Palin Potshots - Mythed Again

September 17, 2008

Palin Potshots - Mythed Again
Obama is running against who? That other old guy? The one who is not Biden. Yeah, McCain, that one. Or maybe both.

Biden has sure been a help to Obama hasn't he? "Yes, picking me was Obama's first major decision since he decided to enter the race. He screwed it up. I'm not the right choice. He should have picked someone else." Actually, he says Hillary would have been a better pick! Now that's called getting support from your veep selection!

[It is hard to blame Joe though. No one has been paying any attention to him. He has to say outrageous things just to get any news coverage!]Obama's response could have been a bit more restrained though. It probably didn't do him a lot of good to pontificate in a prime time interview with "Well, that just goes to show what you know, Joe. I didn't want you. You weren't my first pick. In fact you weren't even my third choice. But everybody else turned me down. So there. Nyah Nyah."

Of course his response when the interviewer asked "Did you ask Hillary?" didn't help anything either: "What!?! That b***h? I don't need no woman naggin me bout what to do and tryin to boss me around. I've already got one of them. It's called a wife."

Where do you suppose he picked up that faux inner city black accent? Talkin' to folk while organizin' communities? Is it just me, or has that "accent" become much more pronounced since he won the nomination?

Then he launched into yet another attack on Palin. "Yeah, sure she could be Governor of a frozen wasteland full of eskimos, but if she thinks she has the experience to ... well, I, uh, what I mean is, it's not like it takes "experience", what it takes is being for "change" and that's mine. Mine, mine, mine! I'm the one that's for change. Not that Pale Lynn. I mean, now ya'll listen I mean to say if'n she was a Black Lynn you might could believe what she [laughing and slapping knee] ... but this is like she is tryin to uh but ... and what about what her preacher said? Huh? I mean this is the guy that she gets her ... um ... listens to, uh, well, we maybe um, that isn't really what I wanted to ... her little escapade with ... well, no we don't want to go there but she just wants to 'drill baby drill' in those eskimos' front yards. You come over to my place b***h and I'll show you some drill, baby, drill! I mean how would you like it if there was an oil well in your front yard? You get that slimy crude all over your muktuk! What, you sposed to mow around it or, well, snow shovel around it or you know, whatever ... yeah that's the kind of lipstick we need in the oval office fer sure and, well Bill, that's Bill Clinton, he nuf of a bud I call him Bill. Now Bill, he had lipstick in the oval office [slapping knee again and laughing uproariously] but I don think Hillary is ... ah ... what was the question again?"

Interviewer: "I see you took up smoking cigarettes again. Did you also restart your pot habit Senator?"

Seriously though, it is almost that bad. Obama and his attack dogs have been obsessed with Governor Sarah Palin. And they have absolutely no idea what to do. Obama was on a leisurely march towards being crowned when he and his people got totally blindsided from someone with very little experience, whose name was definitely not a household word and who was given very little chance of success by the punditocracy.

The remarkable thing about this story is it is an almost exact repeat of the primary where he "Palined" Hillary on her waltz to the coronation! Hillary never recovered. It is beginning to look like Obama may not either. He kneecapped Hillary because of her arrogance. But his success in so doing went to his head and he inherited the arrogance that brought her down. If the man has any abilities in the introspection department (which, like most things about him -- bizarrely for somone who has been under the national spotlight for so many months -- is an unknown outside of his circle of personal relationships), then win or lose he will someday shake his head in amazement at his own blindness.

His first instinct was good: say nice things about her, mention her compelling life story, and get on to campaigning against McCain. Unfortunately the ever so fickle press decided that Sarah was the new hot exciting thing and all the cameras turned to her. Obama, not being experienced enough to understand the ebbs and flows of a long intense presidental campaign couldn't resist. Instead of keeping it low key and letting the Palin storm blow itself out, he had his feelings hurt and gave into his lesser instincts and blasted at her and (apparently) turned his pit bull staff loose to do the same. He even tries to disguise it, but no one who watched his "lipstick on a pig" comments could ever believe that he was not trying to smear Palins lipstick without mentioning her by name.

What Obama is smart enough to know ... but too emotional to control ... is that every time he takes a shot at her it builds up her image. I do not recall, nor have I ever run into in my historical researches, a presidential campaign where it so often seemed that the presidential candidate of one party was campaigning ... indeed running ... against the vice presidential candidate from the other party. This is particularly strange because the entire message that Obama wants, and needs, to project is that Sarah is lacking in substance and should not be taken seriously.

But every time he or his people take a shot at her ... the press scrambles to report ... and she inevitably gains from the exposure. There is a subconscious sense in the American psyche that if Obama takes her that seriously ... she is someone to be taken seriously! Every attack on her, helps to build up the mythology surrounding her.

She is America's Joan of Ark, Alaska's Xena the Warrior Princess, a political Teddy Roosevelt, the powerful and mysterious Nanook of the North and the nation's unoffical Mrs. America all rolled into one in the national consciousness of the everyday Jill and Joe. And this myth-making is as much the doing of Obama and his camp as it is the people, the pundits or the Palins.