10-Aug-10 Who needs education to run a city, state, or nation?

10-Aug-10 Who needs education to run a city, state, or nation?



“Manager: Levi Johnston to run for city office in Alaska

By BECKY BOHRER

The Associated Press

Monday, August 9, 2010; 10:57 PM

JUNEAU, Alaska -- Levi Johnston may be following in Sarah Palin's footsteps.

Johnston's manager, Tank Jones, on Monday confirmed a report on Variety magazine's website that Johnston is planning to run for city office in his hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, as part of a reality TV show. “

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/09/AR2010080906145.html

The decision to a run a high school dropout for local political office so that he may appear in a television reality show is yet another reason to despise the Palins and their extended clan. While it can be claimed that Sarah Palin is not responsible for the actions of Levi Johnson and his hangers-on; she is in fact, at the root of the problem. She has done everything in her power to trivialize the electoral process while keeping herself in the money and celebrity stream.

If Palin had not pushed her pregnant daughter and her boyfriend onto the stage to demonstrate her adherence to the “family values – theocratic” platform, she’d have delivered another anonymous statistic and he’d have spent his adult years reminiscing into his cheap beers about how great he was on the ice and how his hockey prowess got him laid repeatedly. Whether or not he would have finished high school is uncertain but would have been of no concern to most of the nation.

But while the McCain/Palin ticket was rejected by the voters, Palin got enough attention from a press corps that was desperately trying to find some substance in her candidacy. She reverted to archetype and the attention-craving beauty pageant contestant demanded the spotlight while spiraling toward self-destruction because of ethics violations, abuse of power citations, and the inability to make her view of reality coincide with the political office she no longer found to be satisfying, fun, or easy.

GOP backers found her a book deal, signed her up to make canned speeches, and reinforced her craving for attention. Unable to face real reporters and journalists, she has found parasitic attachments to Fox News and hands out pronouncements concerning her own princess personae from the journalistic pinnacles of Facebook and Twitter. Since she, or her minions, can prevent her seeing anything that resembles truth, she’s free to utter nonsense, provoke division, and pander to racists, anti-intellectuals, anti-Semites, and Tea Party mobsters.

Because she has retained celebrity, the miscreant daughter and the former fiancé have also been able to milk the media, particularly tabloid media. They are being provided more money than either would have ever learned in two lifetimes to keep the try pots boiling as the tabloids look for more scandal or ignominy.

The announcement that Levi Johnson plans to degrade the already damaged political entity that Sarah Palin did not finish ineptly destroying is a symptom of how poorly informed our electorate has become, how low the bar has been dropped by the GOP and its southern strategy. From railing against education and intellectualism, the GOP has now offered candidates of such poor quality that most voters with any education can’t imagine they are viable.

But here it is, folks. America has no talent, no education, no future, and no ethical values if any municipality allows such a charade to take place during its elections. What we’re encountering is a former. often resigned, political puppet/hack who has managed to become a demagogue to the illiterate, the ill-informed, the false patriots, and the bottom of the electorate. She’s managed to cheapen her candidacy and that of others by reducing the election of political officials to something akin to “American Idol.” If we let them get by with it, we’ll be too far down this road to ever successfully turn back. Armageddon or at least 3rd World America is likely to begin in Wasilla AK.