Reading The Pictures: Palin Proud To Be Trash

This photo was circulated by Getty after Palin was tabbed for Veep by McCain and appeared, at least, in a cheeseball LAT election slideshow on Palin's fashion sense.

If you haven't seen it before, however, it's because the image, like Palin herself, is radioactive.

Although taken back in '04 (see caption below), the statement is significant today for revealing an attitude (along with the adorable love 'ya/just shot 'ya) that, upon her resignation from elected office, now morphs into a full-blown strategy. Palin has created a scenario, at least in her mind, in which she's defeated the press and can freely Facebook and speak obliquely with and to her equally angry and alienated true constituency.

Simply, she's positioned herself to reconnect, with the same invective, to the haters and fanatics she was inciting during the campaign.

For more visual politics, visit BAGnewsNotes.com (and follow us on Twitter).

(image: Robert A. Baker/Getty Images. Sarah Palin models purchased 'Proud to be Valley Trash' t-shirt as the result of State Senator Ben Stevens (son of Ted Stevens) comments that people living in the Mat-Su Borough are 'just Valley trash' July 21, 2004 in Wasilla, Alaska. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate at a campaign rally August 29, 2008 in Dayton, Ohio.)

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Comments

[Shayrae]

Figures.

[1differentdrummer]

What a load of nonsense. Why is there no context?

[S1m0n]

Did you read the part in Italics?

[martynf]

if a picture is worth a thousand words then enough is said and then some.

[gs425]

what exactly is said than?

[KurtO]

Ex-Gov Palin,
To use the words of Barbara Bush Sr. " I am done with you. "

[johnnygoodwud]

wow, wonder how i'd feel if my mother was sporting a t-shirt like that?

[peacegurl48]

The Left "fears" Palin in the same way that one would fear a drunken airline pilot. It is all about inability and lack of fitness for duty.

[PDinCA]

Thanks, you've hit on the perfect metaphor.

[kareemachan]

Yup, I'm going to remember that one!

[alenaspoppa]

Exactly. No one wants to crash into the side of a mountain, and that's exactly what a Palin presidency would mean to this country.

[Conserv]

How's that "Hope & Change" working out for you now?

[ThouBaldhead]

Actually, I think Palin will be among the leadership of the GOP that starts cleaning up after the crash currently underway, starting in 2010.

I hope we don't get another stimulus, at this rate it may drive unemployment up to 18% ... the left may think Palin's incompetent, but they must not be paying attention to the facts of their own President's reign.

[beaupritchard]

Not since Pamela Anderson strutted down the run way in a polka dotted trash bag have I been so entertained.

[DoTheMath]

I had not seen this photo before, but the winks during the VP debate clued me in on her trash pride.

[mcantwell]

When I saw this photo, my intial thoughts were of that bizarro VP debate as well.

This is what I remember from that debate: Wink, wink, wink, Joe six packs, you betcha, let me give a shout out, energy expert, no answers to questions, incoherent babbling, wink, wink,

[Didactic Curveball]

The posts on the story are great, folks! Keep 'em coming. I needed some laughs today.

Sarah...just go away. You make my teeth hurt and my @ss itch.

[miguelobrien]

Reminds me of what the "christian" mob did to the magnificent library at Alexandria, Egypt, in the early days [which had over a million scrolls]: burned it, dragged the head librarian [a woman] into the street and scraped the flesh off her body.

To "ghost": better read some factual history about the Church and ignorance, especially what they did to women who had knowledge and to the Knights Templar. Believe it may still be church doctrine that good Catholics do not read the Bible for themselves. Can you find out what they did to Galileo?

Last I heard, it is still on the books in the Vatican that the solar system revolves around the earth.

[ThinkCreeps]

I'm not sure you can be certain that the christians were to blame for burning the library in Alexandria. They definitely did the one in Constantinople, though.

[Snowflower]

Didn't Julius Ceasar burn the library?

There weren't any Christians then!

[CanisLatrans]

As in "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"?

[Jimmyboyo]

The Library of Alexandria was put to the fire many times.

Ceasar scorched the outer walls as a politcal stunt

later in time xtians and radical jews both burned most of it and tortured the librarians as pagans. Many of the tortured scholars were themselves Jews who were open to learning outside of thier more narrow minded brothers who helped the xtians to torch the "pagan" scrolls.

The final burning was done by the muslims but there really wasn't much left for them to burn. The muslims though did 1 up the other 2 monotheist crazy groups by tearing down many pagan buildings (including the outer limestone casing of the pyramids) to build their mosques.

[jasperjava]

The Christian emperor Theodisius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples in 391. A christian mob decided that the Library of Alexandria contained too many non-Christian texts and set fire to it.

[benne]

The Christians also took the opportunity to take a female librarians and scrape off her skin with shells. This form of populist antifeminism is alive and well in some sort of attacks against Palin.

[b1rd67]

That's ridiculous... the attacks on Palin are because she's an idiot, not becuase she's a woman! The only thing she has in common with a librarian is that she read a book.... once. She is about as non-intellectual as they come even if she does CLAIM to read every newspaper in the world. She has done more to set back the feminist cause than the Promise Keepers...

[kgb999]

That's AWESOME ... please please please: next an an analogy with female circumcision? The Palin victimization is so horrific - it knows no equal!

LMAO!

[protagonia]

You missed one HUGE detail - She IS a "Christian".

Palin would be in the streets with a sea shell if she were there then. She would have been [art of that mob.

[JayInDallas]

I think we can all agree that the frat-mentality let's-make-fun-of-the-geeks time is over. Today's politicians must come to the realization that with the advent of the web, Twitter, Blogging and other electronic media, pandering to the lowest common denominator means playing to a bar that has been moved considerably. This new administration owes a great deal to technology and its ability to reach a wide audience pretty quickly. It's like when you were in advanced calculus and a new theorem was introduced. You either caught on or you didn't and those who didn't either faked it or stuck out like a sore thumb.

This is why the GOP is imploding. They can't fake it anymore.

[AntonBursch]

Exactly!!

[IDIOTA]

Speaking of calculus, I still have trouble remembering epsilon, delta in terms of limits.

[YEHWEH]

I grew up in Eastern Kentucky. I don't just know white trash, I AM white trash. Make fun of Sarah Palin all you want, but please spare my people further insults.

[drumz]

If the shoe fits...

[montecarlo408]

You are only white trash if you fall for the hype. Just like all black people are not ghetto, all white people are not trash. Geography has nothing to do with it, either.

[devadasi]

There's plenty of 'white trash' right here in NYC......don't worry about it!

[postman66]

YEWEH, be all that you can be.

[IDIOTA]

White trash means different things to different people. It does not refer to people who yell their hope that ill befalls the president, the type that Palin attracts. White trash means white people of very modest means, and I have met several.

[everythinginmoderation]

Stop referring to yourself as Trash. No one is trash ! It pains me to hear you say that about yourself.

[hollybork]

This Palin in trash t-shirt has as the characteristics of posturing political coyness. It will go down in the unforgettable "Annals of Palin," along with the grizzly bear throw over her office couch, the red high heel peep toe shoes, the cutsey winks during her debate with Biden, and last but not least, the interview before the blood streaming turkey slaughter machine on the day before Thanksgiving. What a cluck! What a chuckle head!

She is and remains a walking, talking cartoon of ineptitude and political stupidity.

[meko]

Don't forget the American Flag used as a throw on the back of her office chair in her Runner's World spread.

[unitron]

Apparently the small print needs to be bigger.

" Sarah Palin models purchased 'Proud to be Valley Trash' t-shirt as the result of State Senator Ben Stevens (son of Ted Stevens) comments that people living in the Mat-Su Borough are 'just Valley trash' July 21, 2004 in Wasilla, Alaska. "

Palin, to me, is like fingernails on a blackboard, but in this instance I applaud her for defending the people of her area.

[strangelet]

I agree with you on the teeshirt, although I would say that the cutesy pose is pure Palin-flirts-with-the-media.

A more interesting tee-shirt pic was the one of her wearing a "Bridge To Nowhwere" shirt, back when she supported it before the earmark was diverted by Congress and she then said "Thanks but no thanks" to nothing.

[knosiswar]

I see her becoming the messiah to the religious right. She's building on the same white pride oppressed hatred that was prevelant after WWI when the Germans were out of power after WWI and living through the tough times that followed under reperations. Bill Kristol is Sara Palin's Dietrich Eckart. She will be in school under the tutelage of Kristol for the next six months or so and will then be released upon us to bring the message of the PNAC JINSA White Supremacy Movement.

[TheGigaShadow]

"I see her becoming the messiah to the religious right."

Yeah, "Hero of the Stupid."

[PDinCA]

In school? Yeah, right. We've seen how well she responds to attempts to teach her anything.