Teabagger Watch, Part Two: The shining puppet (with crib notes)

They paid her over $100K for some teabagging, but all they got was a lousy hand job.*

"These stupid peasants, who, throughout the world, hold potentates on their thrones, make statesmen illustrious, provide generals with lasting victories, all with ignorance, indifference, or half-witted hatred, moving the world with the strength of their arms, and getting their heads knocked together in the name of God, the king, or the stock exchange---immortal, dreaming, hopeless asses, who surrender their reason to a shining puppet, and persuade some toy to carry their lives in his purse."

-- Stephen Crane, American author and poet

*Cf.

Comments

[kathy a.]

maybe she really is 14. you'd think someone getting $100K for her pithy remarks could either remember her top points, or spring for a notecard.

[big bad wolf]

i'm sort of jealous. all those nights prepping for court, when i could have just written it on my hand while waiting for the big knock on the door.

[Corvus9]

I really do hate her guts.

Litbrit, that Stephen Crane quote is awesome. When I had to read The Red Badge of Courage in high school, nobody told me that the author had so much vitriol in him.

[Corvus9]

You know what I can't get over? She crossed out her cheat notes. She wrote the wrong thing, then had to cross it out. Which means she wrote it off the top of her head. Who doesn't prepare a cheat sheet in advance?! How fucking dumb can a person be?

[Sir Charles]

kathy,

The first thing I thought when I heard about this was "oh my God she really is a 14-year old girl."

Couldn't she get a little laminated cheat sheet like Tom Brady of the New England Patriots uses? Or the 3X5 index cards that Reagan favored.

[litbrit]

Corvus, if there's a good writer who *doesn't* harbor at least a bit of vitriol within...well, I've never met him or her.

What makes me fear her is the whole dominionism movement. It's less about her than about who's pulling her strings and the lengths to which they will go to achieve their ends. In this respect (among others), I am totally with Andrew Sullivan; I've been paying attention all along. The media, not so much.

What makes me hate is the foul, mendacious, crowd-rousing words she spews about an intelligent and outrageously accomplished president whose boots she is not now, nor ever will be, fit to polish.

[Glenn Fayard]

WHO DA FUCK DAT

(As I've been saying across the internets, this proves copulating with a Kardashian results in a championship.

[Corvus9]

I have a different take on her, litbrit. I guess I don't see the particular danger coming from who's pulling her strings, because, well the hallmark of Sarah Palin is her tendency to "go rogue." Her entire rise to power has basically consisted of stupid white men cynically elevating her into power, thinking she can be easily controlled by the white male establishment, only to see her veer off in some batshit direction, that gains her more power and influence, while her benefactors get left behind. This happened with McCain, it happened with Kristol. I remember reading stories like about about how she ended up governor and even mayor.

Sarah Palin is a completely incurious, intellectual vacant, but she is possessed of a kind of raw, animal cunning, and she always knows when to abandon a drowning boat, and who to let go down with the ship.

So I am not really worried about who's pulling the strings. I am worried about what happens when they stop.

...But really, I don't think there is a chance in hell she ever serves in office again, though I think that she will be the 2012 nominee (when is a feminist victory not a feminist victory?). But Barack Obama will be surfing on the backs of a resurgent economy by then, and (hopefully) the most actively progressive record of governance since at least Johnson (if he gets healthcare and repeals DADT) or perhaps ever (if he gets cap and trade and finance reform and maybe some aspects of employee free choice act if the next set of elections actually swing back in the democrats favor). Then hopefully, the resulting assstomping will finally break the fever spell the republican party has been in since, well, really since 1980, but let's say since, oh, 9/11, or the election of Barack Obama.

I almost can't wait. But in a kind of frightened way.

[minstrel hussain boy]

professor longhair & the meters sing about my favorite place in my favorite city

[big bad wolf]

tip's is the best. every club should have a convenient neutral ground for spilling out onto for set breaks, or following albert collins out the door

[oddjob]

OT: How reliable a news source is the British Daily Mail?

[MR Bill]

I try not to think too much about Sarah Palin. I have noticed, though, that the same folks around here who championed the likes of Eric Rudolph (if not for his bombing, then for not getting caught) are Sarah fans. There is an element of racism and an undercurrent of embracing or at least threatening violence as a 'righteous' act...
It's for perverse reasons, in yet another us-against-them thing: she's sorta pretty, Mom-like, and spouting conservative dogma..

Entirely off topic, but something that hit me the other day (while examining yet another log cabin in need of much repair) out of the blue: while the donations of corporations may now be legal, what is to keep the government from taxing them, say, at rates up to 80%, and splitting the haul between the Treasury and some public financing of investigative journalism, and investigation of the respective campaign's claims?
PBS needs an overhaul, as it's become extremely Village-y. Maybe it could be brought to the level of the BBC,and actually investigate the running of the government.
There must be some way to make lemonaid out of Citizens United...

[kathy a.]

i can't see palin getting any kind of mainstream political traction, not really. but when headlines scream that she is calling for "revolution," and her admirers tend toward the loonies toting guns, who hate gummit and abortions and anyone who doesn't look like them and lib'ruls... well, it does not take a lot of imagination to think her antics encourage racism and violence. her followers are not all that smart and thoughtful, ya know?

[oddjob]

...What's most appealing about Palin to these exurbanites, I think, is that the big Elite Crucible tore her apart -- and she rose again, stood up, straightened her dress, and is now confronting her tormentors. When it was pointed out that Palin had scribbled some policy points on to her hand during the Tea Party Q and A, she was widely mocked. The next day, Palin wrote "Hi Mom!" on her palm. Palin doesn't like to be mocked, but she doesn't like to be beaten, either.

Not a single other Republican presidential candidate can build a crowd like Palin, can run against something like Palin (be it Washington, the media, the McCain campaign or Obama); no one speaks to the resentment/aspirational conservatives like she does; no one's life has better exemplified the way they perceive their struggle against the elite. We like to think about presidential primaries in paradigms, but candidates who fit with the times often find ways to completely subvert established paradigms.

Read the rest of Marc Ambinder's post. It's important not to be blind-sided, and he makes some very intelligent observations.

(Hat tip, Sully.)

[kathy a.]

our most infamous domestic terrorist, mcveigh, bombed the federal building in oklahoma because he was so riled up with anti-government sentiments. her rhetoric, as cited by armbinder -- "and an eloquent jab at the President: 'We will proudly cling to our guns and our religion.'" -- speaks to the crowd that feels the same way, in my opinion.

i actually would take most guns away, if it was in my power, because their destructive force is played out every single day -- in robberies, in drive-by shootings, in home accidents, and sometimes, too often, in postal shootings and school shootings and suicide by cop and plain old suicides and hundreds of other stories. i know that people still hunt to subsist, that they are needed for protection against wildlife in rural areas, and so on. but that's my opinion, too many guns. my opinion is not exactly obama administration policy, so far as i can tell. palin's position is code for, "they're coming to get you."

wtf about taking anyone's religion away? even palin cannot believe this. here, palin's code is, "they won't let you impose your beliefs on everyone else."

so yeah, resentment politics. zero on policy.

[big bad wolf]

kathy a, i think that ambinder characterized it as an "eloquent jab" as a matter of well-fitted rhetoric, which it is. it refers back to obama's comment during the primary season (in s.f., i believe) about rural folks "clinging" to guns and religion as security blankets in a frightening and changing world. palin flips the emphasis from fear to pride and throws the words back at the president. rhetorically, it is an eloquent jab.

substantively, i agree with you 100%. there are too many guns, there is no real threat to religon, and someone is going to get hurt again if false claims of government evil keep getting raised to stoke resentment.

[Sir Charles]

I don't know about "eloquent." "Pithy" at best. I'd describe it as effective rhetoric to one's base -- sort of the equivalent of Anne Richards describing Goerge Bush the first as having been born with a silver foot in his mouth, but not nearly as clever.

[kathy a.]

thanks, BBW -- now i see and recall the reference.

i still can't figure out what she is for, exactly, besides personal celebrity. that, plus the book deal and lucrative speaking engagements, was enough to lure her away from actually running the state she was elected to run.

my state has some experience with celebrity governors. apologies to all for reagan, by the way. i've got my share of complaints about ahnold, too, but the man is a veritable statesman by comparison.

[oddjob]

When I was a senior in high school the day after Carter won his election my social studies teacher made the observation that you can often split presidential candidates into two groups: those who want to do something, and those who want to be something. She felt Carter definitely ran for president because he wanted to do something.

If Palin runs it will be because she aspires to be president, not because she wants to do something while in office. The Bushes (both of them) were also candidates who ran because they wanted to be president, rather than because they wanted to do something while in office.

[kathy a.]

according to molly ivans, GB the elder thought ann richards' remark was funny, and gave her a silver pin shaped like a foot. i guess that right there, one can see a difference worth noting; GB junior never could put up with admitting any difficulties or ceding any power. palin is kind of a cuter shrub, without the same baggage. and even less relevant experience.

[oddjob]

without the same baggage

True, but she clearly has metric tons of her own, and I think it's probably worse, if such a thing is possible.

[kathy a.]

let me clarify: without the exact same baggage. dodging the draft is so done, isn't it? but claiming international experience because one's state is near a former superpower enemy: that's just special.

[oddjob]

that's just special

I want to laugh, but there are enough people taking her seriously (!!) that instead I want to weep................

I just don't understand. I get that if you're pissed at the thought of America changing into a country you no longer recognize that you could feel frightened by its willingness to accept "strangers", but even so, why do you find it necessary to pin your political hopes upon a charismatic ignoramus?

[kathy a.]

here's something interesting on palin's folly: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/09/AR2010020901227.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR

i'm not as well read or in tune with politics as many here, but i think this piece makes sense.

[oddjob]

This may be some comfort, too:

Even Tweety gets that Palin's frightening (given that she's now recommending Obama declare war on Iran to boost his political standing).

[litbrit]

I'm glad that people are realizing she hasn't gone away (duh!). I'm pretty confident she won't run for president when all is said and done, but she'll certainly dangle that implied promise in the faces of her supporters for as long as she can, maximizing their donations and adoration alike. I posted a comment to this effect at Ambinder's post on the matter.

The dominionists scare me, as do the gun-nuts and successionists. Many of them are just harmless, angry, and deeply confused blow-hards, true, but there are plenty amont them who *are* the real, scary-assed deal, I'm afraid.

[kathy a.]

also, many of them have guns. not that anyone in florida needs reminding.

thanks for that clip, oddjob.

[oddjob]

It would be one thing if she was offering up this frightening nonsense as truly her own assessment of things, but it's obvious that she doesn't even have the basic historical knowledge to do that.

As Tweety rightly points out, she doesn't even understand something about the limits of presidential power that I learned when I was 12, when I learned about the Constitution in 8th grade!

(Furthermore that doesn't even begin to delve into her complete lack of knowledge about the Middle East! "Eye-ran"???????)