Various and Sundry for the Week of June 10

Lots of email this week, asking my opinion on things Palin.

A while back I joined other bloggers and some media outlets in a voluntary Palin black-out.

I discovered that, after a month without Sarah Palin, well, you know I just didn’t miss her.

At all. (I suspect that’s how Todd feels after a month at fish camp, but I digress)

So I endeavored to keep it that way.

Sure, every once in a while, when she did something especially silly, stupid, or hateful I’d write a bit about her, my Palin ban is more like Anthony Wiener’s pledge of fidelity than what you’d call an actual hard (get it? Get it?) and firm rule. But I’ve been trying to keep the Palin to a minimum. I’ve actually written a few posts about her and then dumped them just because I didn’t want to give her any more attention. There are plenty of sites out there that keep her sufficiently covered, and for the most part I would like nothing better than to see her fade quietly into the arctic tundra with the rest of last year’s moose manure. Alas, I strongly suspect that she will not have the good grace to go quietly away and enjoy her new found millions. The words “grace” and “Palin” don’t belong in the same sentence together. And now, as the American 2012 presidential election cycle is jiggling into full Brownian motion, she’s starting to occupy more than her fair share of my email again.

This irritates me.

It irritates me for a number of reasons. One, because there are four hundred and fifty million Americans and surely there are better candidates for the GOP nomination than this silly git. It irritates me that a significant fraction of Americans are so damned stupid that they’d vote for Zombie Robot Cannibal Hitler’s Head In A Pickle Jar so long as he belonged to the right political party. And two, because writing about Palin is gratuitous. It bugs me that Stonekettle Station’s hit count jumps by twenty thousand every time I mention the word Palin (damnit, I did it again!). Yes, I know, I’m a blogger I’m supposed to want high hit counts, and I do, but it irks me nonetheless.

I understand that people, both those who are Americans and those who aren’t, are fascinated by Sarah Palin. It’s the same simian trait that makes us all slow down and gape at a horrific car wreck or watch that poor bastard try to do a lift with Kirstie Alley on Dancing With the Stars. We can all deny that we do it, but we all know that we can’t help but watch in horrified fascination – especially when we think nobody is watching us. An anonymous commenter under the previous post lamented the amount of press Sarah Palin gets and then went on to suggest that I spend my time doing something constructive instead of writing about her (the commenter didn’t specify what that might be, but I assume he meant I should be at my computer curing cancer, working towards world peace, or bitching about Obama’s socialism) – and yet that same commenter searched the internet for “Sarah Palin, Paul Revere gaffe,” read the whole article here on Stonekettle Station (and sixty something comments under the post), and then took the time to make a disdainful admonishing comment.

Like it or not, she’s news (which says something about us as a species).

Like it or not, for good or bad, she’s a force in American politics (which says something about the state of American politics).

Like it or not, she’s unlikely to go away any time soon (you can see where this is going, right?).

Like it or not, people are curious about her and the media would be remiss in its duty if we didn’t write about her.

 

And so, like I said, I get questions.

 

What do you think about the release of Palin’s Email:

I think it’s much ado about nothing.

I think that if you’re expecting some big surprise, a smoking gun, a wienergate, well, you’re going to be massively disappointed. The Alaska governor’s office released 24,199 pages of email – and withheld 2,275. About 20% of the released material has been redacted. The current governor’s office and Palin’s lawyers have gone over this material with a fine toothed comb, it’s taken them nearly three years to do so, and you can bet they didn’t leave any major surprises. People who love Sarah will see her voluminous correspondence as evidence of an engaged, common sense, hardworking state CEO … and people who hate Palin will read each line as further proof of her vindictive, small minded, hateful incompetence. Whatever camp you happen to fall into, you’ll likely find support for your view in the released documents.

The fact that there are few Americans in between those two positions says more about Sarah Palin than anything likely to be in those emails.

Do you think Palin is going to run for President:

No. Yes. Beats me. This is a sucker bet. I think she’s doing exactly what she says she’s doing, i.e. keeping her options open. I think she’s thinking about it in as much as she thinks about anything. I suspect at this point, more than anything else, she’s basking in the adulation of her supporters who keep begging her to run, save us Sarah! Saaaaave us! Yer so pretty, yer so wunnerful! Derp derpity derp! I think she enjoys the cheering crowds, the paparazzi, and the attention one hell of a lot more than she’ll ever enjoy actually campaigning. She’s on vacation and having the time of her life, a campaign is work, damned hard work and she’s not doing that. Yet.  But, notice that she very, very carefully has not declared support for any other candidate or potential candidate. You’ll also notice that she rickrolled Mitt Romney – and don’t you believe for one damned minute that she didn’t do that deliberately. Romney is the best candidate the conservatives have at the moment, there is no way that she wasn’t warned that she was about to drive the Juggernaut of Freedom right over top of him. Palin the High School Beauty Queen doesn’t like competition, she’s made that abundantly clear. She upstaged Romney on purpose, bet on it.

I think she’s waiting.

If I had to guess, I’d say she’s waiting to see if a genuinely popular conservative jumps into the ring, somebody she can’t beat in the primaries. If so, she’ll offer herself as a running mate, and if not she’ll step in at the last minute as the GOP savior by popular demand.

But like I said, predicting Sarah Palin’s next move is a sucker bet, I wouldn’t put any money on it – the only thing that is for sure and for certain is that she loves it when you try to guess what she’ll do next.

 

 

Newt

Speaking of the campaigns that aren’t: Gingrich can’t convince his staunchest supporters that he’s the right man for the job. What’s that tell the rest of us?

Honestly folks, if you haven’t figured Newt out by now, the fact that his entire team abandoned ship within the first month of the campaign should tell you a few things:

- Folks who specialize in getting people elected, don’t think Newt is electable. And they’d rather be unemployed than try to run his campaign. Whoa.

- Newt can’t pick people to run his campaign, yet you expect him to be able to pick a Cabinet? The Joint Chiefs? Supreme Court Judges? Color me dubious when it comes to his personal leadership and his ability to judge people. 

- Newt will not heed the advice of experts, including experts he’s paying to be experts, even if it means he crashes and burns. You think he’ll follow the advice of his Cabinet, The Joint Chiefs, The Supreme Court, You, should he become President?  If you believe that, I strongly suspect you’re the kind of person who thinks your cheating spouse will settle down once there is a baby on the way – Let’s ask Mrs. Gingrich 1 and 2 how that worked out for them.

- Apparently, what brought this about was the fact that he decided to take a two week vacation in Greece because his trophy wife was complaining about how much time his campaign was taking up. Note that he’d only been campaigning for two weeks. Poor Newt, I strongly suspect his love of power will cost him yet another marriage.

Strange things happen in politics and I won’t count Gingrich out until he’s out – and maybe not even then – but if Newt was playing the Tarot, I suspect he’d be looking at The Hanged Man right about now.

 

And finally: The Wiener Mobile

“This was a very dumb thing to do”

That’s what Tony “Oscar Meyer” Wiener said yesterday.  This was a very dumb thing to do. Dumb?  No, Tony, it wasn’t a dumb thing to do. Dumb would be a step up. Dumb would be screwing up American history on national television and then pretending that you didn’t. That’s dumb. 

Texting pictures of yourself in various states of undress to random people on the internet wasn’t dumb, it was downright criminally fucking stupid. 

It’s the kind of stupid that you only get from men who refuse to grow up. 

It’s the kind of stupid you only get from men who think with their dicks. 

Stop, I know what you’re thinking.  But, before you start telling me how Tony the Hard-on didn’t do anything criminal, how he’s such a great Congressman that he should be forgiven, and how tweeting pictures of himself to woman on the internet is something between him and his wife, just stop before you say something you’ll regret later.

See, Anthony Wiener is a United States Congressman.  Sexting it up with random women on the internet? Sending pictures of his junk out into cyberspace?  Folks, this isn’t some dumbassed teenager, what he did was not a stunt or a mistake.  And it sure wasn’t some isolated incident. This was a grown man, a married man with a pregnant wife, a United States Congressman who deliberately and with malice aforethought sought out women on the internet for sexual relationships.

Big deal, right?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Now pay attention because this is the important part: Anthony Wiener isn’t a guy who just “made a mistake,” Anthony Wiener is the kind of guy who put his dick ahead of the security of the nation.

Yes, that is correct. Anthony Wiener put his dick ahead of the security of the United States of America.

See Anthony Wiener is a guy with a security clearance and congressional access who deliberately put himself in a position to be compromised.

We are all damned lucky that a scumbag tabloid journalist like Andrew Breitbart ended up with those pictures, and was self serving enough to publish them, instead of if Wiener’s online infidelity had ended up in the hands of somebody who decided to blackmail their way into congress. 

Understand now?

Do I think he should keep his job? You’re kidding, right? 

I wouldn’t trust this guy to hold my jacket while I washed my hands. 

 

More later.