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(Update 1)
This is not a surprise to anyone that isn't an adolescent male, hopelessly enthralled with any woman with big tits and good looks, or a right-wing hardliner that sees politics in militaristic absolutism: Sarah Palin really is that stupid.
She wasn't duped in 2008 by a liberal media when she couldn't name a single newspaper she reads, nor was she selectively edited by Katie Couric. Reports that Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent didn't come out of NBC or MSNBC, remember, they came from the political chief at Fox News.
That was a rare glimpse of a Vice Presidential candidate that John McCain's handlers tried desperately to hide from the media. We all knew why, you don't go to those great lengths to hide someone that can think on their feet, and use their (hopefully) extensive knowledge of political science and personal experience as a governor to sell yourself as safe choice for second in the line of succession.
Some had trouble accepting the consequences of the Republican party embracing extremist anti-intellectualism as a platform to win votes for themselves against political opponents that were smarter than they were. The road to institutional idiocy had been designed, constructed, repaired, repaved, and paved yet again for the last two decades by Republicans who thought they could win more elections by turning the stupid half of the country against the smart half.
Even if it was just one big lie, even if it would cost them in the end.
The party of stupid that rejects intellectualism as a character flaw has sunk to depths so low that mere disdain for academic elitism isn't enough – you've actually got to be dumb to qualify these days. George W. Bush wasn't enough. Trying to open locked doors, inappropriately touching foreign dignitaries, trying to read an upside down book to school children while this nation was under attack – that wasn't enough.
So this is where we find ourselves, where Alaska's great embarrassment was forced to read talking points written on her hand by a sharpie while insulting the President of the United States -- who whether your like him or not is clearly more intelligent than Palin could ever hope to be – for using teleprompters during speeches.
It's hardly worth the effort to point out, as liberals usually do and yet are regularly ignored, that every President in the modern era uses teleprompters for speeches. If Sarah Palin can't remember a set of five-word talking points without writing them on her hand like a teenager cheating on a test, how is a President supposed to memorize a speech that may run close to ten thousand words?
Remember, Republicans want to set the bar low, not high. If you want to be more qualified to be President of the United States than Sarah Palin, you'll probably need a radio in your ear just giving you the answers instead of reading off your hand (and then showing your hand to the cameras – smooth.)
Palin isn't just an embarrassment for Alaska or the Republican party any longer, and this isn't really her fault. She was born of a conservative movement that embraces stupidity and we have been seeing the results of that. This person is known nationally and around the world because of her arrogant tour, meeting world leaders as if her and John McCain had already won the 2008 election. She's now an embarrassment to the entire country. The stereo type of the arrogant, dumb American has a face and a name, and that name is Sarah Palin.
Naturally, this comes at precisely the same time that Palin ran to the press after he teabagger convention appearance to say that it would be absurd not to ponder a presidential bid.
Well, so much for that idea.
Update: Glenn Greenwald wrote about this which I found amusing:
In its adulating report on Palin's speech, National Review -- whose Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg both bitterly complained about the waving of Mexican flags on U.S. soil -- also proudly noted: "On her lapel, Palin wore a small pin with two flags -- for Israel and the United States." Along with the fact that she remains deeply unpopular with most Jewish-American voters, Palin's flamboyant display of her so-called love for Israel -- she previously boasted that the Israeli flag was the "only" one she kept in her Gubernatorial office -- is almost certainly grounded in her creepy desire to mold America's foreign policy to fit her evangelical belief that God demands that "Israeli land" be unified under Israeli control in order for Jesus to return and sweep all the good Christians up to heaven in Rapture (while banishing everyone else -- including the Jews she loves so much -- straight to hell forever). That's one major reason why neocons such as Bill Kristol love her. Led by Joe Lieberman, neocons have repeatedly shown their willingness to cynically exploit extremist Christian Rapture dogma for greater American fealty towards Israeli actions, and Palin reliably spouts neoconservative dogma on virtually every issue. Almost every one of her national security pronouncements sounds exactly like Dick Cheney and The Weekly Standard (though her call for expanded Israeli settlements go beyond what even most neocons are willing to advocate openly).
Is there any other nation in the world where a leading politician can appear in public -- without controversy -- wearing the flag of a foreign country?
[..]
In sum, Sarah Palin loyally supports virtually every policy that defined the uniquely disastrous Bush/Cheney first term. The "tea party movement" depicts itself as some sort of novel and independent force in American politics, and the establishment media -- which patronizingly equates far right extremists with "real Americans" and is petrified of accusations of "liberal bias" -- plays along. But exactly the opposite is true. It's just an appendage of the Republican Party: more dogmatic and boisterous than party leaders would like, but nonetheless devoted to the purest of partisan goals of restoring the same GOP to power that ran the country into the ground over the last decade.
Glenn's story is far more interesting than mine. Go read it instead.
The text of this article is Copyright © 2010 Paul William Tenny. All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Attribution by full name and original URL. Follow me on Twitter or subscribe via RSS or EMail.
