House of Eratosthenes

Her intellect — she clearly possesses some aptitudes, and is clearly missing others — is something worthy of inspection. Her qualities, all-in-all, as a leader are even more worthy of inspection; after all the lawyers prowling through trash cans in Jueneau, and hackneyed satire on Saturday Night Live, her credentials as an anti-corruption crusader remain intact.

But more worthy of examination compared to anything else about her, is the culture war she clearly represents, whether she intends to or not.

The reaction to Palin revealed a deep and intense cultural paranoia on the Left: an inclination to see retrograde reaction around every corner, and to respond to it with vile anger. A confident, happy, and politically effective woman who was also a social conservative was evidently too much to bear. The response of liberal feminists was in this respect particularly telling, and especially unpleasant.

“Her greatest hypocrisy is her pretense that she is a woman,” wrote Wendy Doniger, a professor at the University of Chicago. “Having someone who looks like you and behaves like them,” said Gloria Steinem, “who looks like a friend but behaves like an adversary, is worse than having no one.”

This preposterous effort to excommunicate Palin from her gender suggests that the kind of new-order feminism she represents—a feminism that embraces cultural traditionalism and workplace egalitarianism at the same time—is especially frightening to those on the feminist Left because they recognize its power and appeal. The attempt to destroy Sarah Palin by rushing to paint her as a backwoods extremist was not a show of strength, but rather a sign of desperation.

Yuval Levin. Hat tip to Sister Toldjah.

Isn’t it funny. By the end of the third quarter of 2008, a “middle of the road American” was receptive to the idea that we should “put Barack in charge — he can’t be any worse than those idiots running things now.” That’s at the end of eight solid years of “those idiots” running things…and millions of George Soros’ dollars used to give those middle-of-road Americans ideas, and fool the middle-of-road Americans into thinking they thought of those ideas themselves.

Eight years.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s been just over two weeks, and it already seems more than reasonable to “put Sarah Palin in charge, she can’t be any worse than those idiots running things now.”

Two weeks.

People make fun of Palin…and they don’t even understand how they’re making her look better, than they would if they simply kept their mouths shut.

Case in point — courtesy of Harvey at IMAO:

They Should Call it WhySarahPalinIsSoFreakingAwesome.Org
Posted by Harvey on February 4, 2009 at 10:00 am

Here at IMAO, we usually focus on the negative. And mock it mercilessly. But today I celebrate the positive.

Celebutard Ashley Judd (Who? I have no idea. I’m guessing she’s one of those no-talent, casting-couch pass-arounds that’s famous for being famous.) has offered her imprimatur to a site called EyeOnPalin.org. Upon hearing the news, I assumed it was just another Palin slander site like SarahPalinExposed.com or ABC.

Boy was I ever wrong.

This site has everything a Palin fan could want. Except maybe significant quantities of frequently updated content.
:
Sarah Palin not only kill wolves, she kills them FROM A MOVING AIRPLANE!

Not quite as cool as belittling Democrats from a stationary podium, but a close second in my book.

Plus the site give all these great reasons to vote for Sarah Palin if she blesses us by running in 2012. These headlines practically write their own campaign commercial:

• Palin battles for ANWR drilling
• Palin does no favors for musk oxen
• Palin supports in-state gas line
• Palin Fights Endangered Listing for Belugas
• First wolves, now polar bears
• Environmentalists Assail Palin

Oh, and there’s something for the kiddies. A pdf drawing of a wolf for your wee ones to print out and color. Please note they have to draw in their own airplanes and streaming bullets, which is probably just the site’s way of encouraging children to develop their artistic skills.

But if I had to choose the thing I like best about the site, it would be the fact that the WORST picture they could find of Sarah Palin looks better than the BEST picture they could find of Ashley Judd.

Somewhere on TOTALFARK I had questioned the necessity of Speaking Truth To Power against Republicans in late January 2009…as deeply ingrained a habit that may be for some of our luminous celebs. I compared Judd’s curiously-timed campaign to bring the truth to the people about those evil Republicans, to engaging in a debate with your much-dumber kid brother about whether he can collect $200 for passing Go, when the board’s chock full of hotels that belong to you from St. James’ Place to Boardwalk and he’s mortgaged clear up to his ass.

It’s exactly the same situation. What are you afraid of? Where exactly are these decisions being made that Ashley Judd doesn’t like, with democrats running everything? Alaska? She waited until the elections were over to tell us about wolves being hunted in Alaska? The national election went exactly the way you wanted it to, and you have to follow Sarah Palin back home and try to rally the lower-48 to dictate how things should & shouldn’t be done up there? Every square inch of soil in the union should have everything done on it, done the democrat way? Since we all know from looking at San Francisco, Chicago and Washington DC how great that works out?

That’s a neurosis. That’s a mental illness.

Does my heart good to see Harvey poking that kind of fun at it. There is truth in it. For many of us, Sarah Palin looks better after the criticism has been flung at her, than she did before. That whole “Troopergate scandal” is yet another example of it. She figured out someone should be fired, some guy supposedly got in the way, so she whacked him. Well, good. That’s the definition of a good leader. You figure out something needs to happen, people can count on you making it happen even if you run into some resistance.

Half the problems in politics — using the word “politics” loosely here, as it applies to any effort to shape policy involving multiple egotistical people — are caused by people who never truly think about the decisions they make, before they’ve got them made. They make enemies out of anyone who tries to bring in a different perspective. The other half of the problems are made by people who re-think things endlessly, never deciding anything. In so doing, they put the most contentious factions in charge of everything. We have 206 weeks to observe some more examples of both of those.

Don’t blame me. I voted for the non-lawyers. And it’s always been my vision that the nicer-looking of the two should really end up in the top spot. It’s looking more and more like I’ll get that wish, with just a little more waiting. Becoming more and more certain every day.

Amen, Morgan, for starters she wouldn’t have given an inaugural that would have inspired not depressed. She might have closed Gitmo, than transfer the detainees to the icy tundra, and brought the wolves along for good measure; that would have provoked a quandary for Ashley, who do you root for the wolves or the terrorists. The Huntress would have told Putin to knock off the threats against Poland and the Czech Republic, but it was not to be,not yet anyways.
- narciso | 02/08/2009 @ 16:28
Yeah, the Palin VP candidacy in ’08 blew my mind. Not so much because of what she said or did, but what her critics said or did:

– Assailed her, when she personifies everything the feminist movement claims to love: strong, independent women who don’t take crap from anybody.
– Called her stupid, when you clearly don’t get elected governor of a state by being a moron
– Tried to paint her as some kind of dangerous, backwoods bible-thumper…when a middle-aged, happily-married-with-kids woman (one with an unplanned pregnancy in the family) represents America today better than anyone else I can think of.
– Impersonated her on SNL to the point where people could no longer tell the difference between her and the real article
– Dared call her executive experience into question, when she has more of it than the Obama/Biden combined.

Picking her as a running mate was the only wise thing the McCain campaign did in its entire incompetent run.

Just frackin’ blew my mind. The good news is that it looks like Ms Palin isn’t going anywhere. She will definitely be back for another go-around. She has to win re-election to the governor’s office in ’10, then she can hit the national scene in 2012. If she doesn’t run for President, I hope she at least goes for a Senate seat.
- cylarz | 02/09/2009 @ 21:56
Agreed, cylarz, specially after what was that we just witnessed last night. I disagree on just one point though, Tina Fey is nothing like Sarah, she bears a slight resemblance, but the portrayal was nowhere as strong, confident, or frankly attractive (we go back to that thread back in November) as she is. And that wasn’t incidental, only by portraying her as Tina’s dotty aunt could they really achieve their goal.
- narciso | 02/10/2009 @ 00:40
Late, I know, but I can’t resist. Thumbs up to all posters, since I couldn’t agree more.

I’m having a lot of trouble with the awfulness we’ve just witnessed; it’s shaken my faith in Americans in a way I didn’t expect. The only good thing I can come up with is that the Left and “Feminism” have been exposed for what they are, which is a swamp of envy and resentment.

One thing for sure, Sarah Palin broke down the closet door of the man-haters. How dare she have a life of accomplishment without depending on a powerful man to open doors for her? She’s the first American female politico who wasn’t hand-carried by a father and/or a husband, and the harpies have all been shown up. And man, do they hate her.

She’s got my vote for good.
- rob | 02/10/2009 @ 20:55
This seems an appropriate place to give a shout-out back to Dick Stanley the Texas Scribbler, for the linky-love and polite admiration he showed this morning to our banner logo. Now, if that turns into a hot fashion trend, that’s one I can get behind.
- mkfreeberg | 02/10/2009 @ 22:03
the WORST picture they could find of Sarah Palin looks better than the BEST picture they could find of Ashley Judd.

Well, you and I both know that this really means that they didn’t try very hard, because Ashley is freaking hot, as hot as Sarah.

But her ad was so much one-sided, bleeding heart enviro-PeTA-bullcrap that I couldn’t take it seriously. I doubt Ashley is well versed in issues of conservation and wildlife management. Except for what she learned from PeTA, maybe.
- philmon | 02/11/2009 @ 15:09

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The Meaning of Sarah PalinSunday, February 8th, 2009

The Meaning of Sarah Palin
Sunday, February 8th, 2009