26 May 2010 Sarah Palin scarecrow in a tiara

26 May 2010 Sarah Palin scarecrow in a tiara


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/25/AR2010052503970.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Sarah Palin's fact-free commentary on Paul and BP



By Ruth Marcus

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

“Has Sarah Palin learned anything since she was plucked from obscurity almost two years ago? Not that I can tell

It was not Palin's fault that she was woefully unprepared to be the Republican vice presidential nominee. For that one, blame the petulant, impetuous John McCain.

But Palin has had ample time now, outside the crash course of a presidential campaign, to develop and exhibit some understanding of the issues. Her learning curve, from all the available evidence, is a flat line.

Three unattractive Palin traits have, if anything, been amplified since the election: her unwillingness to buckle down and do the necessary preparation; her tendency to adopt what McCain adviser Steve Schmidt described as a "down is up and up is down" version of reality; and her enhanced sense of injury at the hands of what she oh so cleverly refers to as the "lamestream media."

Marcus does a good job of nailing Palin to the wall in her column. She quickly fixes the source of the problem and the nature of the problem. She’s right on target. Palin has never changed her behavior from her high school days. Her public career has been a chain of back-biting, treachery, lies, unethical practices, using friends, abusing friendships, and coasting on her physical appearance and her willingness to use that appearance. She’s the perennial home-coming queen candidate promising little and delivering even less.

I guess, for many people who stopped thinking and learning before entering high school, her appearance and willingness to parrot the words and thoughts of others endlessly is sufficient. It’s not for me.

I hear the echoes as incomprehensible strings of proto-language bounce around the empty space that should contain a brain. I think of the immense number of unwanted pregnancies that will result if her heartless, and brainless, approach to birth control and sex education become the law of the land again. One would think that her own experience at becoming pregnant before becoming married would cause her to think the cause and relationship through instead of trying to enforce ignorance and abstinence upon the world. But apparently, she can’t quite make that connection. Like the language circuits, the logic and reality circuits are missing and presumed dead.

Like untold thousands, who continue to return to the “home-coming” experience, to reconnect with people who they never connected with initially, Palin’s supporters flock to the myth. I truly have not seen her high school academic records. I don’t need to. She obviously had no interest in education then and has never seen reason to reverse that. She obviously had a mob of drooling boys willing to dance to her tune and a snakes’ nest of retainers and toadies willing to crown her as long as she exhibited sufficient pulchritude and social dominance.

Today she has a much larger following, comprised of almost exactly the same unlearned, unthinking, sycophants. I’ve seen endless internet proclamations of her “hotness,” her “common sense,” her opposition to corruption, her motherhood, create your own list.

She’s approaching 50, her hair falls out under stress, she has no common sense, no ethical platform, and motherhood is a physical mistake, not sanctification. Take away her makeup, her foundation garments, and let the tea baggers see he as she actually is, and that home-coming queen façade will vanish for all but the most gullible.

The working press, that is anything not slaved to Fox News, needs to begin insisting Palin submit to interviews. No working media should mention or print her name until she agrees to a real interview by real journalists, with real questions not previously submitted. The press has enough power to do it if they want to. Sure, it will anger the Tea baggers. That’s a good thing too. They’ll start spouting out the things they’ve been hiding so far, the ugly racism, religious fundamentalism and desire for a national religion that they’ve been suppressing so far.

Just as people sometimes say more than they should at home-coming, the tea baggers, theocrats, and Palin may spill all sorts of stupidity if they’re angered just a bit more by the people who can actually read their high school diplomas insisting the press do its job.

I’ve never gone to any of my high school reunions. There’s no need. I knew enough about the people who return before high school was over. I never voted for any of them then and certainly have no intention of voting for any of them now.

Marcus is all too correct. It’s time the real press start functioning as it should. They need to think about returning to their own past, and trying to remember those journalists who first inspired them to start publishing the truth.

Perhaps the media should host a homecoming for its people, to remind them that they can still follow in the paths blazed by Pulitzer, Cronkite, Murrow, Ivins, and others who were too proud and too honest to settle for electing or being led by a scarecrow in a tiara.