Why It's Not That Fun to Laugh at Sarah Palin Anymore

By Doug Kreeger, AlterNet. Posted October 11, 2008.

Now that Sarah Palin is playing the role of pit-bull with lipstick, it has taken all the fun out of this election. I was experiencing endorphin overload as she entertained us the first few weeks after she got the nod. While the far right wing was enjoying her moment in the spotlight, most others of us have turned to her for shameless comic relief. But, now, as she has been repackaged as an attack dog, it is not so easy just to laugh her off.

Here we are nearing the Eleventh Hour in what many term the "most important election in generations." With the world crumbling by the nanosecond, the new Sarah is all about getting boos from the audience against Obama, The New York Times and the so-called "East Coast elite." What kind of fun is that? Not to mention, it's also clear she doesn't have a clue that the oceans are risin' and the skies are fallin', to use the Palinese dialect. Am I sick to wish she'd just call it a day and audition for a fictional Fox show called "The Hockey Mom?"

That might be funny until you stop and consider what is at stake. We are in the throes of the biggest collapse in the world's economic system since the Great Depression. We now have the real possibility that the frozen credit markets will forever change the world. I guess those campaign slogans were right; this election is about change.

Now even laughing at Palin won't be enough of an anti-depressant because millions of our fellow citizens actually think she is ready to be president. Wow -- a person who just two months ago most of us had never heard of and who has now been dressed up and sold to the American public by the likes of Karl Rove. Forget the fictional Fox show, she has been thrust into the all-time best reality show ever conceived. While providing great material for Jon Stewart, David Letterman and Tina Fey, she's serving the increasingly dangerous role of pandering to the audience at Fox News with her hate speech.

So here we are with a dire economic outlook. State governments are begging for credit from the federal treasury to pay for next week's payrolls. They are slashing the budgets to the bone in order to come to grips with dwindling tax revenue in the coming year. As this trickles down, each of our local communities only has its overstretched local tax base to pay for the services like schools, maintenance of crumbling infrastructure and picking up our garbage. It is generally the case when our national leaders fail to balance their own budgets, we all have to deal with the garbage. Really, in these times, we can do much better than a vice-presidential candidate who asserts that Barack Obama is a terrorist.

The reality is that the very people who have promoted Sarah Palin's ascendancy to our living rooms, relish the thought that our governments are being forced to reduce spending in every conceivable way. So, those overcrowded classrooms will get worse and this winter as the potholes get deeper, the Grover Norquists will delight in the inability of our government to provide a safety net during these scary times that lie ahead.

So, instead of thanking Sarah Palin for injecting so much fun into the campaign, I will borrow her most famous phrase, "No, thanks." All we have now is the memories of her most amusing moments as she stumbled into the spotlight. If only it was just an act it might have actually been funny. Let's hope the series ends conclusively on November 4th.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

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Douglas Kreeger is the former CEO of Air America Radio.

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