House of Eratosthenes

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.

I’m saving this quote for future use, as a guy who in fact loves camping in the woods and has often been at a loss for the right words to explain why, for instance, some friends and I have chosen to camp in the woods on some of the most bitterly cold nights of the year the past few Decembers.

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.
- philmon | 05/29/2010 @ 07:42

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D’JEver Notice? LVIISaturday, May 29th, 2010

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