High Heels and Lipstick

As many of you have likely experienced there were several times during the election campaign when a friend, usually, but not exclusively male, would admit to being attracted to Sarah Palin. Unlike the nerdy adolescents at the ever-shrinking National Review these were hardened liberals who'd sooner be caught en flagrant with Bill O'Reilly than suggest that Palin's "mesmerizing" performance against Joe Biden "sent little starbursts through the [T.V.] screen" . Or as Rick Lowry went on to gush-- that she made them sit up "a little straighter on the couch and [say], "Hey, I think she just winked at me."

None would ever propose, as did the goo-goo-eyed Mark Steyn, that Sarah Palin "sounded like the citizen-politician this country’s Founders intended" but there is an uncomfortable truth about her appeal. Palin's aggressive feminized presence projects the kind of animal magnetism that can cause fully developed brains to instantly dissolve into post-pubescent mush. How else does one explain Camille Paglia's only slightly tongue-in-cheek exclamation that, "Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich."

After being battered by Bush's disinterested leadership and their own spectacularly destructive policies, conservatives are grateful to have Palin's womanly form to drool over while they spend the next thirty years drilling for an idea in the political wilderness. Far from the visceral fear she inspires in most liberals, much of the public appears to identify with this self-styled hockey-mom from Alaska who likens herself to a pit-bull, thinks a woman's first duty is to replenish the earth, believes in witches and, perhaps inadvertently, speaks in tongues. I submit that for all her "weirdness", in a disturbing fundamental way, Sarah Palin reflects the muchness of America.

Isolation Breeds Stunted Development

A recent study showed that a sampling of elected U.S. officials could correctly answer only 44% of basic questions on the Constitution and the various roles of our government. Correspondingly, 30 % of America's high school graduates cannot locate Great Britain on a map or identify the Pacific Ocean. A majority of us reject evolution but believe in ghosts, while over 70% are positive that Jesus was born to a virgin. We laugh at Sarah Palin and her adorers at our own peril. As Zbigniew Brzezinski mordantly observes in "America and the World", "Americans are curiously, paradoxically, simultaneously, very well-educated and amazingly ignorant."

Zbig should know--the former National Security Adviser could be describing his own daughter. Despite these Palin doozies-- "He [Obama] says that sure, if industry wants to try to build these coal-fired power plants, they can go ahead and try, but they're only gonna be able to do it in a way that bankruptcies the whole industry." Palin then alludes to Obama's infamous characterization of small town voters, but calls them alternately “bitter clingers” and “cling-ons” --MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski nevertheless proceeds to opine: "Sarah was quite amazing today. I was watching her in Lakewood, Ohio, performing beautifully, really - masterfully ..." I assume Mika is no one's dummy so I can only surmise that like Rick and Camille poor Mika has a serious girl-crush:



So what does it mean that despite the voters having judged that Sarah Palin lacks the skills to be president large portions of the media persist in sounding lovestruck? I suspect it is for the same reason that in spite of our unabashed ignorance and self-absorption the rest of the world finds itself entranced by us Americans. I sense that at an atavistic level men the world over (and probably more than a few repressed women) find themselves attracted to our overt sexuality. We use our Sarah Palins to sell our poorly made cars, our insipid light beer and our froth-filled movies, so why shouldn't a former beauty contestant use all of her exceptional physical charms to sell her politics?


Cagle Cartoons

The danger in this 21st century world of instant gratification is that Madison's Avenue's persistent tapping of the Venus center in our brains has left the average American male constantly horny and his women unsatisfied. It has gone on so long that for relief we seem to be craving our own demise. When someone as expensively educated as Mark Steyn is so enraptured by Palin's metaphorical "music" that he is willing to ignore her tortuous "lyrics" Zbig's notion that America can provide the rational leadership desperately needed in a globalized world seems tragically quaint. Thanks to our corporate media's eagerness to whet Mark's fantasies it matters not that Palin's candidacy proved as constructive as a rampaging pit-bull-- she gave John McCain's wilting campaign a boost and Pat Buchanan a five-week hard-on.

Wait--Sarah's on T.V. wearing red lipstick and three-inch heels? I'll get back to this later--gotta check out those gams--you betcha!

Palin's Alaska: The America John Left Behind

One of Barack Obama's overused lines is: "John McCain is a good man, a war hero-- but John just doesn't "get it". I will not reiterate here why I categorically disagree with such sentiments, but I wonder if Obama himself understands just how much the 72 year old Senator McCain "does not get".

It is important to keep in mind that John McCain did not witness the social upheaval that took place during the late sixties and early seventies. While the civil rights movement was ushering women and minorities into the center ring of American politics John McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. And though half of the country is not looking back, the America John McCain intended to serve still wobbles behind, struggling between progress and regression.

That lack of perspective is what allowed John McCain to think that someone as oblivious about the world as Sarah Palin could bolster his chances at becoming president. No doubt he imagined it was still the 80's and, like Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin merely had to flash some perfect white teeth to be the cherry on top of his platform's bowl of vanilla. Fresh from the snowy wilds of far-off Alaska, Sarah is the woman John kissed good-bye when he went off to bomb poor Vietnamese villagers. In his dreams he probably sees her as that perky fifties woman who could jump from the typing pool and land in the boss' lap. You know the one-- the girl men used to call "stacked" who knew how to wrap her package and time her giggle.

The other night, watching a possible President of the United States grin and wink when asked her thoughts on federal bankruptcy laws or Pakistani terrorism I thought I was seeing one of those science fiction flicks where the spaceship from earth lands on a technologically superior planet populated entirely by gorgeous women all scantily dressed and hungry for sex, but who could paralyze men with their hips.

I can only imagine how nauseating it must have been for the woman who has had to endure a supervisor's raunchy passes or see the airhead with the endless legs promoted to yet another pay-grade above her incompetence to watch Palin flirt and smirk for the camera. But what must have outraged every sentient viewer was that after being treated to ninety minutes of Palin dissembling and dodging questions our talking heads could not stop praising her mockery of the Fourth Estate as some sort of triumph.

As far as John's lost world is concerned, I suggest it is one of the reasons he could not look at Obama during their debate. John just can't wrap his mind around the fact that a biracial junior senator with a foreign-sounding name could more aptly represent America. John ran for the country he left to fight for-- the one still lingering out in snow-white Alaska and the frosty cabins of Montana and Idaho. The America where ambitious smiling girls have not yet tired of worshiping cranky old men and out-of-touch Cold War heroes.