Todd S. Purdum on Sarah Palin | vanityfair.com

I was wondering about the Sarah Palin phenom, slow day.



Todd S. Purdum on Sarah Palin vanityfair.com:

Read the entire article, but, I think the following sentence says it all;

"What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded?

Merriam Webster defines a phenomenon as:
1)an observable fact or event; a: an object or aspect known through the senses rather than by thought or intuition: b: a temporal or spatiotemporal object of sensory experience as distinguished from a noumenon c: a fact or event of scientific interest susceptible to scientific description and explanation. 3a :a rare or significant fact or event b: an exceptional, unusual, or abnormal person, thing, or occurrence.

As like most of the world I had not heard of Sarah Palin until she was selected by John McCain as his running mate. Also like most people I thought McCain was attempting to attract the female vote by selecting Palin. Obama did not select Hillary Clinton as many thought he should, but had selected Biden a week earlier. McCain bypassed several other well known female republicans and stronger male republicans in order to make a statement, be mavericky so to speak. Palin wowed them at the RNC and they were all excited. She said cool things like comparing herself to a pit bull in lipstick, and jesting about the work of community organizers and the whole bridge to nowhere mess. Oh she had'em, they loved her. Then she traveled with McCain for at least a month, no lone appearances. She continued to give the same juicy speech which started to atrophy and dry out.
Then the press started asking unscripted questions which had nothing to do with pigs, pit bulls, lipstick or bridges to nowhere. The press discovered the 49th state and attacked like locust. Everyone wondered why she was being protected and always traveled with McCain. Biden was traveling alone, making speeches and answering questions. Then came the Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric, interviews, SNL, Ayers, the monkey, the cries of "kill him", "terrorists" and her (and her families) expansive wardrobe. Yet the crowds roared on, the predominately white, gun clinging religious crowd yelling patriot slogans and hate.
Is this a phenomenon? Does this meet any of the definitions by Merriam Webster? Palin's dip into the national pool was an observable fact, and was not temporal or spatiotemporal, but was it a rare or unusual fact or event? Well it was weird by political standards and I believe she was in way over her head and capabilities.
For me, she came off cocky, unprepared and opportunistic. The latter is not negative in and of itself, but not in concert with the former. An analogy Palin would like is a player needs to know when to pass the ball when that player has no history as a outside shooter. Palin took the shot unprepared with no history or skill, and she missed.
The McCain/Palin loss was not totally her fault but she did not help it. She may not have heard those people yelling, "kill him" and "terrorist" at her speeches the first time, but she had to have heard them thereafter, she made no attempt to stop these people. Through the spending spree for herself and her family, her lack of knowledge in geography, the canned superficial responses to questions, her lack of knowledge in world politics, blaming the media for her short comings, through it all, she remained cocky.
Palin was as a puppy that was smacked on the nose and sent from the national arena. She is still whining and blaming the media because she was not potty trained.
She went back to Alaska, continued to air her dirty laundry while arguing publicly with the baby daddy of her grandchild, had 15+ actions filed against her personally, made an attempt to turn down stimulus dollars and was very vocal against Obama's policies. I won't even mention the airport to know where the state is building with stimulus dollars.
This past Thursday Sarah girl quit. In her usual superficial rambling way, she said a lot of nothing as to her reasons. The one thing I found interesting in her resignation was that she did not want to be a "lame duck" in the position. Keeping in mind that she has another 17 months before the end of her first term in office.
Phenomenon, maybe, but definitely strange, odd, and headed for the history books for a chuckle or two.