I went to the local Rite-Aid to buy some aspirin the other day. When I went to the check-out counter, there was the usual assortment of gossip and women’s magazines. However, there was an addition that I’d never seen before. It was a special edition magazine titled “Sarah Palin: The Untold Story”. It promised “100 pages of must-see photos”. Below that were the words “Faith, Family, Tradition” (Kinder, Kueche, Kirche). Below that was the question: “Can She Save America?” (Do pigs have wings?)
Experience has taught me to be wary of conspiracy theories. Still, I can’t help thinking that there is something fishy about this whole Sarah Palin phenomenon. Here is a woman who has failed to distinguish herself in any way, who was treated as a national joke when she ran for vice-president. Yet the media are constantly promoting her. And not just the right-wing media. Last year, Barbara Walters did a TV special called “The Ten Most Fascinating People of 2009”. Sure enough, Sarah Palin was one of them. Her speech at the Tea Party convention was broadcast by CNN, as if it were a major event. One really has to wonder if there is something behind all this.
Anyone, even a conservative, who thinks Palin is presidential material, must live in a cave. First of all, she’s clearly not very bright. It apparently never occurred to her that her comment about Obama reading a TelePrompTer might open her up to ridicule, since it is well known that she uses hand notes. Her lack of education is embarrassingly obvious. As a public speaker, she is just awful; she sounds like the most annoying teacher you had in grade school. What’s more, she’s prone to scandal. The real reason she resigned as Governor of Alaska is because the Republican-controlled state legislature found evidence that she abused her office. She tried to pressure the Public Safety Commissioner to fire a state trooper who was her former brother-in-law. This should have ended her career. (Blagojevich became a political pariah, even though what he did really wasn’t any worse than this.) It’s recently been revealed that she hasn’t paid property taxes for some cabins she owns.
Palin doesn’t alway seem to get along with her fellow Republicans. One of the more interesting moments during the 2008 election was when McCain criticized Obama for using the expression, “putting lipstick on a pig”. What does it tell us that he automatically assumed that Obama must be referring to Palin?
So, who, or what, is behind this big Sarah Palin push? And what are they trying to accomplish by this? We should start demanding answers.
The Spanish Prisoner 
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