The deluge of articles about Palin continues as unchecked as a snow melt creek in Spring. We know already it seems, far more than we ever wanted to know about the female Maurice Minniefield (a little unfair, Maurice was not an unintelligent man). But the temptation to throw another pannican of water into the creek is irresistible.
Palin seems to me the first Manchurian candidate of the Murdoch era. I have reached this conclusion gradually. At first I thought she was a cunning plan to shore up the wild-eyed evangelical NASCAR dad base. But if this was a plan, the fact that she has lost all the non-evangelicals and non-NASCAR dads makes it a poor plan at best.
Then I thought that she was an extension of the George Bush strategy. I forget who it was, but one of the Republican strategists pointed out that Bush being so dumb and down home good old boy was not a minus but a plus. Every time he was criticized for being dumb and ignorant by the east coast elites he gained more votes from the dumb and ignorant. So I thought Palin might be the ultimate test of this strategy - how dumb and ignorant can a candidate be before this fact loses you more votes than it gains? Considerable merit in this idea, but not a full explanation.
And then it came to me. Here was me thinking all this time that the Murdoch empires' fair and balanced reporting was designed as a long term strategy to create a mass of voters who could be relied on to vote, in possession of a set of hatreds and prejudices but no factual information, for the candidates who would best serve to continue the interests of the corporations.
But I can see more clearly now. The strategy was even more long term than I thought. It was designed to create not just voters but actual candidates. In Sarah Palin we have the first candidate whose world view and knowledge base has been formed entirely by junk television and radio (her lack of any newspaper reading is one clue). She has been carefully prepared by years of exposure to Murdoch and Murdoch-style media to go all the way to the White House, either in 2012 or earlier, and then, her mind stuffed full of prejudices and hatreds and misinformation, do the bidding of her unseen trainers.
Will it work, or can she be foiled at the last moment? And what of the others who come after her?
Insights like this one abound on the Watermelon Blog.