Re: The Tragedy of Sarah Palin

What two interviews is he referring to?  I'm guessing one is Couric and fair 
enough, (although it was really one question - she comes of pretty well in the 
rest of the interview - which of course no one remembers anymore).  But is he 
referring to the Charles Gibson one with the Bush Doctrine question?  No one 
knew the answer to that and it turned out Gibson didn't even know it - there was 
no formulated Bush Doctrine and different people described it different ways.

This is a classic example of how the media created a false narrative in an all 
out effort to destroy her.  I have a hard time blaming anyone for not being 
ready to deal with the savagery brought to bear on her by the media.  


That said I think the article makes some fair points about how her reaction was 
human, (imo understandably so), and I agree that she probably has no future as 
an elected official.  However, I am struck by Limbaugh's maxim to the effect of: 
the extent to which the left/media attack someone is a reflection of their fear 
of that person.  The continuing vitriol with which she is met far outstrips the 
influence/power that someone as shallow, stupid, evil, etc. as she is accused of 
being should merit.  She drives them nuts and inexplicable so.  


Having just finished Breitbart's book I'm re-inclined to say "Go Sarah Go!", (to 
be distinguished from Run, Sarah, Run). 


Mike F.  

  




________________________________
From: Peter Chattaway <[email protected]>
To: Daniel Amos off-topic listserver <[email protected]>
Sent: Thu, May 12, 2011 10:03:57 AM
Subject: [DADL-OT] The Tragedy of Sarah Palin

Note: Douthat writes this as one who once recommended Palin for the 
vice-presidency, shortly before McCain went that route:

http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2008/08/my-pick-for-veep/55512/

- - -

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/the-tragedy-of-sarah-palin/

by Ross Douthat
May 11, 2011, 6:10 pm

Josh Green has a great piece in the latest Atlantic on the Sarah Palin who might 
have been — Palin the reformist governor of Alaska, that is, rather than Palin 
the spotlight-chasing, media-feuding avatar of right-wing identity politics that 
we’ve come to know since the 2008 election. The Alaskan Palin fought corruption 
within her own party, attacked the nexus of government and big business, avoided 
polarizing feuds and cut successful bipartisan deals; in the process, Green 
notes, “she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, 
what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a 
trajectory to financial well-being.” This was the Palin that I liked from afar, 
before John McCain elevated her to national prominence: The charismatic pro-life 
working mom who was also a good-government reformer capable of thinking outside 
the ideological box. (Imagine Mitch Daniels crossed with Michelle Bachmann — in 
a good way.) And it’s a Palin who was swallowed up, almost immediately, by the 
national culture war, which made her both a right-wing icon and a left-wing hate 
figure almost instantaneously, and effectively erased her more interesting and 
complicated past.

Ruminating on Green’s piece, and Palin’s post-2008 trajectory, John Podhoretz 
suggests that she has no one but herself to blame:

    The fault here lay not with her attackers but within her. She embarrassed 
herself in two interviews, and decided the blame lay not with her own 
ill-preparedness but with the media that had come after her. Understandably 
enraged by the misogynistic and practically psychotic attacks on her, she came 
to embrace her status as a kind of martyr for the social-conservative views that 
had not been the truly distinguishing features of her meteoric political career 
up to that moment.

I agree completely: Palin was caricatured viciously, but in response she decided 
to essentially become the caricature, giving her enemies exactly the kind of 
Spiro Agnew-in-heels performance they expected, and then chasing celebrity in 
destructive (if lucrative) ways once the initial firestorm around her subsided. 
The only thing that can be said in her defense is that her choices, while 
misguided, have been very, very human. Consider: If you were bounced from 
obscurity to national prominence and immediately found yourself attacked from 
every angle imaginable — the personal, the political, and everywhere in between 
— to whom would you instinctively turn to for advice and counsel? To the elite 
Republicans who seemed to disdain you from the beginning? To the McCain 
strategists who sent you out as an attack dog and then blamed you for their own 
missteps and misjudgments? To the establishment media mavens who never gave you 
a fair shake? Or would you turn instead to the various conservative 
commentators, activists, radio hosts and bloggers who made it their business to 
champion you as the second coming of Ronald Reagan, to defend you from every 
attack (fair and unfair alike), to spin your blunders as successes and your 
gaffes as wisdom, and to generally insist that you could do no wrong?

We know how Palin answered that question. She has been ill-served, to put it 
mildly, by her “you’re great, you’re perfect, don’t change” admirers; she would 
have been far better off taking advice from some of her more constructive 
critics instead. But listening to one’s critics is hard; listening to the people 
who stood by you when you were in the crucible is far more natural and 
understandable. And that all-too-human tendency, as much as anything else, 
explains why we’ve ended up with a Sarah Palin who sounds more like, well, a 
right-wing talk-radio host than the promising politician she once was.


-- 
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot
-- 
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot