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Herewith a comment posted to an article, "Bonkers in Alaska" by Beth Quinn, published at the CommonDreams site [link@sig]. The article got me going-- but as my unflattering reference below illustrates, Salon primed the pump.
I think it's sufficiently "on topic". I'm unloading it here both because I've been simmering over this issue for a good while, and because it's an ironic counterpoint to Kamiya's conclusion that "...it's positively frightening that we have to keep watching Palin."
With all due respect, it may be true enough that They Started
It by catapulting Palin into national recognition. But in my view,
the circumstances under which Palin was thrust upon us is only the
beginning of the story, and its least remarkable aspect.
___________________________________________
I must be the only Amerikan who finds the grotesque, obsessive stoning of Sarah Palin to be far more significant than Palin herself.
When the Republican Party pulled her out from under her Alaskan rock, I thought of Katherine Harris-- another ditsy, ambitious Republican wingnut serving the reactionary cause.
Still, over the campaign period, and even into the present, I was shocked by the absolute brutal animosity that arose in the Democratic ranks.
To this day, as this trifling article [i.e., Quinn's] demonstrates, the compulsion to mock and deride the woman persists at a level that can't be fully explained by the conviction that she's an incompetent dingbat without redeeming qualities.
Please note that I don't particularly dispute this opinion. I just don't think it's as important as the anaphylactic shock she induces in her detractors.
My 2¢ pop-psychology opinion is that at least some of this unremitting animus and rancor originated with the PUMAs and less obstreperous Hillary supporters. It was as if the Republicans choosing an obscure woman as Veep was considered the dirtiest of tricks-- an attempt to steal the identity-politics game that Democrats had owned for decades.
It was as if Hillary, like Glinda the Good Witch, was supposed to be the first woman president (or vice-president)! And when that prospect went by the board, those loathsome Goopers added insult to injury by summoning the Moronic Witch of the Northwest to usurp Hillary and the Democratic Party's Place in History!
For instance, the mushy moderate liberal Joan Walsh, editor of Salon.com, to this day pounces on every possible twist and turn of Palin's peculiar life to mock and deride her. Strictly speaking, I don't know that Walsh herself oversees this almost daily scourge. But Google for yourself to see the avalanche of Palin-sneering and criticism published there.
Last summer, I mentioned to an Obama-supporter of my acquaintance that I was horrified by the anti-Palin overkill arising from both political opponents and the moderate-liberal blogosphere. He retorted heatedly that it certainly was contemptible and outrageous that the Republicans would resort to picking a provincial nitwit as a "Hail Mary" strategy to gain political traction. What was wrong with me?
This Obama supporter, otherwise intelligent and perceptive, treated my observation as if I were "supporting" or commending Palin. I tried to explain that even if Palin is pathetic and unfit for high office, the hostility and rancor was many orders of magnitude greater than that elicited by other trashy opportunists. I maintained, and still maintain, that the anti-Palin hostility was, and remains, far deeper and more insidious than mere resentment at her unfitness for high(er) political office.
Finally (at long last!): while I don't endorse obnoxious cretins as model candidates, consider all of the Serious, Experienced, Impeccably Credentialed, and Highly Qualified Misrepresentatives we keep electing on every level.
Don't they, by and large, turn out to govern as plutocrats, dictators, and war criminals? I'm in no way "pro"-Palin, but the Fine and Upstanding "bona fide" players with sparkling curriculum vitae are as bad in their own way-- or worse.
