The Hater exposes the insanity of the Wasilla Wingnut by noting that they responded with outrage to David Letterman's crude joke about pedophilia by...wait for it...cracking a crude joke about pedophilia: "The Palins have no intention of providing a rating’s boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show. Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman." This reminds me of the time in the primaries last year when David Shuster made some unfortunate comment about Hillary "pimping out" Chelsea. I can understand her being angry at that comment--it's not exactly in good taste--but Hillary took it much further, trying to get Shuster fired and using this as another reason to try to reunite the sisterhood. I found that distasteful, just as I find this distasteful.
Honestly, I don't much have much to say about Palin, who oftentimes sounds so stupid it almost seems as though she's a Democratic plant with a vested interest in destroying the Republican Party. The only people who seem interested in defending her are the Weekly Standard types who don't want to admit that their ridiculous boosterism of this mediocrity only further underlined their irrelevance, and all the cries of media bias aren't going to change that she's not exactly leading in the polls for 2012 and that she wears poorly with time, suggesting that she's going to go down, not up, in terms of her popularity. Her popularity in Alaska has eroded, and I doubt she'll seek re-election. She has all the signs of a classic political burnout, and I suspect that she'll be only vaguely remembered come election day 2012. The GOP seems eager to move on, having gotten some glimpses at the vulgarity and darkness under the relentlessly smiling outer shell.
One of the things that always interests me is the degree to which political leaders' personalities reflect the anxieties and hopes of the country at a particular time. It was definitely true of Nixon, and I think it was true of G.W. Bush as well, to a point--I think the Democrats' attacks against him as a trust fund baby who never really achieved much and actually had a long track record of failure didn't catch on because, deep down, a lot of Americans felt that we hadn't earned our heritage either (and that it was Al Gore Jr. that was making them took a little bit of the punch out of it--don't get me wrong, I like Al as much as the next lefty, but he wouldn't have been elected to much if it weren't for his dad being in the business, know what I mean?). Palin, too, has a personality that tells a lot about the state of contemporary conservatism: the free-floating grievances (Glenn Beck's "them", in other words), populism as a substitute for policy, rhetoric as a substitute for argument, wild-eyed faith unleavened by knowledge or reason. One can certainly take this exercise too far, and I'm not sure how much utility one can get from trying to figure out what Bush's dad tells us about late 80s America. But Palin exemplifies much of what drives modern conservatism, which is why she was so polarizing, as it stands in marked contrast to what drives contemporary liberalism: put simply, liberals feel that Palin is The End of the Enlightenment. It's all similar to how Bill Clinton personified liberalism during his day. Clinton, though, was successful, and in the end I think that's why conservatives really hated him. In a way, I think that Palin's defeat endeared her even more to conservatives (though most sane Repubs have since had second thoughts) because conservatism since Nixon has been based on a fundamental insecurity about America's position in the world, as well as conservatism's place in America. Palin is a huge ball of insecurities, which is something they identify with. So was Bush, for that matter--the bluster and bravado were disguises for a fundamentally weak man with a deep desire to be meaningful, even if it meant infamy. For all his faults, John McCain wasn't really insecure, and he came by his arrogance honestly. I suspect that his actual faith in America was why he never really lit the conservative base on fire. Viewing the contemporary right through the lens of insecurity reveals quite a bit, in my opinion.
