September 9th 2008
Possibly The Worst And Best Palin Stories Yet
S
arah Palin stories just won’t go away. This morning we have WaPo digging into her per diems, a half dozen or so deconstructing the Bridge to Nowhere – it’s enough that FactCheck.org has run a summary of all the sick Palin rumors they’ve had to rebut lately, appropriately titled Sliming Palin. (Hat-tip to memeorandum for all those quick links.)
And in today’s crop, I’ve found what may be the best and worst Palin stories yet. Because you’re salaciously anticipating the worst, I’ll start with the best. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the retailers who always manage to put what you want at the far left corner of the store.
There’s mini-best and big-best. Mini first.
A PAC blog, Senate Conservatives Fund, has an item that blows all the Bridge to Nowhere negativity out of the water. (It’s also at LGF):
We linked last week to a web page sponsored by the Alaska Democratic Party, which attacks Sen. Ted Stevens and credits Governor Sarah Palin for killing the Bridge to Nowhere. Our post is here.
Today, we learned that the web page has been pulled. National Democrats apparently want to rewrite history and say that Palin did not kill the Bridge to Nowhere. Fortunately, we saved a screen shot (below) of the page so the facts could not be buried.
The anti-Ted Stevens website run by the Alaska Democratic Party says “Ted Earmarked Funds for Bridge that Goes Nowhere” and the “State of Alaska killed bridge”. They go further to credit Governor Palin for killing the Bridge to Nowhere. The site states: “She said it was clear Congress had little interest in spending any more money for it and that the state had higher priorities.” (emphasis added)
UPDATE: The Alaska Democrats didn’t erase everything. Here is a link to a separate page that says, “Gov. Palin recently cancelled the Gravina Island Bridge near Ketchikan that would have connected the Alaska mainland with Gravina Island (population: 50)”. We wonder how long it will take before this one is pulled down.
It’s not great writing, but it is great journalism, and we finally have a definitive counter to this meme – from the Dems themselves. The Obama campaign will continue to point at the Bridge to Nowhere to discredit the McCain/Palin ticket, but they will do so at their own risk, because their own experts, the Dem entity closest to the matter, contradicts the Dem talking points.
For the better good story, we have to go to England, to the Telegraph, where James Bennett writes that Sarah Palin is not such a small town girl after all. At first I thought this was another slam, showing that she was really raised in elite boarding schools in Paris, not in Sandpoint, ID, and that Wasilla was paying for Palin pied-a-terre in Maui and Martha’s Vineyard, but that’s not it.
Instead, Bennett tells of what it’s like in Alaska, a place he’s familiar with, and how hard it is to wrestle commercial fishing licenses out of the government, and how much political influence she has access to because her husband is not just Yup’ik Eskimo, but a full, enrolled Yup’ik Eskimo.
He says that Wasilla may be a small town in England or anywhere else in America, but it’s the fifth largest in Alaska, making her “an important player in state politics.” In California, that would be akin to being mayor of Long Beach. I helped Boeing get a project approved in Long Beach and can tell you the mayor has oversized power.
Of her relations with Big Oil, he writes,
Palin quickly realised that Alaska had the potential to become a much bigger player in global energy politics, a conviction that grew as the price of oil rose. Alaska had been in hock to oil companies since major production began in the mid-1970s.
As with most poor, distant places that suddenly receive great natural-resource wealth, the first generation of politicians were mesmerised by the magnificence of the crumbs falling from the table. Palin was the first of the next generation to realise that Alaska should have a place at that table.
“The first of the next generation” – in other words, a leader, a change agent, a visionary.
Summing up on our not so small town girl, Bennett writes,
In short, far from being a small-town mayor concerned with little more than traffic signs, she has been a major player in state politics for a decade, one who formulated an ambitious agenda and deftly implemented it against great odds.
Her sudden elevation to the vice-presidential slot on the Republican ticket shocked no one more than her enemies in Alaska, who have broken out into a cold sweat at the thought of Palin in Washington, guiding the Justice Department’s anti-corruption teams through the labyrinths of Alaska’s old-boy network.
It is no surprise that many of the charges laid against her have come from Alaska, as her enemies become more and more desperate to bring her down. John McCain was familiar with this track record and it is no doubt the principal reason that he chose her.
I came away from the story with a new, stronger appreciation of Palin, and greater confidence in her ability to be a strong VP and a help to McCain. How very refreshing that was, especially when compared to the worst, ugliest Palin story of the season, courtesy (a stretch) of Gary Kamiya, writing in Salon. It’s provactively called The Dominatrix, and subtitled, “Sarah Palin is trying to seduce independent voters.” Enough sexual innuendo for you? We’re not even started. Here’s the art:
It’s a fine illustration for the story, because Kamiya quickly dismisses Palin’s strengths and dismissively relegates her to an old, common role in politics: The attractive woman on the edges of power, who’s not there because of what she can do, but merely because of how she looks, and how she’s willing to do the bidding of the men.
Right now, Palin has Democrats quaking in their boots — and with good reason. But all hope isn’t lost. For even if this election turns out to be a referendum on the national libido, Palin may scare off more voters than she attracts.
Because to anyone who isn’t a true believer, Palin comes across not as a fantasy pinup, but as a dominatrix. And the S/M demographic isn’t going to put the Republicans over the top in the swing states.
The election turning on the national libido? With the economy, security and energy very much on the peoples’ minds, only the most sex-obsessed could even come up with the construct. S/M demographic have you confused? Good, I’m glad! We’ll let Kamiya dig his hole deeper:
For the die-hard Republicans who lusted over Palin at the convention, her whip-wielding persona was a turn-on. You could practically feel the crowd getting a collective woody as Palin bent Obama and the Democrats over, shoved a leather gag in their mouths and flogged them as un-American wimps, appeasers and losers. “Drill, baby, drill!” the chant ecstatically repeated by the GOP faithful during Rudy Giuliani’s speech, acquired a distinctly Freudian subtext after Palin spoke. The more Palin drilled the Democrats, the more hotly the base yearned to drill her. (We will leave it to shrinks to determine whether the GOP hardcore has the hots for Palin because she’s reaming the Democrats, or because authority-worshippers tend to have secret fantasies of being reamed themselves.)
Issues, be d*mned! Accomplishments? Who cares! Palin is all about sex, and not just sex, but the most illicit of all illicit sex: dirty GOP sex. Who is this guy Kamiya to come up with so much stable floorcovering? Is he a blind crack whore? That would explain the turgidness of his copy, and its wretchedly twisted misperceptions. No, we learn from his bio that he’s not a crack whore, but rather the hoity executive editor of Salon, who:
…lives on a street with cable cars with his wife, Kate Moses, and her son Zachary. He likes big cities, ’50s paperbacks with gratuitous cleavage on their covers, Steve Young, backpacking, Italy and people who like to talk.
OMG. San Francisco. Knock me over with a purple feather. He likes big cities and can’t comprehend small towns because his mind is slammed shut, unlike James Bennett’s. And he likes cleavage – another big surprise. More on Kamiya, to build your respect for the man:
After moving to California, he attended Berkeley High, where the student government was run by a dadaist cabal; put in a brief, LSD-riddled stint at Yale; and some aimless years later washed up in the UC-Berkeley English Department …
I couldn’t write a better definition for “out of touch with America,” but Kamiya professes to know how the mainstream American thinks.
But aside from the crude fact of her gender, she has nothing to offer women who don’t share her out-of-the-mainstream cultural values.
Successful, corruption-busting, pro-life, pro-church, PTA, youth sports – yeah, no one at all in Berkeley or on a cable car street in San Francisco is going to go for that, ergo, no one anywhere will go for that.
Let’s hope, and it’s not a particularly big hope, that Kamiya’s piece will become the great reading fodder of the Left. Best they not know what’s going to hit them.
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October 28th, 2008 at 6:04 am
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Comments
September 9th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I had only two thoughts when I read this guy’s way-too-graphic description of Palin’s alleged effect on Republicans: (1) I now know way too much about his personal life and (2) projection, projection, projection.