Monday 15 September 2008

SULLIVAN’S SORROWS..

Sarah Palin: the most underqualified vice-president ever?

“It is a farce. It is absurd. It is an insult to all intelligent
people. It is a sign of a candidate who has lost his mind. “

“McCain has rendered himself unfit to run a branch of Starbucks, let
alone the White House. “

“She had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was – the central and most
controversial foreign policy innovation of the past eight years.”

“Then we have the now mountain of lies that follow Palin everywhere she
goes, lies she keeps repeating as if they are not subject to factual scrutiny” -
etc. etc. ad infinitum

There you have him, Andrew Sullivan, Sunday
Times
correspondent, and - for reasons that elude me - “one of America’s most influential commentators“, frothing at the mouth.

Needless to say, the courtesy of the political journalist is usually
inversely proportional to his common good sense. More pertinently, they often
lose sight of the difference between wishful thinking and a reasoned conclusion.
And Andrew is no exception. For if, instead of quarrelling over how many angels
can dance on the top of a pin, he’d taken a single step backwards, he would
clearly have discerned that denying the truth does not change the facts. For
even though the racial mix of America is altering as immigration fuels
population growth, Obama is, in fact, at this moment in time, unelectable. And
so, for that matter, is McCain - pickled, as he is, in Botox and walking like
the Golem of the Ghetto. Let us not pretend otherwise. In fact, it is hard not
to admire what either Obama or McCain achieved, but the histrionic conduct of
their thousands of helpers also suggests that an element of ever more desperate
self-deception has long since pervaded their respective electoral campaigns.

So with the electorate caught between a rock and a hard place. Sarah
Palin is, in truth, the answer to a prayer. So far from being “a massive,
unforgivable, inexplicable decision by someone who has either gone insane or is
managerially unfit to be president of the United States“
, she is, in all
probability, the single most effective recruiting agent ever to be nominated for
the vice-presidential responsibility. A stroke of immaculate conception, in
other words, rather than an act of Biblical savagery.

But, of course, when a media war is waged on someone thought to have
done wrong, the executor in the one instance can easily become the victim in
another. And if you really have a problem with women being nominated to the Vice
Presidency while not knowing the Bush Doctrine, she seems to me to be a
prophetess of the changed world one so longs for. She doesn't know, as yet, what
the eyes of the dead are like. For here's the point. The perniciousness of its
ideology can easily be acquired, whereas a guiltless personality is a divine
bequest.

Or think of it this way, Andrew, at least when she’s kissing them, we
know she’s been the mother of, rather than murdering, babies...

Dreamy


15 comments:

Richard Havers said...

She was/is a masterstroke of political gamesmanship.

She's also terrifying.

Colin Campbell said...

I am just gobsmacked by the acceptance of the McCain/Palin lies by the media and many Americans and the breathless acceptance of a lightweight politician to potentially run the largest military industrial complex in the world.

Talk about a potential puppet dictatorship in a crisis.

Bob said...

A wise man once said: the job of the president of the Galaxy is not to execute power, but to distract peoples attention away from it. This is the reason why Zaphod Beeblebrox was the perfect president of the Galaxy, and in much the same way Sarah Palin will be the pefect president of the USA. She really has good legs after all.

Unless of course you are a voter and you don't belong to the fundamental Christians.

Selena Dreamy said...

“This is the reason why Zaphod Beeblebrox was the perfect president...”

...it is also the reason why Ronald Reagan was the perfect president. He didn’t know his elbow from his arse - but like any reality TV show, politics can be manipulated by the powers behind the thrown. He also thrived on conflict. It allowed him to cultivate nationalism.

Selena Dreamy said...

“I am just gobsmacked by the acceptance of the McCain/Palin lies by the media and the breathless acceptance of a lightweight politician ..”

By now, Colin, I think virtually all pretence has been abandoned that this vice-presidential nomination was anything other than purely propagandistic. Which is what makes this, Andrew Sullivan’s, particular outburst so noteworthy for its virulence...

Selena Dreamy said...

“She's also terrifying.”

So is her beauty, which works powerfully in her favour. What one loses in translation is the shrewdness, which is what matters in politics. Perhaps the countdown to Armageddon has begun. Who knows, she is careful and polite but the hint of steel is unmistakable!

But then, Richard, beauty is a genus of power that experiences sharply diminishing returns...

All Shook Up said...

"even though the racial mix of America is altering as immigration fuels population growth, Obama is, in fact, at this moment in time, unelectable."

McCain/Palin lead 54%/36% among whites, Obama/Bidon lead 88%/6% among blacks. Racism rears its head...

As for, "I am just gobsmacked by the acceptance of the McCain/Palin lies by the media and many Americans and the breathless acceptance of a lightweight politician to potentially run the largest military industrial complex in the world." Swap Obama/Bidon for McCain/Palin and the same sentiment would work just as well.

Personally, I'm finding it hard to be objective because I'm loving the sight of the darling of the unthinking left, who console themselves by their belief that they have the monopoly on compassion and intelligence, being swatted by a redneck. Obama may be clever and ambitious... but man he's full of wind. They've only got to hear the opening bars of "Hope and Change" and the crowds orgasm and wave their lighters more as if they're at a Barry Manilow concert than a political rally.

Crushed said...

I won't deny she is an attractive woman.

And that's why she was chosen.

I think Obama will still win.

Anonymous said...

OK. She is pure MILF if you ask me.

Selena Dreamy said...

...point taken, Muts - but would you vote for her?

Selena Dreamy said...

"I think Obama will still win."

Let me put it this way, I would still vote for him. But I do think Obama emerges ever more clearly as a self-deluding Cinderella man. Nor is it easy to avoid the thought that his astounding success so far has already been a captivating enough fairy-tale...

Richard Havers said...

Much as I'm beginning to sound like a broken record Dreamy, but I'm with you!

Selena Dreamy said...

“They've only got to hear the opening bars of "Hope and Change" and the crowds orgasm and wave their lighters.”

I think that what these party programmes rely on is the voting public being subjected to ever more rousing emotions. But nothing, on the other hand, dies more quickly than passion. An orgasm is a fine thing, but the question really is, how long can it be sustained...?

It's all a matter of timing, really!

Selena Dreamy said...

"Much as I'm beginning to sound like a broken record..."

Gosh, Richard, can't hear enough of it - don't stop...:)

Helen said...

Steve Sailer had an interesting perspective on the neo-Rep's brilliant bit of maneuvering:

...a woman so hormonally exuberant, with her dual archetypes straight out of a Camille Paglia reverie: half Alaskan Amazon, half Venus of Willendorf...
Mrs. Palin’s instant ascent to frontier folk hero explains some of the unhinged hatred felt by Obama supporters. They’d been fantasizing about their genetically nuanced man of the future, their political Tiger Woods, when they were blindsided by a figure out of America’s buried past, a merrily comic Wild West character in the tradition of Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane. She’s already inspired hundreds of one-liners in the Chuck Norris mode—“As head of Alaska’s National Guard, Sarah Palin taught troops how to scare a grenade into not exploding”—the modern equivalent of all the yarns about Davy Crockett.

The even more fundamental reason underlying all the fury on one side and amusement on the other is that this brouhaha centers around female fertility...

To the outrage of Obamaphiles, Palin has horned in on all that subliminal symbolism with her own old-fashioned American brand. She’s had five kids while throwing out the crooks and nepotists. And now she has a 17-year-old pregnant daughter engaged to a strapping 18-year-old hockey player in one of the few places left in America where a young man with a strong back can support a family.

Thus, Blue State whites are alarmed and enraged to be reminded that Red State whites can afford to outbreed them.

I wish I stumbled upon this thesis!

My vanity made me pluck your trail of bread crumbs back here to your blog, whilst female fertility has kept me thither, alas not my own quite yet.