So, Sarah Palin quit. She is dropping out before even one term. I got to leave work early on Friday morning, and managed to turn on Fox, since MSNBC had shosen to bombard us with stories about Michael Jackson. Look, I get that it is a big deal, but there is other things happening in the world that are important as well. Just because some folks are not committing suicide over those events doesn’t mean they are worth talking about.
But really, watching the news break on Fox was far more entertaining than it would have been anywhere else. Why? Because they struggled so valiantly to be fair and balanced. Really, the fill in for Neil Cavuto was talking to Republicans and Democrats about “what this means”. Not surprisingly, the conservative guests played this up as another powerful example of Palin being an unpredictable Mavericky leader. But the host was really hung up on how many attacks she has had to weather. His biggest example? The controversy that just would never have been if she was not so attention hungry. They kept bringing up David Letterman and the joke about Bristol (please people, the most obvious reading of that joke is that it was a reference to eighteen year old Bristol, the daughter who had been pregnant and made a public figure of herself and is not underage) as the only example. And really, outside of the questionable taste of the joke? It’s certainly less harsh than it is made out to be as an “attack”. And conservatives kept saying Hilary never had to face this. And no, people did not make jokes involving Chelsae during her mother’s campaign. On the other hand, the media attacked her pretty viciously as a teen. I’d say a pregnancy joke about an of age woman who was previously pregnant is far less cruel than calling a thirteen year old girl the White House Dog. And after the nutcase stories that tried to claim Trig was not Palin’s, but her daughter’s, died down… Palin’s critics quickly focused on the things Palin said.
And now, without even one full term in the only political office she has ever held, she quits. Now, her defenders made great effort yo argue that her limited political experience should not have hindered her as a potential leader, all while claiming it should count against President Obama. But unlike Palin, hey, Obama just did not up and quit because it got real tough. Yeah, that is my unsympathetic interpretation of her speech (and does anyone really think she chose to announce it on July 3rd by coincidence?). But the real entertainment, as I said, is watching the pundits go out on a limb about what this means.
And one last thought:
In her Facebook comments, posted on Saturday, Palin also lambasted the response of the media, which she wrote had been “predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the ‘politics of personal destruction’”.
Seriously? Palin was all about the politics of personal destruction. She took on the mantle of attack dog for the McCain campaign and relished it. She clearly loved that role and did it with gusto and no concern for who she hurt. So, for her to play victim when she is quitting to play the national Republican scene? I call shenanigans.
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