Re: The Tragedy of Sarah Palin

I'm nodding over here. So do you think her greatest role may be as a
political gadfly, pushing change not from within office, but from without?

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |*
*


On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Mike Findlay <[email protected]>wrote:

> 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 <petert-LOVM4QxV+tDq6eQxt3vRmLDks+cytr/[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.
>
>
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