We already talked about Bill Maher’s lame attempt at humor here. A short transcript of the offensive part follows:

“Did you hear this – Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb tw**s, did you…”

And then things got embarrassing for the conspicuously silent National Organization of Women.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) refused to comment on Maher’s use of the derogatory term. A rep told FOXNews.com it is a “known fact” that NOW does not correspond with FOX News.
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Matthew Vadum, Senior Editor at the Capital Research Center in Washington DC, said Maher’s insults spotlight hypocrisy in the media.

“Bill Maher feels he can get away with such jaw-droppingly offensive verbal attacks on Sarah Palin because virtually the entire media-academia-entertainment complex agrees with him,” Vadum said. “Clinging to their political correctness and disdain for her quintessentially American values, the left-wing cocktail circuit regards Palin as a punch line.”

So if a prominent media figure had made such a disparaging remark towards a leading female Democrat, like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would the mainstream media have reacted with outrage?

“If a conservative used that language to describe Hillary Clinton, we wouldn’t be hearing very much about Japan or Libya,” said John Ziegler, creator the documentary “Media Malpractice.” “If they said it about Michelle Obama, the media would be going 24/7 with the story.”

“I suspect NOW hasn’t come to Palin’s defense because the group agrees with Maher,” added Vadum. “After all, NOW didn’t have a problem with someone on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s campaign staff calling his Republican opponent Meg Whitman a ‘whore.’ NOW really ought to change its name to National Organization for Liberal Women because as far as it’s concerned conservative women aren’t real women at all.”

Yesterday the heat got to be a little bit too much, and after NOW heard about this from someone other than Fox News, they lowered the thunder down upon the pitiful head of Bill Maher. Sort of.

“Listen, supposedly progressive men (ok, and women, too): Cut the crap! Stop degrading women with whom you disagree and/or don’t like by using female body terms or other gender-associated slurs,” Lisa Bennett, NOW communications director wrote in a statement.

In addition to chastising men (and women) like Maher who use their position as progressives as a shield against charges of sexism, NOW made it clear that their denouncement of Maher’s sexist remark toward Palin is in no way an endorsement of her or conservative policies.

“You’re trying to take up our time getting us to defend your friend Sarah Palin. If you keep us busy defending her, we have less time to defend women’s bodies from the onslaught of reproductive rights attacks and other threats to our freedom, safety, livelihood, etc,” wrote Bennett. “Sorry, but we can’t defend Palin or even Hillary Clinton from every sexist insult hurled at them in the media. That task would be impossible, and it would consume us. You know this would not be a productive way to fight for women’s equal rights, which is why you want us stuck in this morass.”
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“It would be nice to think that you’ve suddenly discovered sexism and are interested in joining us in the struggle for full equality. But this really smacks of the worst kind of hypocrisy: Folks with no history of working on an issue trying to discredit those who have been working for decades on the issue. Ridiculous.”

I’m taking these comments from NOW with a medium-large grain of salt. Lisa Bennett is a real person, but I can’t find any linkage between these quotes and any resource I know to be connected with NOW. So far as I know, Daily Caller is not a satire site. But this reads like satire.

Okay let’s pencil this last part in. Look what you’ve got going on here. A famous liberal “comedian” engages in some “humor” about a high-profile conservative figurehead who is holding no office and seeking no office. Then he calls her a twat. NOW, depending on what you want to believe, is either entirely silent or speaking out only under protest.

If you think they said what was linked above, then I submit Swen is in the running for having delivered the best summation (10:00 PM 3/22/2011):

“NOW further wants to make it clear that it is duplicitous for the right to now be interested in sexism after, what they say, has been years of absenteeism on the matter.”

It seems even more duplicitous for NOW to now be interested in sexism directed against Sarah Palin after 2-1/2 years of absenteeism on the matter. After all, combatting sexism isn’t the raison d’etre for conservatives, but it is for NOW, so they’ve got some cheek accusing the right of absenteeism on the issue.

The Left likes to call itself the “Reality Based Community.”

Nobody who’s been following this should be the least little bit in the dark about how Maher’s brand of “humor” works here…although it’s understandable that the “twat” word made his punchline immediately forgettable. So far as anyone can tell, Sarah Palin has made no such comment about invading Tsunamia or sticking it to those Tsunamis so they stop pushing us around. Just like she never claimed to have seen Russia from her house.

But, altogether now…quit taking it so seriously, it’s just a joke. Yeah right. For daring to notice it or remember it, I’m the problem. Again.

And it’s a joke, why. It’s funny, why. Because although Palin didn’t say it, you can certainly imagine her saying it, it’s perfectly in keeping with this reputation she’s earned. The joke that isn’t a joke, that you aren’t supposed to consciously notice, that was immediately wallpapered over by a vulgar slang term for a woman’s vagina, to guarantee that by the next day everyone would be talking about something else, still manages to make a point. After all, that dumb twat Sarah Palin must have earned this reputation she has, that makes the Tsunami crack believable, right?

So the joke makes a point. And she had it coming anyway. The dumb twat.

Ah, well there’s the rub. The “Reality Based Community” places this level of importance upon things they consciously know to be untrue. And these little anecdotes about the dumb twat Palin that are known to be untrue, figure in large part into her supposed “reputation”; this is by design. Nobody needs to apologize for it. It’s a glorious fight. Reproductive freedom or something.

Here, I’ll go ahead and put the remaining pieces together. If the joke is funny because Sarah Palin didn’t say it but you can certainly imagine Sarah Palin saying it because it would be entirely consistent with her reputation, and her so-called “reputation,” such as it is, relies so very heavily on made-up untrue things just like this spun up by dumb prick comedians like Bill Maher…what do we really know about Sarah Palin? It ends up being a classic case of circular reasoning. The punchline proves the reputation and the reputation prove the punchline.

One other question: Assuming Sarah Palin wanted to do something to make these dumb prick comedians and establishment feminists stop being mad at her — just go with that one, alright? — how would she go about doing this? She isn’t running for anything. Have our leftists, once again, put so much thought and energy into sustaining a satisfying tsunami of hatred that they’ve forgotten what they’re trying to bully people into doing? What’s the payoff? What is Palin’s offense? What’s the complaint?

How dare that dumb twat continue to exist as 2012 gets closer? Something like that?

If Sarah Palin doesn’t have any opportunity to mollify the anger thrown in her direction, what chance do any of the rest of us have? Our “reality based community” that doesn’t really live in anything close to reality, is supposed to be busily constructing a wonderful utopian society in which everybody has a place; everyone is entitled not only to the staples of life, but to some of the luxuries as well, plus guaranteed respect and dignity…as some busybody anonymous bureaucrat defines it, anyway. But when we observe their actions it seems that isn’t entirely true. It’s looking like, once you go on the record disagreeing with them as Sarah Palin has done, the dignity part of it is something you don’t need anymore. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a candidate for elective office, or not. Since she isn’t.

So the rest of us aren’t entitled to dignity unless we agree with the leftist establishment. All right. What else can we not have then? We can’t expect some miracle worker leftist busybody to come out of the woodwork and start organizing our communities, I take it? I’ve been told if I like my health plan and my doctor I can keep those…was that, also, conditional on me agreeing with leftist dogma? Is that off the table too? What about, if I make less than a quarter mil a year, my taxes “won’t go up by one dime”?

Life? Liberty? Pursuit of happiness? Oxygen to breathe? Is there anything out of the entire cornucopia of needs and wants that our frenzied leftists consider to be “rights”…to which, as a matter of fact, none of us are actually entitled unless we agree with those leftists on all the important issues, and work on their behalf? To what extent has the reality-based community been lying to us about the everyone-is-entitled-to thing? What exactly are the conditions? What exactly are we to lose, out of this seemingly endless banquet of promises, for not cooperating? All of it, maybe?

Whether Palin is in it or not, the 2012 campaign ought to be about that. Call her whatever you want to, but a candidate Palin would see to it. I wonder if anyone else has the balls.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

There’s a fair-minded liberal out there who has taken the time to research this quote from Sarah Palin about “I can see Russia from my back porch” (actually, “house”)…and, of course, has found out the line was actually delivered by somebody else. To his credit, and contrary to the dictates of the left-wing playbook, he isn’t being quiet about it.

I found him through notorious factoid-cherry-picker Ed Darrell, who could learn a lesson from him about the proper treatment of inconvenient truths.

Be that as it may: This is the exception, NOT the rule. The effort to slander the intellect and character of Alaska’s former governor, lest there be any doubt, has been an overwhelming success. If we were getting people hired, as quickly as we were getting them convinced Palin was a book-burner, we’d have nothing to worry about with our economy.

And yet her candidates keep winning and winning.

The most devastating point to be made in favor of Palin’s influence, arrives with the admission that her personality has been successfully slimed. At this point, it becomes undeniable that the electorate is working hard to communicate a thought, and she has been carrying the banner on this thought since before it was cool.

Of course, I’ve been bullish on her since before it was cool, so I’m biased in saying this. But it can’t be denied: She is owed her due. Her idea is the logical one to try next, whether she is elected to something or not.

The guy who’s in charge now, is supposed to be repairing the damage done by His predecessor…and yet we can’t criticize what He’s doing, because His predecessor was doing the same thing. That’s supposed to solidify the charges of racism, since He has black skin and His predecessor had white skin, so He gets a pass since He’s just continuing the policies of the guy before. You know, the one whose messes He’s cleaning up.

That makes no sense at all.

Palin’s out there saying, Just stop it already! Stop living life as an American apologetically, stop it with the drilling moratoriums and the disaster of ObamaCare. Make it easier to run a business — easy=profitable, that’s what makes an economy stronger. Stop it with the screeds against “rich people.” Stop treating people who contribute to the economy, as if they’re the enemy. They’re not.

This, contrasted with what came earlier, makes perfect sense.

And if America isn’t ready for it, how come her candidates are consistently winning? The propaganda has been put out there that she’s a religious-zealot dimbulb…more people are buying into it, than not. Even Republicans are believing it…all of it…even the nonsense about “Quitter Palin.” But then they nominate her candidates. And, when these candidates are polled against their opposition, they do alright.

The effort to slime Sarah Palin has been an unqualified success.

But the effort behind the effort, is to make her ineffective.

This has become an irreversible failure. It may be the most failing-est failure in living memory, which says a lot. It has become embarrassing, by proxy, watching the latest “paramedic” try to jump start this cadaver, which is stinking up the joint as the defibrillator is applied yet another time.

Looks like they just got snookered.

On this one, I’m taking a leftist point of view. The lefty said aloud exactly what I was thinking: Palin was confronted by a hater and handled the whole situation extremely well? That’s a scandal? Could the bar possibly be pushed down any lower?

Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin received a whole lot of criticism this week for the terrible crime she committed of being-spied-on.

My d’jever-notice-moment comes from reading the late, but now lengthy, history of Palin criticism. Ever notice that with ninety-nine percent of it, if you take out all the occurrences of “Sarah Palin” and replace them with “Barack Obama,” it makes more sense after you do that than before?

Obviously the paranoid stuff about water breaking and labor pains doesn’t fall into that. I said “ninety-nine percent.”

I’m talking about the lack of experience, the questions that “come up” every time she does something, the press not doing their jobs, you aren’t allowed to criticize her (!), the silly fantasies about dirt that has yet to come out, we-don’t-know-who-she-really-is, et cetera, et cetera.

She wrote a book, and the publisher went and printed it! For money! ZOMGWTF!!

Yeah you’re right Andrew, we really haven’t done any homework about her. It’s almost like Barack Obama, with just a few exceptions.

1) She’s a private citizen and nothing more than that, which means she’s an idea and nothing more than that. When her face comes on the teevee while it’s on mute, you have the luxury of saying “Oh jeez not her again!” As opposed to “Oh, what the fuck did he do this time?” This is why a lot of sane people are questioning and criticizing our President — it used to be the very definition of “patriotism,” remember those old days? — and when you express the same frustrations that this private citizen hasn’t been similarly “vetted,” you just look deranged and silly.

2) We don’t really have any indicators to clue us in that she’s fond of socialism, or has communist-oriented colleagues or mentors in her past;

3) If & when you do delve into that past, when you talk to people who went where she went and who ought to be able to remember her, they can.

Other than those, the situation is exactly…er…hey, wait. I lost track of whether that makes the Palin situation better than the Obama situation, or worse.

Keep digging, Andrew. Maybe you’ll eventually find out Trig is someone else’s baby, and as a bonus, she spent twenty years going to a church that installed a bigoted anti-American Marxist asshole as its pastor. That would really make your day wouldn’t it.

One other Palin gem came out this week. Blogger pal Gerard Van der Leun liked and linked our take-down of Peggy Noonan, for whom we still hold some measure of respect and admiration, although nowadays it is a vestigial moon-shadow of what it used to be. And so we were kinder than this older fusillade with which he paired us…kinder and less delicious.

As an aside, the analogy that connects a vote for Barack Obama, to bringing a baby bear cub home, was something that just popped into my head when I was grasping for a way to illustrate something. Before I even knew it had been excerpted, I was mulling it over in my head throughout the day, thinking a bit more about all the ways that it worked. It does work. It works well. People go ’round living their lives, 24/7/365, making life-changing decisions based on whether this-thing-or-that-thing is cute. Within the city limits, you generally don’t get in too much trouble doing that.

What’s the appeal of camping out in the woods? You are forced to make wise decisions. Where do we build the fire. Where do we pitch the tent. Can we drink the water. It’s an environment still considerably more sanitized than what was endured by a ’49er stumbling on a fresh patch of turf to prospect, but it’s an environment in which every li’l thing out there isn’t necessarily there to entertain, thrill, palliate, or spoil you. For some of us, that feels good.

Bringing a baby bear to the car to take it home, would be something done by someone who just missed the point entirely. It would probably be whoever wanted to stow the iPod with the water softener tablets. The city folk who are accustomed to everything in sight being built & done for their benefit, and with no other purpose to it at all. Everything’s all about them. And with that mindset at work, some of the decisions they make are poorly-thought-out and quite wretched.

That’s a bunny trail within a bunny trail. It also says just a little, in a great many words.

Must mark off this link to something that says much in just a few words:

You’re Peggy Noonan and you’re jealous. You started a new venture, “The Women on the Web” website, a very conservative, free-enterprise thing to do and still you are not appreciated. They talk about the Palin family fishing business — big deal. Anyone can get a couple of fish — just call Leonards’ on Third Avenue and they will deliver. [emphasis mine]

When I find a way to chisel this down into a one-line item, I should add it to my list of things I notice about the Palin-bashers:

They seldom-to-never state it outright, but they speak of Palin falling short of what is required for the presidency as if she is part of some larger continuum of persons, some odious sub-strata of humanity, similarly unqualified. It isn’t just her.

Up top, I compared the criticism of Palin to the criticism of Obama. Funny how we’re told by the loud people, those ever-present yelling people who must always have the last word, who may be many and may be few, that criticism of Obama is actually bigotry in disguise. Meanwhile, Obama Himself is actually on record as having been associated with a real racist. But when you take the time to talk to an Obama critic, you find out it’s really just about Obama and His inner circle. And it’s informed. They have paid attention to the decisions He has made, and how He’s made them, and applied logic to this to figure out what kinds of decisions He is likely to make that He hasn’t made yet.

Criticism of Palin is a mirror-reverse of this. It is supposed to be only about Palin, but when you take the time to talk to a Palin critic you find out their criticism is for an entire way of life. That, and they really don’t know what they’re talking about. These are the people who think bringing in a couple of fish is no big deal, just call Leonard’s and have it delivered. These are people who’ve never watched Dirty Jobs, and if they ever did, they’d sneer at the people being interviewed and change the channel in a great big hurry. Probably to The Joy Behar show. But their hatred of Palin is just a reflection of their hatred for this entire way of life. They want entire classes of people to be disqualified, permanently, from ever making any decisions about anything. It is things about Palin that they don’t like, not the outcome anticipated should she ever be put in charge of deciding something. The state in which she resides, the schools to which she went, the things she has done for a living, the kids she has had and how she has chosen to raise them.

Whether they realize it or not, they’re setting aside big chunks of humanity, millions of souls strong, as they so breezily pronounce these personality attributes and personal histories as disqualifications for higher office.

I linked a few days or weeks ago to Volokh who was bitching that everyone making any decisions right now graduated either from Harvard or Yale. It isn’t a picture of America, and it’s a problem. When these people bitch about Palin, with their vague and useless descriptions of what’s wrong with her and why she isn’t suitable, they reveal themselves to be that problem.

Goodness, gracious me. I had no idea when I jotted down yesterday’s comments about the “McGinniss siege” yesterday morning that this was going to be the main story of the blogosphere. We got a “Memeorandum-launch” out of it again, from linking to Dave Weigel’s confession that he is an insane person.

The background is that a certain private citizen who lives in Alaska, who holds no elected or appointed office whatsoever but once was that state’s governor and whose name was on a major party ticket for the Presidency, is being stalked by an unscrupulous biographer. The writer has rented the house next door to hers, and his new front porch comes within fifteen feet or so of hers. So she snapped a photo of it and uploaded it to her Facebook page with some pithy comments. Yep…altogether now…she can see his house from her house.

None of this was sufficiently remarkable, to me, to merit a post. What really tipped the scale was that Weigel — are you sitting down? — sees Sarah Palin as the perpetrator and McGinnis as the victim. She invaded his privacy with that Facebook entry.

Palin informs her readers that McGinniss is “overlooking my children’s play area” and “overlooking Piper’s bedroom.” Alternately sounding angry and mocking, she refers to “the family’s swimming hole,” which at first reference sounds like she’s accusing McGinniss of checking out the Palins in their bathing suits, until you realize the family’s “swimming hole” is Lake Lucille. And she posts a photo of the space McGinniss is renting, captioning it, “Can I call you Joe?” Can somebody explain to me how this isn’t a despicable thing for Palin to do?

Heheh. Yeah Dave, I could, but why should I have to? Have you read many of the typical Facebook entries? “Feelin’ blue, listening to a Whiter Shade of Pale on my old turntable.” “Walked out to my car in the rain, didn’t know I had a hole in my shoe, my sock got wet.” Some creep is renting the house next door so he can spend half a year spying on you, that’s some delicious red meat right there. Facebook should pay her an advance.

Blogsister Daphne is on Weigel’s side on this thing. She thinks Palin’s whining about the natural consequences of being in the public eye, or something.

This is one of those rare happenstances in which my reasonable and well-thought-out opinion happens to be in line with that of the majority. Although I have to admit, it wasn’t the undeniable logic of my defense that swayed the majority; this is The Blog That Nobody Reads, of course. The viewpoint that seems to surface over and over again is that people took the time to read Palin’s Facebok entry (linked above), and to listen to her interview on Glenn Beck about this matter, and when they kept an ear our for some whining they just didn’t find it. From that, I think they figured out they were being directed to despise somebody just for her noticing something.

That’s a relic from the 1970’s; Archie Bunker probably started it. We can figure out you’re a baaaaad person, by noticing you noticing things. It seems kinda like noticing some guy’s skin is black, get it? So when you notice things, like some asshole reporter is going Peeping Tom all over you for an entire summer, we can notice you noticing things and that makes you bad. Well — that nonsense has been going on for forty years now, it’s aged badly and that dog won’t hunt. Palin got a new neighbor, she noticed it, uploaded an entry on Facebook, and all-in-all that strikes most clear-thinking people as pretty reasonable. Actually, it’s a much cooler reaction than they or I would have.

Dave Weigel is feeling defensive about this. He wrote a follow-up piece about his “Palin mailbag”; he was as surprised as I was that this thing would catch fire. He then treated his critics the way most newspaper employees, I’ve noticed, treat their critics. He pulled out four or five samples that would most effectively buttress his intended theme, which is one of “I’m a fair guy and trying to give these Palin defenders a shot at saying what’s on their minds, but gosh, these people are just whacked.”

This has always concerned me somewhat, and over the years I must confess it’s caused me to delay buying newspapers, and more recently, to skip the ritual altogether. It’s just lazy thinking. If one Palin defender fails to catch on to a joke, and another Palin defender uses potty-mouth language in a letter, that doesn’t mean they all do. And even if they all do, what of it? Ask an idiot whether it’s raining or not and the idiot says yes it’s raining, does that mean it isn’t raining? No, it doesn’t. Like I said: Lazy thinking. And I’m more inclined to believe idiots than lazy thinkers, because if you’re a lazy thinker you can be a freakin’ genius and you’re still going to be opining on pure nonsense, or stuff that is only correct now & then by random chance. Whereas the idiot might at least try to get it right.

Erick Erickson sees things my way with regard to the Weigel problem. He just can’t take the man seriously anymore, although his reasoning is slightly different.

A reporter moves in next door to Sarah Palin — a reporter with a negative history reporting on Palin — and Palin takes to Facebook to complain about the rather stalkerish vibe of this reporter taking up residence right next door to snoop on the family. This is the same reporter who once tried to get into a charity contest where he bid $60,000 to have dinner with Palin. Imagine if you had someone like that move in next door to your family and say they were going to write a book about being your neighbor. We all know that’s exactly what this guy is going to do.

But Weigel, along with a host of other reporters in DC, is going after Palin for being upset about it.

Politicians don’t have veto power over who gets to write about them, or how they research their stories, as long as they’re within the bounds of the law. It’s incredibly irresponsible for them to sic their fans on journalists they don’t like. And that’s what Palin is doing here — she has already inspired Glenn Beck to accuse McGinniss of “stalking” Palin and issuing a threat to boycott his publisher.

This follows on the heels of this defense of the White House that could have been ghostwritten by Greg Sargent, the Post’s lockstep defender of the left. According to the logic of the piece, it was impossible for anyone to know that Sestak was running for the Senate until the day he announced, and it would be totally impossible for Barack Obama to move someone out of the way for Sestak once that person was confirmed by the Senate. That one doesn’t pass the laugh test.

In fact, if you go through Dave’s archives you’ll find a slew of stories from the most recent one as I write to others that no one on the right really cares about, but people on the left who see the right collectively as fringe will eat up. And that’s the whole point of why he’s there.

On the other hand, our resident “gadmaggot,” TBogg, is within the vocal minority. He’s following the Weigel approach of, nevermind whether Palin is being stalked by a creepy neighbor even though that’s what the subject is supposed to be. Let’s talk instead about irony and how some people aren’t capable of comprehending it.

So when Sarah Palin goes Full Metal Mayella Ewell, accusing Joe McInnis of eye-raping her children, [Mark] Hemingway buys it and the horseshit it rode in on. Not willing to settle for being a garden variety half-wit, Hemingway doubles down when McGinnis’ son replies sarcastically to an email from Politico’s Ben Smith:

Bestselling author may be romantically stalking Sarah Palin
By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
05/25/10 1:10 PM EDT

[…]

Well, it gets even crazier. Ben Smith of Politico got ahold of Joe McGinniss’ son and asked him about his father’s recent move to Alaska:

I haven’t been able to reach McGinniss, but did send an errant email to his son, the novelist Joe McGinniss Jr., who replied, “Sadly, she’s right. We tried our best to intervene, but alas, the heart wants what it wants. We can only pray for him now. He’s convinced that Todd will step aside and when the time is right, he’ll be there, right next door, to pick up the pieces.“

Wow. Just wow.

People like Hemingway like to complain that someone is always trying to shove something down their throats. This may be because they seem all too willing to swallow just about anything.

I note, with interest, that all TBogg has to say about this is that this Mark Hemingway guy failed to comprehend the joke. In his world, the story begins and ends there. That’s all he has to say.

And what a fragile little hook upon which this chandelier rests. “Wow just wow.” When you think about it…that doesn’t even prove anything. Not that I care. This whole irony-thing is just a bunny trail.

See, TBogg doesn’t live in a world of ideas. He is one among many lightweight thinkers who just want to be on the good side of things, to be assured that no one who agrees with them ever has a bad idea…and spin a fantasy that nobody who disagrees with them can ever have a good one. So if you read through his archives you’ll see his blog is just one meandering ad hominem attack. Oh, and it’s hip and edgy too. So he’s selling what lots of other folks are selling.

As an argument about the subject at hand, it is a curious one to say the least. Let me see if I can follow it: I am TBogg! You are scum! There are good people like me, and bad people like you and Sarah Palin. My people are better. Sure, they believe so much in what they’re doing and get so caught up in sliming your people that we sometimes do creepy, stalker-ish things, like move in next door so we can spy on your people all summer long and write books about it. But we understand irony. And our ability to understand irony (while we spy on you) makes us much, much better.

Okay TBogg. So noted.

Mediaite tries once more for the “Palin’s the real stalker here” defense. Good luck with that, guys.

But if you want something with real meat, I’d be remiss in leaving out Sheya’s piece at Conservatives4Palin, “David Weigel Doesn’t Get It.” Now, that is a rebuttal. “Conservative” Weigel indulges in a longstanding liberal tactic, which is to make a passing reference to something with a history behind it and hope to hell you don’t go doing any homework about it. Sheya did the homework on the Conde Nast Portfolio hit piece, and the results are devastating for whatever argument it was Weigel was trying to put together.

But after reading all this stuff that came up yesterday, I see it all this really comes down to one thing. I had made a passing reference to it twenty-four hours ago, having no idea how incredibly prescient the comment was and how relevant it was. In this comment, is the key to all things Sarah-Palin-related you’re hearing nowadays…at least, from the critics who are so desperate for her to “just go away already.”

Just dang, if Joe McGinniss burned her house down would you come down on her for using up his matches and gasoline?

See, this just cuts to the heart of it. And most of us can’t see it because Palin’s not out there trying to be a victim, not running herself breathless trying to fill the role of victim, there’s nothing “victim” about her at all. McGinniss has laid his little siege; so Todd’s building a fourteen-foot fence. Problem, solution.

But you see, these people aren’t thinking straight. They can think logically about it, but thinking logically is a procession in a sound direction from whatever point of origin, and if the point of origin is cockeyed then the logic doesn’t do a lot of good. Their point of origin is that Palin cannot be a victim — ever. In many cases, they have built an entire social life around this. Here’s a story about that Palin chick we all want to “go away” so badly, let’s talk about it and give her the attention we’re wishing people would stop giving her…and the first person to show her any of what looks like sympathy, is to be drummed outta the club.

There are events taking place in real life, now and then, in which people are victims whether they accept the role or not. And when you start out with the prejudiced determination not to ever acknowledge that, you end up saying childish boneheaded stupid things, just like Dave Weigel. And that’s the problem they’re having. In their world, if you run over Sarah Palin with your car, the story is about the damage her rear end did to your car.

Weigel made an ass out of himself and he knows it. I know he knows it, because he did what newspaper people do when they realize they’ve made asses out of themselves. “Uh, I recieved a lot of complaints, and they’re all from crazy people, get a load-a this.” Sure, Dave.

As for Daphne, she’s just made the mistake of accepting a false choice about Palin’s motives. See, Sarah Palin may be motivated by a sincere desire to turn the country around and put grown-ups back in charge again…or…maybe she really is just “Sarah Paycheck” and is motivated by the money. To me, the whole thing is a First Amendment issue because the First Amendment isn’t about edgy shocking talk radio or crucifixes soaked in urine, it’s about efforts to change the government be they ultimately successful or not. Now, if everyone with an influential presence & set of opinions is forced, in this new “McGinniss siege” cultural protocol, to build fourteen foot tall fences around their homes just because they’re having an impact on things, that isn’t the death of the First Amendment. But it’s certainly takin’ a beating, in spirit, there can be no doubt about that.

Daphne uses sound logic proceeding from an unsound point of origin: That Sarah Paycheck is a showgirl. Palin doesn’t give a rat’s behind where the country is going, she just wants her book advances and royalties. She goes to give speeches for the money. Wherever she goes, she chuckles at suckers like me.

If you’re going to presume that, then I can see this makes some measure of sense. Palin’s flying around from one hot spot to another not giving a shit about politics one way or another, fooling suckers and making big coin. So all kinds of reporters want to know more about her, and sooner or later someone rents the place next door. Why yes, that does seem just natural. Live by the spotlight, die by the spotlight.

I’ve borrowed a favorite phrase from Obama Speech Bingo and called that a “false choice” because that’s exactly what it is. You see, Palin can be about both the money and about changing the country for the better. All the other politicians are supposed to be about both of those two things, I don’t see any reason why she has to be the exception. Palin’s life has been inspected with magnifying glasses, microscopes, rectal-scopes, fine-tooth combs. There is not a whiff of evidence anywhere that her personal values are anything but exactly those: Personal values. She believes in ’em. Not a syllable has been uttered by anyone suggesting anything to the contrary, save for the ugly whispering about Bristol’s pregnancy. Months of digging through the trash cans in Wasilla and Juneau, that’s the best they could do. So if Palin is indeed a charlatan, she isn’t a pure one; or if she is a pure charlatan who is apathetic about politics & the way a society should be run, she is awfully clever.

And you know what, Daphne? If both of those motives apply to what she’s doing, which is a virtual certainty — the values, and the moolah — my argument wins and yours falls flat. She is a potent force for jettisoning the liberal bullshit, starting right now, and the folks who happen to like the liberal bullshit recognize this and are engaging in the same bullying tactics we’ve been seeing for the last twenty-one months now. Whether Palin is officially appointed to a high office or not, the chessboard looks a lot different with her off of it, than with her on it. She’s the Queen. The liberals are doing what makes the most sense in a game of chess, and so is she. So she’s making money at it; so what?

Except in their case, it’s a little bit of Einstein’s classic definition of insanity. Renting a house next door for an entire summer while you’re writing a book about the person who lives therein…it’s just pure bullying, like everything else they’ve been doing, just pure “We’ll show you what’s in store for conservative media darlings, now how do you like THEM apples.” Well, some folks can be bullied and others cannot. So the people who want her to go away, and have their reasons for wanting her to go away, must understand this whole anti-campaign of theirs holds very little prospect for victory. There is no reason for them to keep deploying it, unless someone has figured out there are no other options available.

So in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve come to have a change of heart about this. Not about Sarah Palin being a whining crybaby who’s unable or unwilling to accept the natural consequences of being in the “public eye”; really, enough is enough Daphne. Your readers aren’t with you on this, the evidence isn’t with you. Give it up. No, what I’ve changed my mind about is the importance of the story. I did not see, at first glance, all the importance that was wrapped up in it. It is a newsworthy item — not that Palin put up a Facebook entry about McGinniss moving next door, but that McGinniss bothered to move next door. Very, very big event. If, that is, you see 2010 as a promising year for getting the kids-in-charge back to the kiddie-table where they belong. We need to know what’s going on with this procession of related events, and the “McGinniss siege” supplies a lot of clues as to what is going on.

But Legal Insurrection summarized the entire absurd situation as capably as anybody else, IMO:

There is something strange, unprofessional and paranoid going on here, but it’s not Sarah Palin.

Updated: Picture of Palin Fence — that’d be your Lake Lucille version of “whining” — borrowed from Gretawire, by way of John Hawkins.

Go Todd, go.

Me:

This is the saddest part of modern day liberalism, IMO. It’s the part that compels otherwise-decent and otherwise-thoughtful people to reject simple, straightforward, wise courses of action, and accept simple, crooked, fraudulent, stupid ones. They get distracted by the question of who else is decent. And choosing just the right double standard to make Bill-n-Hillary look like saints, and cast such a contemptuous darklight on Levi-Bristol that hopefully some of it bounces up and hits Sarah Palin, consumes all the brain cycles they have. Like, somehow Hillary’s a “victim,” Bill was “tempted,” Bristol is just a shitty judge of character and surely she got that from her Mom…

By the time they’re done writhing around and jumping through their own intellectual hoops, they’re so exhausted you could tell them we’ll fix the nation’s economy with a trillion dollar health care plan, and get rid of our racial-tension for good by drinking beer.

What am I talking about?

Daphne’s liberal friend had some kind of point to make. I’m doubting the liberal friend, herself, would be able to explain what exactly the point is…but Daphne noticed Mr. Johnston is not keeping current with his child support obligations.

One way or another, it all reflects on the former Governor, and therefore anyone & anything that doesn’t agree with Obama. Or something.

Buck doesn’t like coming to our pages and finding grim depressing stuff; I guess for him it’s all hockey stuff, something else cheery, or nuthin’. Well, in our book when you see some dumbass putting square wheels on a shopping cart, you take the time to tell him things aren’t gonna work, right? And the shopping cart of the U.S. of A. is being fit for square wheels, make no mistake about it.

But we do recognize the benefits of balance. And this Onion piece that apparently seeks to poke some fun at the former Governor, tickled our funny bone. But that’s a little complicated in itself, as we’ll explain below:

“This Tea Party movement just goes to show ya that America is ready for another revolution,” Palin said as things long ago divined came finally to pass. “Who do you think is gonna stand up for the freedoms promised by our Founding Fathers? Folks like us, or some socialist professor of constitutional law in the Oval Office?”

It was then, witnesses claim, that there was a tearing of the heavens, and the skies receded as does a scroll when it is rolled up, and anecdotes about everyday middle-class Alaskan families were enunciated in down-to-earth tones.

“That’s right, partner,” Palin said, as every mountain and island moved from its place, and flames overtook the lakes and the rivers and the seas. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

What does intent matter?

The outcome is, both sides are ridiculed; Palin fans, and Palin bashers. With much of the unintended comedy aimed squarely at the bashers.

Palin giving a speech, after all, doesn’t have much to do with End Times. By Onion standards, the satire is a little clumsy. What’s the point? She’s such a mental klutz that we should expect the dead to rise out of their graves the first time she forms a complete sentence? No, if I’m looking for a recent event to portend the Apocalypse, my mind would go back to Holy One’s (broken) promise to close down Guantanamo. Or the Beer Summit. Something like that.

Government’s broke. I don’t mean just the feds. I’m referring to all the states as well. Here in mine, we have “furlough Fridays.” Every Friday morning like clockwork, our airhead traffic report radio people flock to the airwaves to gladden our hearts that the roads are going to be nice and clear, without those bothersome state workers sharing them with us.

Get the picture? We’re paying taxes…all 51 governments are moving in the direction of — no services. Not that productive people tend to be in demand of such services in the first place. But we’re moving rapidly in the direction of just dropping the pretenses. We pay our taxes, and it just goes to people who are friends of the politicians who go through the motions of providing “services” to us.

Palin gives speeches pointing out that you know, maybe this isn’t the best way for things to work.

And the Obama apologists, and Palin-bashers, work up a hysterical lather just as well as any loco barnyard animal ever did. Acting like…yeah…the world’s coming to an end.

Poking fun at anything and everything. Just hoping the topic of conversation, for God’s sake, will somehow change.

We have Health Care II. We have Son of Stimulus. Huh. I suppose the world is gonna end if we don’t pass those.

“Drop The Pretenses Day” can’t arrive soon enough, in my book. I’ll open the seals of the Great Book myself. Just stop pretending you’re trying to help people, using stem cell research to cure polio victims, giving burn therapy to orphans, “creating or saving” jobs, blah blah blah. Just take our money, give it to your friends who aren’t any better at securing a productive and honest livelihood than you are — right out in broad daylight — and start counting down with us to the inevitable revolution.

That way, you’re not insulting our intelligence anymore. And frankly, this business of “Boy Sarah Palin’s Stupid, Who’s With Me?” hoping the subject will change whenever you find it convenient for the subject to change, is as insulting as anything. Just because some folks fall for it, doesn’t mean everyone does.

Update: This is more like it.

George F. Will thinks Sarah Palin is being celebrated for the quality named in the headline of this post.

In this work, he is a sad story. His whole point is that seven persons in ten consider Palin unfit for the presidency…therefore, he does as well. It’s not quite so much that he’s figuring out which way the wind is blowing and then responding to it. It’s that he’s figuring out which way the wind is blowing, and based on that figuring out whether this is the time to say out loud what he’s thinking. Which is just as bad. Not deriving an opinion from popular will, but being a fair-weather friend to popular will. Most people agree with me — on this one point — so on this one point, that proves I’m right. Naturally, if there’s some other point on which the popular will happens to be less receptive to George Will’s way of looking at things, we’ll never know about it.

So he sacrifices his intellectual scruples in order to put his finger on the pulse of The American People. That is the one prize…and it eludes him. He thinks Palin’s popularity is some rebellion against intellectual cred. Perhaps he is taking the situation too personally.

Could Thomas Sowell be talking about George Will, I wonder?

I can only speak for myself. This Palin supporter doesn’t give a good goddamn if her I.Q. is 200…or 50. I’m tired of the nonsense, tired of the bullshit, kill some terrorists and drill for some oil. At this point, those are the common sense things to do, and if you’ve got some talking points that make them seem otherwise I say you’re doing enough talking that you’ve stopped thinking so I don’t care how well you think you’re doing it.

I want to see some domestically produced oil barrels, some whittled-down tax rates across the board, crap-n-trade nuked for good so it ain’t never coming back, and some terrorist corpses with looks of real fear frozen on their dead crispy faces. Period. And frankly, all this talk of who’s “qualified” or smart or stupid or enlightened or educated or folksy or charmy or a lightworker, is beginning to bore me. And by bored what I mean is I’m getting pretty goddamn irritated over it for a couple of years now. I daresay I’m speaking for more people in that statement, than George Will is with his.

Boortz doesn’t think very good things would happen to you if you were a cartoonist and you chose to lampoon a liberal politician this way. I agree.

I’d sum up the mood of the intelligentsia this way: “(Name of lefty politician here)’s family is absolutely positively off-limits, now get a load of my Tripp Palin impression.”

So Bagdad Bob Gibbs wants to make fun of Sarah Palin with his hand. Very clever, Mr. Gibbs. But as Gerard’s seventh comment, from CBDenver, notes — it’s a bit too late for any good comedy. Palin already made any snark her own private domain the day before. She does that. One of many reasons she’s called Sarahcuda.

Nice try, though.

Anyway, you need to represent your boss just a little bit better. He’s about oh so much more than hope and change…isn’t He? So we thought we’d help the press secretary out a little bit (click for larger).

You might want to use an extra-fine Sharpie, and continue on the other hand.

You’ve got a shopping list too, Bob? Aw, that’s a toughie. Guess that’ll have to go on your tie, or your ankle or something.

Update 2/10/10: Ah, I see over at Hot Air, Derek‘s photoshop of Bagdad Bob’s actual hand has been picked up by the Malkin crowd so I suppose that will become the “official” version. Ah well. Mine’s funnier.

But why dwell on it anyway. Oh yeah that’s right — Bagdad Bob Gibbs is the official spokesman of the President of the United States of America. We are impacted, directly, each and every day, by the decisions made there…

Now, on the other hand (har!), why does Gibbs care about Sarah Palin’s hand? Uh, she’s the running-mate on the losing ticket from fifteen months ago. Governor of — oh no wait, no she isn’t, not anymore. She’s a private citizen who wrote a note on her hand before appearing on teevee, and the White House has to take the time to comment on it. The White House. The constitutional government’s ultimate executive authority. They’d like to get the final word on things Palin writes on the palm of her hand.

*Sniff*

*Sniff*

That isn’t fear I smell?

Advice He needs, whether He likes it or not:

We’ve now seen three landslide Republican victories in three states that President Obama carried in 2008. From the tea parties to the town halls to the Massachusetts Miracle, Americans have tried to make their opposition to Washington’s big government agenda loud and clear. But the President has decided that this current discontent isn’t his fault, it’s ours. He seems to think we just don’t understand what’s going on because he hasn’t had the chance – in his 411 speeches and 158 interviews last year – to adequately explain his policies to us.

Instead of sensibly telling the American people, “I’m listening,” the president is saying, “Listen up, people!” This approach is precisely the reason people are upset with Washington. Americans understand the president’s policies. We just don’t agree with them. But the president has refused to shift focus and come around to the center from the far left. Instead he and his old campaign advisers are regrouping to put a new spin on the same old agenda for 2010.

Americans aren’t looking for more political strategists. We’re looking for real leadership that listens and delivers results. The president’s former campaign adviser is now calling on supporters to “get on the same page,” but what’s on that page? He claims that the president is “resolved” to “keep fighting for” his agenda, but we’ve already seen what that government-growth agenda involves, and frankly the hype doesn’t give us much hope. Real health care reform requires a free market approach; real job creation involves incentivizing, not punishing, the job-creators; reining in the “big banks” means ending bailouts; and stopping “the undue influence of lobbyists” means not cutting deals with them behind closed doors.

Instead of real leadership, though, we’ve had broken promises and backroom deals. One of the worst: candidate Obama promised to go through the federal budget “with a scalpel,” but President Obama spent four times more than his predecessor. Want more? Candidate Obama promised that lobbyists “won’t find a job in my White House,” but President Obama gave at least a dozen former lobbyists top administration jobs. Candidate Obama promised us that we could view his health care deliberations openly and honestly on C-SPAN, but President Obama cut deals behind closed doors with industry lobbyists. Candidate Obama promised us that we would have at least five days to read all major legislation, but President Obama rushed through bills before members of Congress could even read them.

Candidate Obama promised us that his economic stimulus package would be targeted and pork-free, but President Obama signed a stimulus bill loaded with pork and goodies for corporate cronies. Candidate Obama railed against Wall Street greed, but President Obama cozied up to bankers as he extended and expanded their bailouts. Candidate Obama promised us that for “Every dollar that I’ve proposed [in spending], I’ve proposed an additional cut so that it matches.” We’re still waiting to see how President Obama will cut spending to match the trillion he’s spent.

More than anything, Americans were promised jobs, but the president’s stimulus package has failed to stem our rising unemployment rate. Maybe it was unfair to expect that an administration with so little private sector experience would understand something about job creation. How many Obama Administration officials have ever had to make a payroll or craft a business plan in the private sector? How many have had to worry about not having the resources to invest and expand? The president’s big government policies have made hiring a new employee a difficult commitment for employers to make. Ask yourself if the Obama Administration has done anything to make it easier for employers to hire. Have they given us any reassurance that the president will keep taxes low and not impose expensive new regulations?

Candidate Obama over-promised; President Obama has under-delivered. We understand you, Mr. President. We’ve listened to you again and again. We ask that you now listen to the American people.

Still ready to debate whether Sarah Palin is as stupid as people say?

Does it even matter?

With every resume that’s written up for anything anywhere, the phrase “excellent communication skills” becomes just a little bit more threadbare and worn-out, a little bit more outdated, a little bit more vague. It could be argued to mean a whole lot of different things.

It shouldn’t include the ability to promise one thing, deliver on an entirely different thing, and get away with it. That’s not what communicating is.

The common-citizen, the one who used to be the Governor of Alaska, speaks. Those who mock her spread out in their familiar horseshoe-arrangement, point their fingers, and open their maws — but nothing comes out, for her points are unanswerable. Oh, how the hatred bristles. How dare she opine on Facebook. Why can’t she do what we want, and appear on an interview with Katie Couric? It’s so unfair!

President Obama’s meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an “overseas contingency operation.” Acts of terrorism are just that, not “man caused disasters.” The system did not work. Abdulmutallab was a child of privilege radicalized and trained by organized jihadists, not an “isolated extremist” who traveled to a land of “crushing poverty.” He is an enemy of the United States, not just another criminal defendant.

It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal. Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber. John Brennan, the President’s top counterterrorism adviser, bizarrely claimed “there are no downsides or upsides” to treating terrorists as enemy combatants. That is absurd. There is a very serious downside to treating them as criminals: terrorists invoke their “right” to remain silent and stop talking. Terrorists don’t tell us where they were trained, what they were trained in, who they were trained by, and who they were trained with. Giving foreign-born, foreign-trained terrorists the right to remain silent does nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats. It only gives our enemies access to courtrooms where they can publicly grandstand, and to defense attorneys who can manipulate the legal process to gain access to classified information.

President Obama was right to change his policy and decide to send no more detainees to Yemen where they can be free to rejoin their war on America. Now he must back off his reckless plan to close Guantanamo, begin treating terrorists as wartime enemies not suspects alleged to have committed crimes, and recognize that the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor.

Had these thoughts in my head for awhile, and as long as we’re on the subject of Palin I thought I should jot ’em down.

These people are in a “most lunatic” photo-finish neck-and-neck with the hardcore Obama-zealots. I seriously think we’ve discovered a new mental sickness epidemic. Palin isn’t it, but she’s a useful black light for detecting it. For how many years, before the nation learned to pronounce her married name, has this been going on, churning away in our midst, unseen?

1. They’ve achieved a great deal less in life than she has, even though some are quite a bit older than she is.
2. They don’t want to be called “haters,” although their reaction to her is purely negative and purely emotional; I’m left groping for another word and “bashers,” far from being a perfect fit, ends up being the least-unsuitable.
3. They persist in the mistaken belief that Charles Gibson tripped her up.
4. Whatever they have to say about Palin’s lack of competence or intellectual acumen, is felt, not thought. It invariably relies, not on observations, but on perceptions of what others are going to do. Nobody truly owns this.
5. A lot of them are ready to vouch for other women in power who are relatively homely and frumpy, like Hillary Clinton. This, also, fails the thought-over-feeling test; it isn’t based on much of anything. It’s just a reverberation of feelings felt by others, nothing more.
6. They breathe hard and their pulse quickens. I haven’t run into too many people who are ready to calmly explain Sarah Palin’s lack of qualifications.
7. Their laughter, in response to Palin jokes, is forced.
8. Their lofty opinions of the minimal requirements for the offices Palin has sought, or might seek, is selective. When the topic of conversation shifts to Joe Biden, suddenly it seems the Vice Presidency doesn’t demand a whole lot out of anyone.
9. They don’t seem to think it takes a whole lot to govern Alaska, or to even live there. They don’t appear to think very highly of Alaskans. One wonders if they’d back a Constitutional amendment establishing a “geographical litmus test” for future candidates, and if so, how many other states would go in the “No Can Do” column.
10. A lot of people claim to like her personally, just don’t “feel” (see Item #4 above) that she’s “right”; when the topic of conversation shifts to Barack Obama, this principle turns out to be selective (see Item #8) and they have a whole new and different way of seeing people.
11. They seem to have an awful lot of ego invested in these discussions, like if they cannot convince ALL reading or listening that Palin is a dimbulb, right here & right now, that this failing will somehow diminish them as a person.
12. They aren’t at all willing to say women should be staying home raising their kids; but they’re perfectly willing to say Palin should be staying home raising her kids.
13. They are loud, eager to get their opinion on the record, to the point of being obnoxious. Nobody seems to be sitting in a corner anywhere quietly thinking to himself “Wow I wish Palin would go away she’s so unqualified.”
14. Some of them think it’s way too early to talk about 2012. They seem to realize if the nomination process was conducted today, the results would be pretty clear. They seem to understand, but not to be willing to confess, that Palin is less likely to embarrass herself compared to her rivals, between now and 2012.
15. The standard they apply to Sarah Palin is not just higher than the standard they apply to others; it is surreal. Speculation on false pregnancies, burning books, forcing rape victims to pay for their own examinations, months and years after being thoroughly debunked, is somehow considered residually damning against her.
16. The people who get angriest about her, make me really happy she’s around to make them so angry because these are people who’ve had it comin’. As OldT6Flyer said at Neptunus Lex’s place (hat tip to blogger friend Buck), “If she didn’t exist somebody would need to invent her for the cause.”
17. Other than the secular types supposedly living in fear of some tighty-righty coming along to transform American into a “theocracy,” there doesn’t seem to be a single soul among them willing to say what a President Palin would do that they wouldn’t like. As a community, if you can call it that, they seem to be nearly brain-dead on matters of policy.
18. They’re ready to say what they think about things, in general, a whole lot more quickly than they’re ready to comment on their qualifications or lack thereof for thinking these things. This figures: They’re dissing the intellect of someone they’ve never met and never will meet.
19. If they’re Republicans, they long for a return to the halcyon days when the Republican party was known for its intellectual depth, and won elections that way. I, too, think that would be kinda cool. They aren’t ready to clue me in on when in the last hundred years that ever happened, or how likely such a thing ever is to happen again. Haven’t they noticed in columnist-world, the conservatives have a monopoly on intellectual wherewithal? Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Sowell, George Will…their counterparts are Keith Olbermann and Arianna Huffington? And that there’s a filtration process in place to keep that from ever translating into our elections, so that when it’s time to vote suddenly it’s the liberals who are the eggheads. What do they think is going to happen to upset that? What should be done to overturn that canoe? They aren’t ready to discuss this, not in the slightest. One would reasonably expect they’d be chomping at the bit.
20. A lot of them fall into Item #22 on my list of Fifty Fucking Sick Things. They want me to think something just because they think it — they’re so undeniably smart that if I don’t agree straight-away, that’s evidence of my own thick-headedness and cluelessness. But they can’t tell “their” from “they’re” or “your” apart from “you’re.” Innocent, excusable mistakes until you stop to realize: The whole point of their garbled writing is to raise doubts about someone else being qualified to graduate from high school!
21. They use “beauty queen” as an insult. One cannot help but wonder if they’re prepared to explain why this is.
22. They’re ready, willing and able to quickly concede that the attacks on Palin have been “unfair”; but their opinions about Palin appear to have been decided entirely by these unfair attacks. How’s this work exactly?
23. If they’re women — and a lot of them are — they all have that same look. Like they go to New Year’s Eve parties looking exactly the same as when they’re spending a day housecleaning. No one’s ever gotten ticked for leaving late because they took too long in front of a mirror.
24. They show an astonishing, whiplash-inducing ability to go from one extreme — “yes that’s true, her family should be off-limits” — to the other — “that little skank Bristol didn’t listen to abstinence education so why should anyone else.”
25. They hiss at her for being a “quitter” but give you a blank look when you name some of the Obama nominees who had to withdraw because of tax “problems.”

In person as well as on the innerwebs, I get the feeling I really shouldn’t be arguing with these people. Not in a “ah shucks, you’ll never see things my way and I’ll never agree with you, so what’s the point? Let’s talk baseball!” But more of an I-gotta-get-outta-here kinda way. With that unsettling kind of feeling you’d get if you ever found yourself arguing with some homeless guy covered with pigeon droppings about whether he really is hearing voices in his head.

They aren’t expressing hostility inspired by Palin; they’ve been carrying the hostility around, some of them perhaps for generations, and Palin has provided the outlet. In lots of ways.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

That’s kinda like Satan’s approval rating on the rise in a Heavenly poll. There’s definitely something going on.

Sarah Palin has erased her drop in the polls that followed her resignation as Alaska governor, according to new national survey.

But when it comes to opinions of Palin, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday suggests a partisan divide and a gender gap.

The survey indicates that Americans are split on Palin, with 46 percent saying they have a favorable opinion of her and an equal amount saying they have an unfavorable view of last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee.
:
Following her resignation, Palin’s favorable rating dropped to 39 percent in CNN polling, but her popularity is now back to the same level it was before she stepped down.

I got an off-line from fellow Palin blogger Shane Vander Hart letting us know about his latest post…a few more tantalizing hints about whether she’s planning to run or not. Couldn’t resist hitting the reply button and sharing what I’ve been seeing:

Two statistically significant factions exploding in number since the book tour started:

A. “Hate to break it to you, but this woman is NOT winning any elections!”
B. “It is WAY soon to be talking about any of this!”

How many deluded Palin-hating souls do you think have made the mistake of signing up for both of these? Perhaps they need to have it pointed out: You need to choose one…

I’d nominate Boortz to represent A, and blogger friend Buck (commenting at Daphne’s place) to represent B. Yes, neither one’s a hater. But both represent millions of people who do so hate…or nurse a grudge…or criticize to the point of tedium…or sneer…or, or, or.

I’ll take them all as sincere commentary — provided nobody’s crossing over. Anyone occupying the overlap is simply grasping at straws, and driving themselves nuts by doing it. So that’s my challenge to the Palin haters. Choose one.

Meanwhile, I can’t help noticing: Forty-six percent approval is within a point or two of He Who Walks On Water, over in the White House. For all intents and purposes, it is equivalent. Hmmm…I think Faction A just took a beating. Need to watch those hasty predictions.

…against other candidates on presidential tickets over the last few years? Really?

Huge things, man…really huge. They’d really, really hurt her if they got out, but I’m just not going that far.

Levi Johnston says he’s keeping some “huge” things about Sarah Palin from the public.

In Part One of a two-part exclusive interview with “Early Show” co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez, which aired Wednesday, the father of Palin’s grandson says, “There are some things that I have that are huge. And I haven’t said them because I’m not gonna hurt her that way.

” … I have things that can, you know — that would get her in trouble, and could hurt her. Will hurt her. But I’m not gonna go that far. You know, I mean, if I really wanted to hurt her, I could, very easily. But there’s — I’m not gonna do it. I’m not going that far.”

Johnston says he’s referring to things Palin did while she was governor of Alaska. Asked whether those actions were illegal or immoral, he refused to elaborate.

And I’ll be signing autographs. Burbank Wednesday, Vegas Thursday, Phoenix Friday. Buy my tee shirts and coffee mugs, I’m not talkin’. Yet.

Hey, I heard Sarah Palin’s Air National Guard commander wasn’t happy with her logged hours of flight time, and I’ve got these proportionally-spaced memos from a 1974 office typewriter to prove it.

Great job, CBS. Great journalism; great work. Keep it up.

Not entirely sure how many months, weeks or days we’re talking about when we read one more article about Levi Johnston living with the Palins and getting his inside scoops on what goes on in that household. But his talking about it, is starting to take on the air of a Barbra Streisand or Cher or Madonna “final farewell tour.”

Do we have to “learn” new “truths” about Sarah Palin every time Johnston needs a new tin of chaw now, or it’s time for him to gas up that ginormous expensive truck?

It goes without saying these stories have currency and demand. And it further goes without saying that the reason they’re in demand, is that the public has this fascination with warped, dysfunctional personalities.

What’s not so obvious is — maybe the public’s real fascination with “Levi has more dirt to dish on Sarah” isn’t quite so much a fixation on the flaws in her character, but rather on the flaws in his. After all, it isn’t every day you get to make an acquaintance of a Sarah Palin, but there are Levi Johnstons everywhere you look, and we’re all a little bit unsure about how to handle them. Other than the obvious things, like not counting on them to do anything important, or say anything that’s true.

Those who doubt that, should probably read this. By all means, buy that issue of Vanity Fair, but know what you’re getting. Not quite so much an accurate portrait of events, but a window into a troubled soul. And I’m not talking about hers.

So we got another round yesterday of Palin rumors, and as always it was nicely mixed in with loads of bile targeted at Alaska’s former Governor and anyone who would dare to see anything positive about anything she has done:

Earlier this week one of my best sources claimed to have explosive new information for me.

It took all week for us to finally get together, but last night we finally sat down for an amazing conversation. And what I heard made my jaw drop.

According to my source Sarah is finished with Todd and has decided to end their marriage.

She has purchased land in Montana (I wonder whose donations paid for that?), and may be considering moving herself and the children as far away from Alaska as she can get.

Do you remember all of that talk about her missing wedding ring during the three part going away picnics? Well it turns out that ring now sleeps with the fishes. Apparently in a fit of anger Sarah stripped the ring from her finger and tossed it into a lake. (No I did not think to ask WHICH lake so I cannot confirm if it is Lake Lucille, on which her house is located, or some other lake. I apologize for not getting clarification, but I was a little tired last night and so was my source.)

So it appears that the reason Palin has been so quiet, and has given her tweeting fingers a rest, is NOT because of any master plan, or carefully orchestrated new direction, but simply the result of the emotional stress that prevents her from communicating with her fan base or making any public appearances.

I would assume that this stress is also the reason that Sarah has suffered such a dramatic drop in weight and would also explain the hair loss that Jessica Steele referred to in the New York Times (and which she quickly tried to take back after she received a scolding from the Palin camp.)

On this point I must spend a few words deviating from this latest national tragedy to toss some of my attention briefly toward another one: Men who use parentheses like women. Parentheses are to be used to designate those portions of your prose which are disposable. They are for garnish. Too many of you are using them to put together a sort of a “salad,” not a garnish…an overwhelming hodgepodge of items that are on equal footing with one another. In this case, it’s a list of scintillating tidbits to be carried forward into the next heated cocktail party pro-Palin anti-Palin melee. Twenty-eight insults for the Caribou Barbie is a lot better than twenty-seven, right? That’s not disposable. That’s “buckshot.” And when you use parentheses to separate them, it gives people headaches (but only for the people who aren’t sharing in your Palin bashing vision (so not that you care too much about that)).

Also, it makes you look like a complete pussy. Not that “Gryphen” is restored to his guy-card credentials should he choose to cease and desist. “It took all week for us to finally get together, but last night we finally sat down for an amazing conversation. And what I heard made my jaw drop.” A guy wrote that? An Alaska guy? This guttersniping about weight loss…that came from a tough Sourdough fella? Between hits of moonshine to keep his ticker tickin’ at 75 degrees below zero, and mouthfuls of raw polar bear intestine? He’s managed to put something together that could have been torn from the pages of the National Enquirer.

Okay enough of that rant. Back to the subject at hand…

Yes, it’s bullshit.

Sorry, my left-wing friends, but today isn’t Christmas, the Palin’s aren’t getting a divorce, and you can’t have a pony. I know that your favorite blogs are running with the unsubstantiated rumor that the Palins are splitsville like Darryl Grant with an errant Gary Hogeboom pass in the 1982 NFC Championship Game, but it’s not victory they’re running toward, just another credibility-demolishing embarassment.

The rumor, which you will surely hear on some Sunday talk show tomorrow is being spread by someone with a history for spreading stuff that not even the Weekly World News would put on its front page.

The Palin family has discounted the fantasy without equivocation in a statement on Sarah Palin’s facebook page, posted by Meg Stapleton.

Yet again, some so-called journalists have decided to make up a story. There is no truth to the recent “story” (and story is the correct term for this type of fiction) that the Palins are divorcing. The Palins remain married, committed to each other and their family, and have not purchased land in Montana (last week it was reported to be Long Island).

Less than one week ago, Governor Palin asked the media to “quit making things up.” We appreciate that the more professional journalists decided to question this story before repeating it.

Palin herself chimed in with a definitive quote first published by Stacy McCain and Dan Riehl.

“Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”

You can’t debunk a rumor any harder than that. Well, I suppose you could use a baseball bat or a lead pipe but, if words are your only weapon, that nasty little piece of borderline slander is as debunked as debunked can get.

In the fitful moments between REM sleep and giving some thought to climbing out of bed to start my day, I was thinking about this thing people do. I was thinking about the way people behave — at a very, very high level, staying out of this whole Republican-democrat thing. The idea that Palin earns all this scorn because she’s some kind of a dimwit, is laughably silly. The idea that she earns it because she enjoys imminent potential to become our next President, or to be launched into some other high office with real decision-making power…this contradicts, directly, the things said by those who carry around that scorn. They are not motivated by her stupidity, and they are not motivated by her power, or the power she will be wielding next year or the year after that. But they are motivated by something; can anyone anywhere deny that?

And they are not in an exclusive club. They are recruiting each other, and having a rather easy time doing it. They must be making contact with something deep in the prospective recruit’s soul, something that has been there since long, long before anyone outside of Wasilla ever heard of Sarah Palin. And it must be something present in all of us, or most of us…so let us finish the rest of this little essay without using her name again. We’ve already looked into, in great detail, why so many people hate Sarah Palin so much. But we’ll not be guilty of redundancy here…not too much. There is more that is worthy of inspection here. This really isn’t about her. This is something far, far bigger than her.

I was tossing and turning in bed, not thinking quite so much about this latest gossip-burp from yesterday, as about other things going on — wondering where I’d seen it before. In those moments before the dawn when man’s mind is left alone, enjoying complete peace and quiet, and occasionally finding greater chaos in its own repressed thoughts than it will ever find throughout the day, the truth suddenly hit me like a Mack truck: Everywhere. At work. At school. In the women I’ve loved, and, in my younger days, in the girls.

It takes me by surprise, time after time, because it possess the stealth of an enemy who isn’t always there. In fact, so many years pass before I see it. It’s something deep inside us, but something we cannot support constantly. It has to pulsate. And no single individual can make the decision that the time is right for it to erupt again. It is a purely social thing. People get together, in larger and larger numbers, and then if the time is right the collective will make the call that belongs to no one single member who is a part of it. And then the members practice this thing, that knows no name and no description.

I cannot name it but I do know how to describe it now:

It has to do with that star/solar-system configuration so familiar to anyone who’s watched girls in high school hang out together. There’s the ringleader, and then all the hangers-on riding her coattails.

It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship in its own way. They are nothing without the club; the club is nothing without the ringleader; the ringleader would be nothing without the rest of them.

One quarter of the time, it seems, all the rest of us are in that constellation. Or we want to be.

This thing that wells up within people every so-many years, has to do with seeking this out. The Head Bitch of that little clique, does not offer herself to be the leader of it, nor has she built the clique. That’s the dirty little secret nobody seems ready to admit. They come looking for her. We come looking for her. Every few years we seem to get it in our heads, that life is all about seeking out some champion. But not the sort of champion who inspires us to be the best we possibly can be. A Head Bitch champion. Someone with truckloads of charisma but with very little character.

And so the way I would describe this thirst we all seem to have, or that most of us seem to have, but only occasionally — this Pon Farr of social idiocy, if you will — is: We make friends with those who lack character, and we direct our enthusiastically destructive energies toward anyone who might possess an abundance of it.

You see someone cannot really be trusted, some observed person shows all the scruples of an alley cat. And as the fever hits you, instead of thinking “Okay I know pretty well what he/she is all about, I’ll keep my distance” — like a red-blooded earthling would think — instead, you say “This person knows how to get what s/he wants, and maybe s/he’ll do me some good if I hang out with him/her.”

In other words, we admire each other for our most destructive, antisocial qualities.

And we start to labor under the delusion that by turning things upside-down this way, we have defined what life is all about. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Survival of the fittest. You have to be looking out for Number One. It’s you or him, so it’s gotta be him! And if it’s you or me, then say your prayers pal because it’s gonna be you.

Well, there is some truth to all that; life isn’t all sweet and comfy, it does have competition, and sometimes the competition has consequences. And occasionally you can come out ahead by making all the “wrong” friends. But if that’s such a reliable lodestar, rather than just a load, then why the Pon Farr of stupid? Why is there this cyclical pattern to it; how come we come to this understanding just one-quarter of the time? How come we have to let all these years zip on by, stupidly putting our trust in, y’know, people who are actually worthy of it…being nice to people who have been nice to us…building a real community of people who depend on each other? How come for years and years we catch ourselves doing things that boring old-fashioned way, before a snake presents us with an apple and we’re suddenly endowed with all this “wisdom” that we have to start screwing each other over?

If life is just a Lord of the Flies re-enactment, and we can only show a useful strength by deceiving those who have been fairly kind and decent toward us, then how come we only manage to catch on to this truth for a year or two, out of five-to-ten? The Golden Rule deals not nearly so devastating a blow to this doctrine, as any decent observation of our own pattern of behavior, coupled with an understanding of time.

As I said, I’ve seen it in love, I’ve seen it in school, I’ve seen it in business. What do we call this? “You’re too nice, you’ll have to go”? No, it’s not quite so much niceness. Character. Trustworthiness. The impulse is to make friends with human sharks, who just swim through life grabbing at what they can. The reward to be offered is the reward of Remoras, who just cling on and scavenge the bits of stray meat that drift on by during a frenzy. Ostracism for those who have not succumbed. Those who live their lives according to defined principles. Jealousy toward those who’ve managed to arrest the drama involved in living day-to-day, and divert their energies toward where they want them diverted…rather than fighting on the phone with collection agencies, or divorce lawyers.

It isn’t all jealousy. Some of it is selection. They…we…want, at the apex of this cycle, to be friends with those who we know betray everybody…who will eventually betray us. Somehow, our cycles stay in sync. And so when a few people show greater fidelity to those they know are not capable of returning it, the society-at-large seems to do exactly the same thing. For a little while.

Something else I’ve noticed about this…in love, at work, at school. As we come off this high apex of one-way-fidelity and stupid-socializing with those we know are going to betray us, it all seems to fall apart like a pyramid scheme. Last in, first out. The latest newcomers, those least devoted, figure out they’ll always be called-upon to put more into this thing than they’ll ever get out of it. Kind of like Butters, on South Park. Those in the middle, who never had a shot at leading the pack but still had some kind of “cred,” are next. They fall away in layers, dejectedly, very much like losers at a casino, all out of chips, taking up that walk of shame to the pawn shop.

Those ultimately choosing to remain a part of it, as the phenomenon reaches its lowest ebb, are the hardcore types…those who’ve never left it and never will. The ones who really, absolutely truly, do see life this way. Life…is nothing but a series of surprises, hopefully pleasant ones. And you make your own surprises pleasant ones by screwing the other guy. Usually, this is the one who was the shark for the remoras. The Head Bitch cheerleader ringleader type. But not always. Some of these sad souls are not destined to take charge of anything, ever. They’re just good-for-nothing cowards, incapable of living in any kind of community, any kind of society of give-and-take, or mutual cooperation. They aren’t capable of living in such an arrangement because they don’t believe in the concept.

To the discredit and everlasting shame of the rest of us, or most of the rest of us, it seems for about 25% of the time — we allow them to define for us all what a community is, and should be.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.