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Palin's a reminder of how easy it is to manipulate and seduce others. What's required is a sharp, but not overly complex intelligence, and a willingness to do almost anything to get what you want. Combine this personality with the amplifying effect of television, add followers eager to hand themselves over to someone else, and you have an explosive cult of personality.
If historians exist hundreds of years from now, if we still have a few good thinkers dedicated to separating truth from fiction, I fear these discerning intellects will ascribe the collapse of our brilliant, pluralistic culture to the way that television sold form before substance, image before content. And the way so many of us bought what was sold.
It breaks my heart that anyone thinks bravado and unearned confidence are attributes of good character. Don't we know what happens when unskilled, but crazily confident people, hold positions of power and responsibility?
Palin will be sufficiently dangerous rallying her admirers via basic cable.
