Poor, Persecuted Sarah Palin
When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her resignation two weeks ago it was after a series of strange, petty bouts with her detractors. Many "frivolous ethics violations" had been alleged against her, she noted. David Letterman had told an ugly joke about her daughter. A blogger had posted something that was probably not true. Someone had photoshopped a radio talker's face onto a picture of her baby -- a "malicious desecration" of the image, in the words of Ms. Palin's spokeswoman.
Team Palin got duly indignant at each of these. They took special, detailed offense. They issued statements magnifying their wounds. And, finally, the governor resigned her office, a good woman cruelly wronged.
The culture's fantastically unfair treatment of middle Americans is the main lesson that many will no doubt take away from Ms. Palin's time in the national spotlight. In fact, it may be the only lesson. We don't really know where the former vice presidential candidate stands on most issues. We know only that she is constantly being maligned, that when we turn on the TV and see her fair face beaming, we are about to hear that some liberal someone has slurred this noble lady yet again.
Indeed, if political figures stand for ideas, victimization is what Ms. Palin is all about. It is her brand, her myth. Ronald Reagan stood tall. John McCain was about service. Barack Obama has hope. Sarah Palin is a collector of grievances. She runs for high office by griping.
This is no small thing, mind you. The piling-up of petty complaints is an important aspect of conservative movement culture. For those who believe that American life consists of the trampling of Middle America by the "elites" -- that our culture is one big insult to the pious and the patriotic and the traditional -- Sarah Palin's long list of unfair and disrespectful treatment is one of her most attractive features. Like Oliver North, Robert Bork, and Clarence Thomas, she is known not for her ideas but as a martyr, a symbol of the culture-war crimes of the left.
To become a symbol of this stature Ms. Palin has had to do the opposite of most public figures. Where others learn to take hostility in stride, she and her fans have developed the thinnest of skins. They find offense in the most harmless remarks and diabolical calculation in the inflections of the anchorman's voice. They take insults out of context to make them seem even more insulting. They pay close attention to voices that are ordinarily ignored, relishing every blogger's sneer, every celebrity's slight, every crazy Internet rumor.
This has been Ms. Palin's assigned role ever since she stepped on the national stage last summer. Indeed, she has stuck to it so unswervingly that one suspects it was settled on even before she was picked for the VP slot, that it was imposed on her by a roomful of GOP image consultants: Ms. Palin was to be the candidate on a cross.
Resentment was, for example, the most-noticed theme in her famous speech at the Republican convention in September, when she introduced herself to America by taking umbrage at those Democrats who "seem to look down on" small-town ways. Before long she had become a full-time victim of the media, deploring "the bitter shots" they took at her. She imagined that reporters were threatening her First Amendment rights by criticizing her. She found a fellow underdog in Joe the Plumber, and after reviewing his mistreatment by the media she made him part of her stump routine.
But the template was apparently set even before her big roll-out. In an essay in The Weekly Standard that was written before Ms. Palin's celebrated debut in St. Paul, William Kristol somehow already knew that liberals "will ridicule her and patronize her. They will distort her words and caricature her biography. They will appeal, sometimes explicitly, to anti-small town and anti-religious prejudice." And all this contempt will serve an important propaganda purpose, he continued, with Ms. Palin becoming a "powerful symbol" for "lots of Americans who are told every day that to be even a bit conservative or Christian or old-fashioned is bad form."
Mr. Kristol's magazine has beat the persecution drum ever since. Its current issue features a cover story about Ms. Palin's suffering by Matthew Continetti, who is actually said to be writing a book titled, "The Persecution of Sarah Palin." In the course of Mr. Continetti's essay he admits to collecting insults of Ms. Palin, which he stores in a computer file that he says is seven pages long.
My advice to Mr. Continetti: Put your insult collection aside for a moment and ask instead why people like Ms. Palin savor insults in the first place. The answer may not endear you to Weekly Standard readers, but it will take you a lot further toward understanding the world we live in.
Read other articles in the Opinion Journal:
Universal Health Care Isn't Worth Our Freedom
The Tragedy of Michael Jackson
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Palin has no grounds for complaint as her national political career was launched with her shouting insults at Obama, Hillary, educated Americans, urban Americans (who make up the majority of the population), Americans who care about the poor and sick, community volunteers, and on and on and on.
Her nomination by McCain was seen by many women as a insult to our intelligence, and then Palin's mouth and brainlette took over and she insulted probably 75% of the population.
She opposes gay marriage in Alaska, makes rape victims pay for the police investigation, was willing to let native villagers starve to death last winter, and in the winter to come, has had leadership over a state health aide system for the poor and elderly that has allowed people to die who should not have, and was opposed to funding help for handicapped children, before she had one and became for it.
There is much in her that insults the descent caring part of America, and that means most of us.
Poor, Persecuted Sarah Palin...bo
GREAT HYPE & SPIN!
Especially after signing a multi-MILLION $$$ book deal.
Only 7 pages of insults? The insults aimed at Judge Sotomayor in the past couple of months are a lot more vicious and take up more than 7 pages. Now there's one tough woman - I would pit her against Sister Sarah any day.
It seems to me that Sarah Palin actually has a "Messiah complex." All her efforts are holy, and she is willing to "go to the cross" for "jay--ee--zus" Only problem is that "jay--ee--zus" "never said a mumblin' word," while SP cries all the way to the cross. One might say that Sarah "pal(es) in" comparison to "Jay--ee-z
While Sarah called President Obama, "He who must be obeyed", it is she who believes that she was chosen by God to lead the people when the Rapture comes.
There is a very good open letter written by a former evangelical woman to Sarah Palin at : www.theopa
Plain is qualified.
OJ was innocent
We did not land on the moon.
The earth is flat.
Dick Cheney violated no laws.
Richard Nixon had nothing to do with Watergate.
There were WMD in Iraq
Newt, Sanford, Vitter, Ensign and Bill Clinton conducted themselves with high personal Morale values.
My mother the car was a great TV show.
Yup.
You forgot Obama was born in Kenya
He would have been born in a foreign country had we not overthrown the governent of Hawaii.
Enough of the palin stuff, the woman is a has been like dan quail, actually they are really both wannabes but i'll refer to them as has beens, since they did move up the political food chain a half notch before their family value party ate them up.
Don't know why people keep writing about this woman, let her go. She will die on the grape vine if the media would let her.
She has nothing to offer the news.
Very well said post and what you have written does really make a lot of sense.
Palin is the lady on the cross for all to abuse until she rises from the dead and takes power.
The comeback Palin. She is younger and and has time.
I am truly tired of white religious conservatives whining like they are some sort of oppressed minority. They constantly lie and distort to make it seem like things are stacked against them, maybe they enjoy feeling that way, some sort of penance perhaps.
"We don't really know where the former vice presidential candidate stands on most issues."
Neither does she!
Ms. Palin was picked at the very last minute by John McCain, after Hillary lost the nomination for president.
Hillary had been subjected to much criticism, that was perceived as "sexist" attacks by her many angry supporters.
McCain saw this as an opportunity. He made the decision to recruit a "woman" thinking he could peel off disgruntled Hillary supporters. He barely knew her. Had spoken to her just once. She had only been a Governor for a little over one year.
Sarah Palin was chosen for the sole purpose of solidifying the Conservative Fundamentalist base, where McCain was weak, and for attracting angry Hillary voters worked up about "sexism"..
They made Sarah's candidacy all about "Sarah" the personality. It had nothing to do with her actual qualifications or ability to be the Vice President. Nothing to do with her Knowledge, Intellect, Achievements, Judgment, Honesty, Experience, Competence, or even Character, at the level of what is called for in a Vice Presidential candidate, who would be a whisper away from the Presidency.
Sarah is still in that mode. It's all she has.
As Joyce Meyers said, "You can be pitiful, or you can be powerful, but you can't be both."
W was both.
I dont have a problem with Christians, I just want their Holy Book to stay out of my government. They want "small" government (the GOP) but this Bible of theirs is LOOMING over every issue. That is unAmerican. We should no more consider what gawd thinks about political issues than we should consider what Mickey Mouse has to say. I dont think this god is real and as far as I'm concerned, pray all you want but keep your invisible deities to yourself. These Fundamentalist people are trying to Ayatoll-ize my free American government and force a god on me that I dont want.
Now is a good time for another "Church of the Flying Spaghetti.
I keep hearing she is always found Not Guilty of Ethics Charges. Does the Ethics Board empoyees of Palin...ca
i think so, great point!
You are correct, the governor (ie Palin) does indeed appoint the members of the ethics board. So very likely they are all loyalists never found her guilty because they were afraid of losing their jobs.
The charges regarding Troopergate was taken on by the AK legislature though and they found her guilty of abuse of office but that she didn't do anything illegal because the police chief she fired for not firing her ex-brother-in-law was an 'at-will' employee.
What's laughable is that Sarah Palin called Hillary Clinton a "whiner." She claimed not to like people who did that. Could you imagine having to listen to that shrill voice whining constantly if she had been elected? Ugh. I'd rather puncture my eardrums with a sharp stick.
In my opinion, Sarah mainly appeals to those who also tend to see themselves as people who are persecuted and who are crusading righteous martyrs. It's not really even about "populism" although it is being presented as such. Instead it is about a "select segment" of people who are prone to religiously extreme emotionalism, who believe they are crusading for God's mission on earth and who are confusing Political concerns with their personal unique religious mission.
This has a powerful appeal for those who believe they are personally on God's mission, and throughout the world there are and always has been, those same types of people in all Religions. America is no different.
In America, people's right to worship God in their own individual way, according to their personal individual beliefs..o
In America GOD is not a synonym for Religion..
Although she's quick to characterize herself as a "fighter" Palin is more the schoolyard bully who cowers when confronted. She looks under every rock for the next perceived insult so that she can pitch a self-righteous fit. She incites her right-wing followers to stomp and scream on her behalf. But she wobbles and, then quits when the criticisms and jibes get under her skin. She continues to exemplify the stereotypical beauty-que
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