Re: The Tragedy of Sarah Palin

Yes, exactly.  I don't think she could win a general election but she can sure 
have influence both on the right by voicing the conservative message, and the 
left, by driving them nuts, distracting them and getting them to act like 
jerks.  As much as the general public may not like her, or be inclined to voter 
for her, they don't like seeing people being unfairly picked on and much of what 
the left does with Palin comes across that way.  


And I honestly think she is having fun jerking peoples chains.  I like/agree 
with most of what she says, my only criticism is that she still comes across as 
too scripted at times, but my guess is that going off the cuff and/or being more 
casual aren't in her wheelhouse.

Mike F.    




________________________________
From: Johne Cook <[email protected]>
To: DADL (off topic) <[email protected]>
Sent: Thu, May 12, 2011 10:47:27 AM
Subject: Re: [DADL-OT] 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 <[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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