REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE

AlterNet / By Vanessa Richmond

Why Can't We Look Away From Sarah Palin?

She's an incompetent has-been. Yet she keeps getting our attention. Is it that she embodies a set of contradictions that many women grapple with?

November 24, 2009 |

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Sarah Palin is a liar who is unfit for public office. This is generally accepted. And yet, she’s getting more attention than people who are honest, sane and actually holding office, and also more than people, even celebrities, who are arguably insane and vapid. Media and audiences clearly can’t take their eyes and ears off her, much as they might want to.

I’m among them. Every day, I’m surprised and perplexed that she’s still in the news and on talk shows, then I watch more and read more about her. I am surely one of those liberal media elite haters she keeps referring to, and if this continues, she’s going to have to acknowledge we’re her main audience, if not her base. The question is why.

On the one hand, there’s clearly plenty to discuss about her politics, and about the politics of the organizations that tried to get her into one of the most powerful offices in the world. But there are plenty of Republican women in the news with similar politics, so that doesn’t entirely explain why she’s a current media darling.
And on the other hand, there are plenty of psychological theories about why she holds such current appeal despite being a has-been: everything from nostalgia for the soap opera of the election season given the “bleak ambiguity” of the day-to-day problems in the White House, to the fact that people end up paying attention to what we try not to pay attention to, if you know what I mean. But again, many people could fill this role.

So love or hate her politics, there’s something that keeps making audiences look. It’s confusing. And I have to conclude that’s part of what makes her so compelling: partly that Palin says plenty of confusing and contradictory things (also called lies). but possibly as much because she actually embodies contradictory characteristics.

As I watch her on talk shows and read about her, I can’t help but feel that she’s a living, breathing embodiment of several of the contradictory messages about being a woman.

They’re questions like, should women be sexy or “pure”? Should family or work be our top priority? Should we seek fame and power, or private life? Should we be ambitious or supportive of others’ ambition? Should we go for a “traditional” definition of marriage or a non-traditional one? Should we prioritize ourselves first, or others?

Something that makes her compelling isn’t that she has chosen one or the other in each set of either-or questions women are constantly subject to, but that she sometimes chooses both. And watching her is therefore both familiar and very head-shakingly uncomfortable at the same time. She’s a paradox.

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Tyee Contributing Editor Vanessa Richmond writes the Schlock and Awe column about popular culture and the media. She is also the former managing editor of the Tyee.

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We watch to be dumbfounded

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Posted by: jreal on Nov 24, 2009 12:55 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]

Palin is a simpleton dimwit thrust into the spotlight. Palin is opportunistic. And because she is both thrust into the spotlight, and because she is opportunistic, we not only see too much of her now, but we will continue to see too much of her until shame lands within her soul.

She has a beauty, that is actually not beauty, but vile if you're a realist like me, and she is folksy, which is scripted but well morphed.

She's a go-getter. Which may be the only thing positive about her, until you realize that what she "go-gets" is way outside her league and intellect.

And now that she was thrust into this presidential spotlight, we are doomed to watch this never ending vortex of Palin go-getting the untouchable for Palin. The only person of her breed to manage such a feat was lil' Bush, and that's only because of his name. And he cheated.

But as for Palin, her dimness is so obtrusive that even the sun gets blacked out during her interviews. I just watched an interview with Greta on the baby feeding fox news. And even with such baby feeding, it was painful to watch, and follow, and comprehend. Every question puts her at a loss for words. But she manages to mumble jumble through with some 'folksy' and some off-intelligible go-getter comments.

I say to you that you watch her because she was once a vice presidential candidate, and a very divisive candidate. And a very dumb candidate. And you watch her because TV studios and organizations keep her on the air. And she stays on the air because not only other dimwits out their think they can maybe someday be just like her, (a dumb ass with a dream), but because other people will watch her just out of sheer hilarity. To be dumbfounded that someone like this can have such aspirations, and get so close, and that someone like this can actually fool people into thinking that she actually has intelligence.

We watch her to watch her struggle for answers, and them make up some obscene tangent. We watch her dig for words like a 4th grader would when caught in a lie. We listen to her 'agendas' and wonder who told her to say that. And we wonder how much coaching she got on the talking point she's presently describing.

We think of all the college students not even out of college that could stoop her in just about any debate. We watch her and think, gee, if I answered like that in any of my entry college level classes, I would have ink and marks all over my report. And we think "wow, and this lady wants to be our president."

We look at the person giving the interview to her and we think, "What the hell is that person thinking about?" "How is the interviewer keeping his/her eyes straight?" How is the interviewer keeping his/her composure straight through all this nonsense?" and are they thinking, "Damn, how god damn simple do I get to go with this lady?" Are they thinking, "I have have slow ball these questions at the same rate I gave that grammar school kid I interviewed the other day." I mean really, how do these interviewers stay so professional. I mean they have to use extra professionalism just to make her not look bad.

So we watch her through these interviews and watch her keep coming back and making excuses for the last interview and we will have to keep watching this vortex because she will never give in to how stupid she is. She doesn't want to believe it. Or maybe she does, and she just doesn't want us to believe it, and she keeps digging a hole to try and prove otherwise.

So on that note, she may be entertaining.

She's Gods little brain fart. And farts are always entertaining.

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» RE: We watch to be dumbfounded Posted by: Libsrule

» RE: This comment and the next on are GREAT!!!! Posted by: marletat