Run Sarah! All the way to Amalfi!

 "I asked one woman whether she'd been part of "9/12," as tea partiers call the great taxpayer march on Washington, D.C., last September. No, she'd missed it, she said, and "felt really guilty" about doing so, but she and her husband had been on vacation.

"Where did you go?"

"We spent a week in Amalfi, then we toured Tuscany, then we spent a week in Rome."

Another woman, hearing my accent, told me about her and her partner's second home in Torquay, England, which they visited three times a year from their base in Atlanta, and about their thirty-five-foot powerboat, in which they'd crossed the Channel to Le Havre and cruised down the French canals to Marseilles.

Most of us were political novices. When we were asked how many attendees had never been involved in politics before joining the Tea Party movement, roughly four out of every five people raised their hands. On the outside balcony where the smokers gathered, I was joined at a table by an intense, wiry, close-cropped, redheaded woman from southern Virginia who dated her conversion to hearing Sarah Palin for the first time.

"She was me! She's so down-to-earth! If Sarah was sitting here with us now, she'd be just a normal person like you and me. You could say anything to her. She's not like a politician—she's real. And Sarah always keeps her word. If Sarah promises something, you know she'll do it. She's just am azing."  NYRB

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I believe I know that woman from southern Virginia.  pl

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23723

Comments

[Cato the Censor]

"I believe I know that woman from southern Virginia."

You have my sympathy.

[Fred Strack]

I'm glad they said the pledge of allegiance, too bad the left out the "..and justice for all." part. I'm sure God won't forget.

[Jose]

"She was me! She's so down-to-earth! If Sarah was sitting here with us now, she'd be just a normal person like you and me. You could say anything to her. She's not like a politician—she's real. And Sarah always keeps her word. If Sarah promises something, you know she'll do it. She's just am azing."

Sounds like me a year ago talking about Foolbama...lmao

[Nancy K]

Jose, I'm not happy about President Obama also, I wish he was not such an appeaser, was more aggressive, and had more balls. However, no matter how unhappy I am with this administration, I look at the Republican party and what a poor excuse they are and I know that I would vote for Obama in a minute. It is a sad thing when we have to vote for the least worse, not the best. But that seems to be American politics.
I truly wish he had just told the Republicans to go F--- themselves and pushed through the Public Option, but he didn't.
I think many American feel he is too far left, I feel he is too far right.

[walrus]

Please don't consign her to Amalfi. I love the place.

I still for some stupid reason have this overwhelming feeling that a Petreaus/Palin Republican ticket could be a winner in 2012.

Has anyone read "The Good Soldiers" by David Finkel chronicling his time with the 2-16th in Iraq? It was released here today.

[fanto]

Colonel, this post will go 'viral'....

[BillWade, Nh]

"Sounds like me a year ago talking about Foolbama...lmao"

Jose, very decent of you, about every other car with a sticker had an Obama sticker here in my liberal town, you don't see many anymore. I still have my two Ron Paul stickers though!!!

[anna missed]

I can't decide whether Sarah Palin is the reincarnation of Huey Long, the first reality show candidate, or both. I wonder if she quit the governorship to avoid something akin to the impeachment trials Long went through - as he tried to place a tax on oil production to fund his social programs. The fallout of oil prices must surely had something to do both with her rise in popularity as well as with her decision to quit. As the price of oil fell, in all likelihood, her popularity would also fall along with the qusi-socialist oil dividends passed out to the population.

And also like a modern day Long, her populist act is pure celebrity. In the sense that it provides an image for her followers to personally identify with, except that in this day and age, it does so in such a way that it also functions as a media ready template. She is in effect, a political version of reality TV, where the context and content are subverted into a voyeristic display of human foibles. The content of which is sublimated or buried into a context designed to reinforce a subliminal narrative of hierachical authority.

All reality shows operate on the principal of rubes preforming some "talent" before a panel of unquestioned authority (most often, idiots themselves) with an unquestionable criteria (usually vague and capricious) where otherwise ordinary folks, compete with one another in such a way that the content for the viewer becomes a vicarious process of identifying with the contestant.
Sarah is performing a similar such dance for the media and her viewers, as they are designed to make her popular, the media obsessed with her, and as a consequence, her followers impotent, and the powers behind the whole escapade, even more ridiculously wealthy.

[William R. Cumming]

Is there a Gresham's Law for politicians? Wondering if there is an Issac Newton out there who will prevent the clipping and shaving of the king's (political) coinage? Don't think it is Sarah Palin but could be wrong as always.

[rjj]

SCAPEGOATS AND PANACAEAS!!!

divest GreenTumb (certified U.S. plantation-grown forest product tumbrels) - consumer demand is for The Man (or Woman) on the White Horse.

[Charles I]

Palin uses word "Ironic" correctly!

"Palin's Canadian health care claim stuns critics

WASHINGTON–Sarah Palin's weekend admission that her family had travelled to Canada to receive treatment under the public health-care system she's so often demonized prompted skepticism and ridicule Monday among her critics in the United States.

"My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse," the former Alaska governor said Saturday night during a speech in Calgary.

"Believe it or not – this was in the '60s – we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing, and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn't that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada."

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/healthcaresystem/article/777009--palin-s-canadian-health-care-claim-stuns-critics

[GregB]

Gen. Petreaus is far too politically savvy to anchor himself to the one time loser Veep candidate Sarah Palin.

I do get a kick out of those who still support Sarah Palin and yet were quick to mock then candidate Obama as nothing but a celebrity.

It is too funny. Palin is shopping around for a reality show, traveling about in a bus with her likeness on the side, doing stand-up shtick on late night talk shows.

All the exact opposite of what she should be doing if she were seriously seeking to burnish her gravitas for a future run.

It's right out of the film Idiocracy.

[Ralph Hitchens]

Sarah always keeps her word? In taking the oath of office as governor of Alaska she was, in effect, promising four years of service. But she quit after two. Kinda sounds like she was less than honest with the voters there....

[s nadh]

GregB, the president in Idiocracy dressed better and made much more sense.