Stepford Politics

“Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.”
-- Lewis Carroll 1832-98: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” (1865)

Yep, it’s Me again. It’s a Sunday morning, praise God, and I’m going to experiment with presenting a rhetorical editorial salad that combines quotes from the columnists, Charles M. Blow, Bob Herbert, Gail Collins, and Steven Pinker. All passages are from the op-ed page of the Saturday, October 4, New York Times. You will also find the sage analysis of Me Interspersed among the quotes. So here goes.

Let’s take the lipstick off the pig. Impenetrable, that’s the only word I could think of in listening to Sarah Palin’s performance in the veep debate. Remarking on Palin’s perceived success with her conservative base, Charles M. Blow had this to say: “In truth, after her horrendous performance with Katie Couric, anything short of her head spinning around and spewing vomit would have been considered an improvement.”

She presents a run-on word jumble that out sudokus the hoodoo man. Some kind of weird Rubik's-cube-speak. Say what? No wonder she said, “I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear.” Bob Herbert had it wrong when he raised the frightening possibility that “the country could be left with an exclamation point as president.” I think “ex-claymation” is a better description of Palin’s public image. “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Why did this non-sequitor admonition leave Biden looking like Kevin Kline during that orgasm in “A Fish Called Wanda.” Here’s Herbert: “Of course [Biden] didn’t know where to start because Ms. Palin’s words don’t mean anything. She’s all punctuation.” The only constituency that might possibly have understood her were the Joe six-pack voters sleeping on couches with a football game blaring in the background. She even had Shadow cocking her quizzical little head.

Gail Collins writes: “In an airplane hangar in Ohio recently, she told the people of Youngstown she was happy to be there because Alaska has, per capita, the nation’s most ‘small planes and small pilots.’” This was obviously a Freudian slip, much like her “drill baby, drill,” mantra, which I’m sure she intones when she’s atop her Eskimo-pie daddy. The Russians can probably hear them from Kamchatka. K2 comes to Denali. Of course the Palinator, dyslexic has she is, still thinks the locals call it Denial. Anyway, no doubt her reference to “small pilots” is a swipe at Ohioan men's small dicks. Which is why them rutting, buckeye, he-cops in their Smokey hats have to vote for Obama. I mean she’s implying that Terelle Pryor has a mini-wang. “Say it ain’t so, Sarah.”

Steven Pinker contends that Palin fared much better than in her face-to-face interview with Katie Couric “because in a one-on-one conversation, you can’t launch into a prepared speech on a topic unrelated to the question….When the questioner is 30 feet away on the floor and you’re on a stage talking to a camera, which can’t interrupt or make faces, you can reel off a script without making faces.” This made it easier for her insane Stepford grin to Svengaliize a public Ostrich that momentarily reared it’s sandy head. As Blow put it, “Palin launched into her charm offensive—winking, smiling, dodging questions and speaking in her signature Sarah-phonics, a mash up of sentence fragments and colloquialisms glued together with misplaced also’s and there’s—gibberish really.” If Palin meant to emphasize the desperation fueled Republican theme that, as Pinker puts it, “expertise is overrated, homespun sincerity is better than sophistication, [and] conviction is more important than analysis,” she was golden. So what does intellect and critical thinking amount to in the McCain scheme of things? Here’s Pinker: “Being able to see Russia from Alaska, then, means you have an understanding of foreign policy; living in an Arctic state means that you have an understanding of climate change. In Mr. McCain’s case, it means, as he wrote last month, understanding technology policy because he flew airplanes in Vietnam and being concerned about the ocean’s health because he served in the Navy.” It’s worth remembering, as “Rolling Stone’s” Tim Dickinson reminds us, Bush was a better pilot than McCain.

On the issue of global warming, she was only interested in discussing how to limit its impact, and not the issue of causality. And this makes perfect sense if your overarching political agenda involves finding ways to maximize profits while continuing to pollute the earth. Responding to Dick Cheney’s bizarre, Strangelovian notion that the vice president is a part of both the executive and legislative branches of government, Palin offered up this pre-simian response: “Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position.” Say what? A lot of “there’s” and “agenda’s” there. Given that folks like Palin, Antonin Scalia comes to mind here, see the constitution as an “enduring,” that is to say, static document, one can only ask who watched these “founding fathers’” slaves while they were in Philly, and how Palin feels about the fact that women were not given the constitutional right to vote until the 20th century. Should we not have abolished slavery and given women equal rights? Collins has a point in seeing Palin’s ascendancy as a consequence of the women’s liberation run amok, as its dark side: “This entire election season has been a long-running saga about the rise of women in American politics. On Thursday, it all went sour.”

Palin had this to say about the possibility of using atomic weapons: “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, and end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.” Can you imagine Palin’s finger on the button. Praise God! Nevermind that North Korea just started up their nuke production again after Bush lifted all sanctions against a country that has a starving population and absolutely no regard for human rights. And, speaking of “dangerous regimes” posing global annihilation, none is more threatening than our anti-terrorist ally, and a country about to be overrun by maniacal fanatics, Pakistan. Lastly, that most dangerous of regimes, and the one with far and away the greatest nuclear arsenal is, of course, the United States. We have met the enemy, and they are us!

Next time I’ll tell you how I really feel.

Love - Me