable as she damned the Democratic presidential nominee for being an unindicted co-conspirator of William Ayers' Weather Underground? Never mind that he was a child when Ayers and his fellow Weathermen were at work.
"And I am so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," Sarah Palin said whipping up a crowd in Florida yesterday the way bullies did in high school. "[We] see America as the greatest source for good in the world. I'm afraid [Obama] is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country."
It was the kind of sleazy, reprehensible charge that only a desperate candidate would stoop to a month before Election Day. Still, Sarah Palin relished the theatricality of the moment. She made the charge several times over the weekend, too.
While the financial system as they knew it was falling down around their ears, Sarah Palin insisted that a nonexistent relationship between her opponent and an aging '60s radical was the biggest problem facing the Republic. That didn't matter to her. She was the biggest demagogue in America, for all the good it did her sputtering, drifting campaign.
It's times like these when I get nostalgic for old coots like Spiro Agnew, a raging ideologue who had the sense to know when he was lying to the American people. He would have been charmed, but horrified by Sarah Palin. He would have dubbed her the Paleolithic Princess of Parsimonious Patriotism. And it would have stuck, too.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sounds like Tony Norman was/is a mommies boy who got beat up regularly on the playground...by a girl.