Political blogs are getting to be more of a pain in the ass to read and less and less fun to actually write. One of my favorite bloggers, Dennis the Peasant, just quit because, in his words, "lots of those folks can't write, are remarkably uninformed, and quite a few are just plain stupid." That's not something that you can argue with without looking plenty stupid yourself.I'd guess that very few bloggers would know a principle if it reached up and touched their junk. Pick almost any political blog from either side of the divide. Go back in their archives about three years. You'll almost certainly notice that things that were horrible then are more than okay now. And things that were okay then are signs of tyranny today.
I chose the phrase "reached up and touched your junk" at the beginning of the last paragraph for a reason. In 2006 every GOP asshole blogger was fine with illegal (at the time) warrantless wiretapping. Now they're outraged by patdowns at the fucking airport. I wonder what could have changed so many minds about something as fundamental as national security so quickly ....
I actually like IMAO. Sure, they toe the constantly shifting and powerfully dumb GOP line, but that blog is well-written and funny, which is increasingly rare. I don't want this post to be construed as an attack on IMAO in the way that I routinely attack Red State or anything that has the name Brietbart on it.
But Frank J. had a line in this morning's Random Thoughts that I want to explore a little bit. I think the attitude behind the remark explains a lot about the double standard employed by Sarah Palin and her fans. The line was "Every time FDR gave a speech, I don’t remember it getting compared to what some woman posted on Facebook."
That stood out to me because Palin and her allies go out of their way to get people to compare her favorably to the President of the United States. The fact that a good number of Americans do is, in my asshole opinion, a sign that Americans are doomed. When push comes to shove, the woman's a moron.
But God help you if you point that point that out in public. Then you'll be subjected to tirades about unfairness and sexism that Republicans routinely mocked as recently as the summer of 2008. Remember all of the Hillary Clinton jokes that came from the right? I do, and some of them were really funny. If you were to mention that Michael Steele was almost comically ineffectual as RNC Chairman, someone like Dan Rheil would accuse you of racism.
Too many alleged "conservatives" are now actually competitive with liberals in the great game of identity politics, and Sarah Palin is their showpiece affirmative action case. The only difference is that liberals are dumb enough to believe their own horseshit, whereas conservatives are just cynical motherfuckers.
When it suits the purposes of Palin and her supporters, she's just "some woman." But if you treat her like some woman, presumably one who should be locked in the fucking cellar and ignored, you're clearly sexist because she's just as capable of being president as anyone.
Howard Stern went on a priceless Palin tear yesterday morning, mentioning her retarded feud with David Letterman. As you might remember Letterman told an admittedly bad joke where he misidentified one of Governor Palin's daughters for another. She responded by actually living on TV for three fucking weeks decrying the unfairness of it all. More annoying was the fact that every chucklehead blogger on the goddamned planet echoed her insipid talking points for just as long.
On the other hand, Sarah can run around the country calling people Marxists that want to destroy America and placing crosshairs over the districts of politicians that she names. But when something went wrong - and I've said that blaming her for it was unfair, wrong and stupid - she puts out an eight minute video comparing herself to tens of millions of Jews that were murdered because it was thought that they were murdering Christian babies and poisoning wells.
And if you have the balls to call her on that, then you're just nitpicking. There is simply no winning with this woman or her dopey fans. Six people were murdered and more than a dozen were wounded and, in the end, it's still all about Sarah. She, and Republicans generally, actually seem to believe that she was damaged as grievously as the people that were shot were.
No Frank, this isn't just "some woman" with a goddamned Facebook page. Sarah Palin fancies herself capable, qualified and willing to serve as the president of the United States. She compares herself constantly with the incumbent and regularly implies that she's just like Reagan.
In his last press conference as president, Dwight Eisenhower was asked if he thought that he had been treated fairly by the press. Ike grinned and said "I don't see what a reporter can do to a president, do you?" Ronald Reagan's attitude was the same. He'd chuckle and dismiss the media in the most jovial way imaginable. There's none of that in Palin.
Well, you know what? There's a big, bad world out there and it's chock full of awful people. And if a hypothetical President Palin can't deal with snide comments from MSNBC or The New York Times without releasing a hysterical video or resigning her office, I shudder to think of what the Iranians or North Koreans are going to do to her and, by extension, America.
And no, there is no Department of Law that she can run to run to every time somebody says something mean about her.
0 comments:
Post a Comment