Wow.

If Sarah Palin drops trou for Playboy at any point in the future, I will hail you as the sage of the contemporary era, quit my current job and volunteer to work as your chauffeur and valet, and compase an epic poem in iambic pentameter in homage to your awesomeness.

Seriously,. I’m probably spending more time trying to figure out YouDon’tCare’s post than he/she spent formulating it. Let’s see if I’ve got it straight. A controversial governor and recent vice-presidential candidate abruptly resigns from office, providing vague and seemingly contradictory motives. That isn’t news, and shouldn’t be on the headline? Also, Salon has provided extensive coverage of the Washington Post “paid salon (no relation)” scandal. Are you upset because neither Salon nor any other respectable news organization has suggested, much less presented evidence, that the Administration was in cahoots?

What has Glenn Greenwald got to do with anything else that you said? I mean, other than the fact that he writes for Salon and apparently says things that bother you?

If Sarah Palin does run for President in 2012, it will be the sacred duty of every Democrat to change their party affiliation and vote for her in their state's Republican primary.

Sanford implodes, Franken gets the nod, and now this. If she's withdrawing from politics, fabulous. If this is prep for a presidential run, better. This airhead idiot will only mess things up worse for the GOP.

What is really sad is that people like this actually have meaningful support in this country. Like many hard core conservative leaders and spokespeople, she is a truly disturbed human being. Aside from feeling somewhat empathetically sorry for her deranged mental state and its tragic impact on others, what does this say about America?

Way to go, America. We had our chance to have Sarah Palin lead us into the Golden Land, based on her vaguely defined platitudes and gosh darn it optimism, also, but we just had to go and spoil it all by, you know, asking her questions and stuff, trying to get her to explain what her run-on rambling sentences mean, and other politics of destruction crap.

Shane! -oops, I mean - Sarah! Come back, Sarah! America needs you, and Putin's rearin' his head again! Sarah!!! Come back!

She lied did she? Lied? A politician lied? Well then, string her up.

Really, your post is more than a little childish. If the issue was that you wouldn't vote for her because she lied, I'd understand completely. But all this vitriol is surely not here because she lied. And let's keep in mind that these are not Watergate level lies. These are not Chappaquiddick level lies. These aren't Iran-Contra level lies.

The vitriol is totally misplaced.

This is frankly off-topic, but I'm an English major, and you know how we get. Anyway, THANK you for not using an apostrophe in "its." :)

You're better than this.

You cant, in one thread, basically disavow all right-wing responsibility for hate speech, deny that there is such a thing as hate speech, and sing arias in praise of free speech, and then, in another thread, whine like a wee bairn because of a few anonymous emails that Sarah Palin will likely never know were written.

Yes, I read at least one post in this thread that was disgusting and beyond the pale. Give that poster a radio show and twenty million listeners, and we have Rush Limbaugh. If you're down with him and Bill-O, I'm afraid you must zip it when the object of derision is a member of your own team.

Apart from not representing your views, what exactly did Palin do to warrant this antagonism?

Called us false Americans. Tried heartily to make this country a far more dangerous place to be a woman. Dragged her children into the media spotlight to use as stage props. Spit on the work of community organizers, on any intellectual endeavor, on literacy and scientific inquiry. More or less accused Obama of treason and enabling terrorists. Lied, lied, lied, lied, lied about and slandered and sneered at anyone who didn't fit in with her conception of perfect, christianist, smalltown, "real" America.

She said, in not so many words but no uncertain terms, that I, and so many of the people I love, have no rightful place in this country.

That's what.

Thank you for the interest you expressed in a position as my personal servant. Unfortunately, I am not making any hiring decisions at this time. However, I will keep your application on file so that in November, when we all see Sarah Palin naked in the glossy pages of Playboy, you will be among the first candidates to be considered.

Vitriol and ridicule are not synonyms.

Christopher 1988: "Who is Sarah Palin? She's a failed VP candidate, and not much else."

Considering how much speculation there's been about her running for national office in 2010 or 2012, and what a lightning rod she's been for controversy, public spectacle, and GOP funding efforts, I think you are making a slight understatement here.

Christopher1988: "But to read the posts, you'd think she was a member of the Klan or something. I don't get it."

The majority of people here have been relatively civil about her, albeit negative. Then you have the right-wing trolls like GLR, who is obviously trying to make Palin's critics look bad, even though he himself is a supporter in sock-puppet form.

Christopher1988: "Apart from not representing your views, what exactly did Palin do to warrant this antagonism?"

What a naive and willfully ignorant question. I guess you didn't hear any of Palin's speeches during the campaign? She essentially accused her opponent of being a terrorist. Over and over. Nobody twisted her arm to say this. She mocked "community organizers," basically insulting everybody who has ever tried to get anything done at the grass-roots level. She insinuated that only rural, GOP-supporting people are real Americans. She lied repeatedly about her willingness to accept government funding for pork-barrel projects. She abused the power of her office to act on a family vendetta. She instructed everybody in her administration to circumvent FOIA laws by using non-government email accounts, and then she left herself open to having that same email account hacked. She apparently abused funding laws by making outlandish clothing purchases during the campaign. She ran for the 2nd-highest office in the country while unable to cite a single news source she prefers to read. Again, nobody twisted her arm to do any of this. She knew what she was getting into, and charged full speed ahead. Sarah Palin is not a victim, though she has followed the right-wing playbook of using bullying tactics and then crying victim whenever convenient. She's a symbol for the GOP's "values-based" attempts to dupe citizens by playing to their fears and prejudices instead of to their intelligence and higher selves. And again -- it's not like anybody dragged Palin kicking and screaming into this role. She signed up for it, and has been (and will continue to be) cashing in on it. Meanwhile she doesn't seem to have any concern about any damage she's done to the national political discourse. (Then again, maybe she does, it's gotten to her, and this is the final result.)

Christopher1988: "Have we really come to the point where we're incapable of just disagreeing with someone? We have to demonize all the opposition?"

Why don't you go ask this question of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, etc. and then get back to us? The crap the right-wing zealots (and their followers) dish out is about 50 times worse than anything anybody's said in this message forum. If you don't think Palin deserves at least a mild amount of animosity, then the burden is now on you to explain why.