Whatever you may think of Sarah Palin, she's widely celebrated as a rare and perhaps raw political talent. She's gorgeous, charismatic, warm, and funny. She has a remarkable ability to connect with her listeners. But—with the exception of a well-scripted performance at the Republican National Convention—it's tough to find an extemporaneous Palin speech, statement, or tweet that contains a coherent message.Our emphases above. And we type "no" to all of them. Not-unattractive, in the broadest physical/appearance sense. But some distance from "gorgeous," for crissakes. The three other qualities? Huh? Charisma & warmth are not the first words that leap to mind. Charisma w/o intelligence or anything else backing it doesn't last much past that first starburst, when one is sitting up a bit straighter on the couch. And it's very hard to find any warmth in a perpetually whining victim. We'll grant "funny," but the laughs are at, not w/. (Really, what's she ever said that was amusing? Palin doesn't "get" jokes, & certainly can't take one. How can she be funny?)
Tough to find a coherent message? More like impossible. But at least someone has typed the truth about Alaska's best-known citizen.
Palin's act of explaining her resignation to us in a torrent of unconnected sentence fragments left everyone wondering, What was the point of Sarah Palin? If she cannot even communicate a simple idea ("I'm quitting because …"), why should we care that she's quitting?No shit. No. Fucking. Shit. Why?
That's why the strangest part of the Sarah Palin saga will always be her loathing of the media. She never failed to remind us that she didn't like being "filtered." She only wanted to talk directly to us, her listeners. Yet the reason Sarah Palin continues to have any kind of political force at all in this country is because of the media "filter." The media helped refine and define her Dada statements and arguments into something that briefly sounded like a coherent worldview. Yesterday morning, Gov. Palin excoriated Andrea Mitchell for "not listening to me" in an NBC interview. You have to go back and watch the clip before you can apprehend that Mitchell was indeed listening. It was Palin who was speaking in half-expressed thoughts and internal contradictions.
And Palin who was biting the hand that feeds her, which has become the totality of her act.
2 comments:
When she accepted the VP nomination, she knew she needed to bring her professional game up to another level, she never did. She knew that her family would get attacked as did Hilary and Chelsea before her (by even her twin maverick brother McCain in 1998), let face it she knew her family affairs would come out. But now she plays the victim card again, a card she played after those comical first extended interviews that we all enjoyed and SNL immortalized. But for the icing on the cake, she quits, because she does not want to be a lame duck governor, because the lawsuits keep coming, because it was the media’s fault, because seeing Russia from her house finally got to her, because its not fair that Alaskan’s paid her salary while she was running for the VP position, take your pick. So what does she tells us? Dear Mr. President, when things get tough, quit. Dear military men and women, if you are not having fun, quit. Dear son or daughter, if things are not going your way, quit. Sure, I agree when she first was introduced and gave a descent speech, sure the polls went up, but after the extended interviews, they went where they ended, down. She showed her true character, I really hope the book deal, Radio/ TV shows and the lecture circuits make up for what her party has lost by her actions. She may go down in history as the quitter that twittered.
She cost McCain the election, her folkyness, accent and winking do not ring true, her intellect is below par (our vivid memory of the last one who delegates and follows because of their lack of intellect), but lets face it with the right type of marketing (vote folky, vote god) it can be sold to US, history tends to repeat itself. God help us!
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