Diva Destruction
Comments (1) Retrospect is always the better context for consideration of the larger picture. Rather than publish a fear-based assessment of Sarah Palin in the countdown to election night I gave the information time to marinate. In the interim I have drawn some conclusions.
This is a video assembled by the American News Project, a team closely associated with Michael Moore and many alternative media outlets. Though I would assume that no positive assessment of Palin would come from these associations, the information contained herein is nevertheless highly alarming and perhaps indicative of a deeper, more menacing spectacle. It is clearly not a meaningless concoction of partisan fear-mongering against the vice presidential candidate as, indisputably, the tapes uncovered in this composition were from Palin’s own church and subsequent media appearances. Humor me and give it a view:
I sat stunned and silent in front of my television the night Sarah Palin debated Joe Biden, but not because of the competitive thrill of political pugilists going brow-to-brow on camera.
Mine was a deep, primal chill of dread. Glancing over a barrage of political blogs, I found that I was not the only one unnerved by something I could not quite place my finger upon. Jill Hussein C., a writer for Brilliant at Breakfast on Blogspot, made the following remark:
One would think that the mother of [five] children, including an infant, and the soon-to-be grandmother of another infant, would use her “hockey mom” persona to frame her ticket’s agenda as creating a better world for her children. [She] doesn’t. And I think I know why. It’s because Sarah Palin doesn’t believe there is a future.
Jill’s assessment was jarring, and with such precision that the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end upon reading it. We all saw a robotic performer. The cold, mechanical mannerisms of the woman at that podium were starkly reminiscent of a cult recruiter I had encountered in the late nineties. In her remarks to her assembly back in Wasilla, Palin clearly believed that she was chosen by God to move forward into the path she has taken. Her rise to politics was directly attributed to a “prophesy” given to her by an African minister, seen in church footage blessing her and protecting her from witchcraft.
Cultists and extremists are a separate brand of danger in the sociopolitical mix; add high ambition and powerful charisma and you have a most unsettling phenomenon: someone capable of speaking a believable lie, manipulating it to the status of a truth, galvanizing others to action, and securing them as allies in an isolating breakaway from those who do not support their truth.
Palin did not concentrate on the state of the union because she did not feel that she needed to know the nation’s issues. To her, they are merely the backdrop to an upcoming series of events that eclipse the economy, the housing crisis and healthcare even on a national level. New York Times columnist Frank Rich drew a very important correlation between Sarah the candidate and Sarah the conqueror.
In the last of her Couric interview installments on Thursday, Palin was asked which vice president had most impressed her, and after paying tribute to Geraldine Ferraro, she chose “George Bush Sr.” Her criterion: she most admires vice presidents “who have gone on to the presidency.” Hours later, at the debate, she offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.
A few weeks later came Charlie Gibson’s question about whether she thought she was “experienced enough” and “ready” when McCain invited her to join his ticket. Palin replied that she didn’t “hesitate” and didn’t “even blink” — a response that seemed jarring for its lack of any human modesty, even false modesty.
But the debate’s most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of his children were killed in a car crash. Palin’s perky response — she immediately started selling McCain as a “consummate maverick” again — was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis’s notoriously cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his wife being “raped and murdered.” If, as some feel, Obama is cool, Palin is ice cold. She didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s devastating personal history.
Even her own handlers in the RNC have been quietly reporting to outsiders about the unbridled ambition that has rubbed them the wrong way and created undue strife within an already embattled campaign team. Many of her speeches were impromptu and unapproved, belying a dismissal record of collaboration when it was critically necessary for the success of the campaign. Hers was an individual goal, and the guidance of the RNC was consistently regarded as interference. Most damning were her attacks on opponent Barack Obama’s integrity by way of association with terrorists and radicals. These were wholly unapproved and created a landslide of backlash against both Palin and McCain, deepening the rift between Palin and her party.
Notably an alpha male, Karl Rove could not have taken too well to any of this. Given his propensity for political retaliation (most memorably regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame), it could be suggested that the leaks regarding Palin’s fall from grace among her peers in the RNC were more of the same. In his own first-hand assessment of Palin’s debut performance at the Republican National Convention, Rolling Stone contributor Matt Tiabbi pulls no punches.
I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker… She appeared to be completely without shame… It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
On social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook, WWII-era motivational images such as Rosie The Riveter were recycled in a disturbing poker play of the gender card to reach feminist voters. While not directly traceable back to the campaign itself, the messages were not unlike the lipstick cracks and bulldog rhetoric of Palin’s own forceful outward persona.
Immediately noticeable is the fact that Palin’s name is atop McCain’s, and I do not think this is mere coincidence. Not only does she believe herself to be the more important contender, she now has her supporters carrying this torch for her as well. If she does indeed go through with her threat to bid for the presidency in 2012, this style of propaganda would likely deepen and spread in menacing ways, especially if Obama’s presidency is less than marvelous in the eyes of the American public.
We have just elected, by a landslide, an African-American man to the highest office of the nation. In four years there may be no scandal or scare tactic big enough to deter us from feasting on the idea of a putting a woman into that same office.
Personally, I would sooner elect Tom Cruise.
Themocracy