Barbarians heart Sarah
I cannot beLIEVE how many pundits I like and admire (I’m looking at you, Charles Krauthammer) have got it wrong on Sarah Palin. Mark my words: she was a brilliant pick. You guys are overlooking one very important fact: I really, really like her.
Hear that? That fluttering sound? That’s the sound of ten thousand DC insiders’ eyeballs rolling in their sockets. “Really,” they harumph, “there ought to be some kind of aptitude test before we let just anybody vote.”
But, see, what you Beltway people don’t realize is, you’re freaks. Really, I love you to pieces — the pundits and politicians on my side, anyway — but you’re politics nerds. You give us (speaking in my capacity as honorary straight American here) the jim-jams.
I can’t even watch the Sunday talking head shows because you’re all like, “well, don’t forget what Ed Muskie said in the ’72 Iowa caucuses!” and everybody busts out laughing because somehow all you Poindexters know what that means. You’re like weird Al Gore zooming across the stage barking “Dingell/Norwood!” It’s enough to make mush-mouth patrician George Bush look like an ordinary guy.
It’s not just that you can reel off more politics off the top of your head than any sane person ought; it’s that you give off that creepy Rain Man vibe doing it.
So why do we read books by geeks like you? Why are you all we elect to office? Because that’s all that’s on offer.
So here comes Sarah Palin — who totally doesn’t make our freak-dar jingle-jangle-jingle — and we’re psyched. Vetting be damned; I already know Sarah Palin. I’ve known several of them.
Cute girl. Likeable. Smart. Did her homework. Partied a little, not too much. Hunted with her dad every deer season. Played on the varsity basketball team. Fierce competitor, but nice about it. Fell in love with a cute guy in High School. Got married and had a cute family. Underneath that healthy, happy, all-American façade is…a genuinely good and decent person. It happens. Honestly. That “quiet desperation” thing is mostly reserved for the arty types.
Plus — Alaska! Man, you’d have to be something as dim as a professional pundit to think Alaska is a liability. Alaska is a real life slice of the mythical Old West. I was in High School while they were building the pipeline and throwing money at people to move up there; we used to dream of going to Alaska. (One of my friends actually went and thought it was a bit of a shit-hole, but never mind — Alaska!)
So, yeah, Sarah Palin could disappoint me yet. But don’t count on it. And don’t think you’ll put anybody off by pointing out how much she’s not one of you sad Beltway twerps.
September 2, 2008 — 10:11 am
Comments: 8
Heels on the move…
“Shoot for the moon – if you miss, you may hit a star.”
– Walter “Killer” Kowalski
Eh. So astrophysics was not Walter “Killer” Kowalski’s strong suit. He was an electrical engineer for a while, though, before turning to professional wrestling. Kowalski spent thirty years rassling as a professional heel, or bad guy (though he doesn’t appear to have been one, really). He spent the last thirty running a rassling school in Massachusetts (yeah…you don’t think they just take guys off the street and let them whale away on each other, do you? There’s education involved).
Kowalski died Saturday at the age of 81. Pretty good for a big dude (6’7″ in his yoof).
Speaking of heels and frauds, Jeremiah Wright has resurfaced in the US. He preached a sermon at a black church in Houston on Sunday that MSNBC bizarrely called “conciliatory.” (For a preview of the ugly we have in store in the next few weeks, cruise MSNBC’s comments sections).
“Twenty years ago, a scrawny little kid with a pointed nose and big ears — mama from Kansas and daddy from Kenya,” he began. “An ordinary black boy raised in a single-parent home. The boy walked into my office 20 years ago to talk about his dream for a community that concentrated on things that we could achieve in common, things that united us rather than to focus on all the problems and the issues in the community about which we disagree or the things that divided us.”
Yep. Still taking credit for Obama. I loved this observation: “This ordinary boy just might be the first president in the history of the United States to have a black woman sleeping at 1600 Pennsylvania, legally.”
What does that even mean? Seriously? When was it illegal for a black woman to sleep in the White House? Wright is going to be SO much fun, if he sticks around.
Right! That’s it! It’s Labor Day and I’m still officially restesing. It’s going to be another gorgeous day in New England, and I’m going to do today what I did yesterday — pop the top on the Weaselmobile and cruise the backroads into Connecticut farm country.
Did I mention the pie? There was pie!
September 1, 2008 — 6:31 am
Comments: 30