Stop Being Paranoid of Sarah Palin

This post is crossposted at The People's View



From the cover of Mother Jones mag, 11-10

This loud, shrieking noise about the AZ mass shooting + "Sarah Palin" has got to stop.

How is it that one person so quickly became such a lightening rod, this larger-than-life focus, yes, a target, for such hasty blame-assignment? Easy: we enable her. Easier: we love to hate and deeply cherish our despised scapegoats. Easiest: she permits herself to be used in this way.

Sadly for Sarah, she misplayed her political cards this weekend. David Frum, one of Palin's conservative detractors put it best this morning.

Palin’s post-shooting message was about Palin, not about Giffords. It was defensive, not inspiring. And it was petty at a moment when Palin had been handed perhaps her last clear chance to show herself presidentially magnanimous.

Don't count on that. Sarah Palin has never shown any interest in appearing "presidential", so I'm still not clear on why people like Frum still expect presidential behavior from her.

Insinuating the Palin name into every oversized news story of the hour has served her and her family well, financially, at least. Who really expects her to change up her pitch today, when her beleaguered camp can now point to every liberal blog on planet earth (except Oh Crap) and cry about how unfair everyone is to poor, martyred, messianic/angelic her?

Jared Lee Loughner's story -- what little we know of it -- reads like that of a poster child for increasing mental health services in Tuscon. We hear endless speculation about that idiotic, infamous scope graphic taken down from SarahPAC (while left up on Facebook), yet nothing about his parents.

We know nothing of his motive(s), yet; and zero about his actual political ideology, if he even has one. But so many are CERTAIN his actions were the result of "Sarah Palin" and her behavior on the internet.

With that in mind, consider that it's only January 10 and in Oakland, CA, there have already been five homicides. Whose marketing copy is to blame for those? Does anyone care? Is it news?

It's much easier to latch on to "Sarah Palin", no longer a person, but now the metonym for all of rightwingery/teabaggery. Except...there's indeed a person there.

We know this from the predictable rounds of fundraising appeals, the absurd calls to tell Sarah Palin this, or petitions to the DOJ with equally useless "indictments".

Read, again, what constitutes "incitement", as of 1969 (Brandenburg vs Ohio):

"The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

Unless someone is planning to challenge a 40+ year old incitement law so strict it allows the Klan to scream they're gonna kill the Blacks and Jews, people can forget about trying to "indict Palin" based on an internet graphic from last March. But man, does it feel good to wallow in the idea of her getting what's coming to her.

Right? Because her magical words can kill. Right? She can command such unprecedented, unwieldly power over her followers, and they all do what she says, so we all tremble at the prospect of a Palin presidency. Right?

Oh Crap covered this odd vision of political messianism, this charismatic authority, in a thing called The Poetics of Plain-Talk. If I may quote the self at length:

Ah, Sarah, poor dear. She was, remains, and will go down in history as, the breaker of multiple public taboos, at once. American politicians aren't supposed to act like that. They're not supposed to look like that, dress like that, trot their kids around like that, express themselves like that, or throw their head back and laugh so confidently, unpretentiously, in their sexy wrongness like that. Not while having those kind of political views, or going to those kinds of churches, or giving interviews in front of dying Thanksgiving turkeys like that.

Alas, she did. She certainly signed up to the clothes, the enhanced accent, the GOP/RNC fiddling with her own lyrical rhythms, and the general manipulation of her own image by them of her own you-go-girl empowered volition.

But I seriously doubt she signed up for this other psychodoodle weirdness of the taboo and ambivalence we of the neurotic American electorate -- Paglia and other pundits included -- have collectively projected on to her, transfiguring before the cameras into every strange spectacle we needed her to be for us in that political moment, regardless of what party we ended up voting for.

Two years later, her antics have landed her in this strange boat, in which people are convinced that federal laws must be altered to prevent certain types of imagery for political fundraising.

Don't think such laws won't ever be used against the left, or won't be twisted to "get Obama". Pass conservative laws like that, and the conservatives win.

No one has to be paranoid of Palin to the extent that we have to revamp our laws or political speech due to year-old crap her staff once put up on the internet.

Stop being afraid of her. She's just a politician. Get a grip, America. Snap out of it.

OCIHACOSP Does Not Have A Category Called "Sarah-As-Savior" For Nothing

Funny lede from stupid HuffPo today:

How do you generate buzz if you're a magazine up for sale and fighting claims of irrelevance?

Combine two of your most reliable go-to topics: Sarah Palin and religion.

Interesting, coming from them, since they are well-known for shoving the words "Sarah Palin" into headlines just for clicks, themselves.

This will make what, 5 Palin-adorned Newsweek covers, and the second with totally-wrong and/or misleading-context?

Taking up two recurring issues at Oh Crap, I Have A Crush on Deborah/Esther/Moses2.0, Newsweek's feature story calls itself covering "what Palin's appeal to conservative Christian women says about feminism and THE FUTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT". After reading Lisa Miller's article, I wish she would have come read OCIHACOSP first. The focus on abortion is a grounding enough for the article, but there's much more to Palin's appeal to rightwing women than just her Trig stories and anti-abortion stance (which, by some counts, isn't nearly anti-abortion enough).

Restating Oh Crap's position,

1. What Sarah Palin is doing with the word "feminism" may be new for this generation, but politically-mobilized rightwing/reactionary white women is not a new phenomenon

2. The left should not once again make the error of dismissing or writing off that phenomenon. It leaves us with things like Viguerie/Weyrich New Right inventions like the Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, Prop 8 and its popular cultural products: Ralph Reed, Glenn Beck, Bob McDonnell, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, who are in prime positions to influence opinion and thus the voting populace. This is by design, since educating students to go into public life and take it over for Jeezus is precisely what schools like McDonnell's and Bachmann's alma maters were founded to do. They make no secret of it.

More Miller:

Palin has been antagonizing women on the left of late by describing herself as a “feminist,” a word she uses to mean the righteous, Mama Bear anger that wells up when one of her children is attacked in the press or her values are brought into question. But while leftist critics continue to shred Palin as a cynical, shallow, ill-informed opportunist, and new polls show her unpopularity rating to be at an all-time high—53 percent—Palin is now playing to her strengths. Even if she never again seeks elected office, her pro-woman rallying cry, articulated in the evangelical vernacular, together with the potent pro-life example of her own family, puts Palin in a position to reshape and reinvigorate the religious right, one of the most powerful forces in American politics.

Miller nails the left's reaction, and in my estimation, that reaction is a mistake, one the left makes over and over regarding rightwing Christianity. Conservative strategists bank on it. They are usually right.

3. If the left is often confounded by whatever the h. Sarah Palin seems to be doing, they're not alone. To the extent that the left is frustrated with her apparent, for-now staying power, she's got the right in ever the same bit of a tizzy

4. With that in mind, her pretend-preacher, ersatz Esther act is only going to carry her so far with the Christian right crowd, who, hopefully by now has learned something from having repeatedly followed her fellow Pentecostal girl Aimee Semple MacPherson into scandal, her fellow bull-headed bumpkin in a suit William Jennings Bryan into multiple public humiliations; rightwing televangelists into 900-foot visions, dozens of ministry scandals, and their Moral Majorities and Christian Coalitions into crumbling institutional impotence.

Some day, the left is going to get it through our collective heads that "trying take down a chick" like Palin, who models herself on Teflon Ronnie, isn't really going to work. Palin-gates and Trig Trootherism: didn't work. Calling her every gender-based epithet in the book: didn't work. Newsweek's silly cover from her Runner's World shoot: didn't work. Focusing on (and getting distracted by) her sexy looks, her nice body and starting ridiculous whisper campaigns about how big she may or may not be "up there": you know the drill; don't think she doesn't either, or doesn't effectively use this kind of behavior to her advantage. She does, like no other. So, keep yearning for that "final undoing" predicted in the press since some time in late 2008, but don't hold your breath for it.

That's because heckling from the orchestra never works, when people are playing to the balcony.

From a personal standpoint, had someone like me -- growing up queer while steeped in New Right/Post-Civil-Rights Christianity -- had a role model like Sarah Palin, my exit from the rightwing would have been hastened far sooner. So feminists quit fretting about the definition of authentic "feminism" in order to exclude the Palins of the world, let Sarah Palin go make the word "feminism" popular again. All we have to do is 1- kick our own institutions and educational drives back into gear and 2- provide a place for young women interested in Palin feminism to land, with a better understanding of what "feminism" is.

That's boon city, peeps. Miller, again:

Behind the Christian-military rhetoric, though, is a theology that’s generic, Griffith and other scholars say. (Though the video clip that made the rounds during the campaign of Palin being prayed over by an African minister gave foes on the left the willies, most churchgoing conservative evangelicals were completely unfazed.) In her speeches, Palin never damns anyone to hell. She never talks about sin: discussing her daughter Bristol, accidentally pregnant at 17, she talks about responsibility.

When Palin writes about her born-again experience, she talks not about an encounter with Jesus or the Holy Spirit, as so many evangelicals do, but of a sudden awareness of the awesomeness of creation. “Looking around at the incredible creation that is Alaska—the majestic peaks and midnight sun, the wild waters and teeming wildlife—I could practically see and hear and feel God’s spirit reflected in everything in nature.” Palin refers often to Ronald Reagan in her speeches, and even critics concede there’s something Reaganesque about the way she approaches faith. It’s easy. It’s optimistic. It’s future-oriented.

As has been covered numerous times here, Sarah's ambiguity on her theological positions is going to get her in hot water with these voters. Note to Palin: these same voters dumped Reagan in a big way when he wasn't "born again" enough for them, when Roe v Wade wasn't overturned (Republicans have a stake in it never being overturned; what else would they have to campaign on if they did?), when Gog and Magog remained dormant, when Reagan never ushered in the antichrist, when Jesus did not return to earth, on a horse, with a sword in his mouth.

Taking people on big rides is just one of the things demagogues do. The lesson for the left, which the left never seems to learn is, never underestimate the political power of religious bigots. Laugh at them, but don't write them off. Sneer at them, but don't make the mistake in believing that will ever make them go away. They will never go away. There will always be another Sister Aimee, another fundamentalist politician like Bryan, and yes, the next Sarah Palin.

We'd do well to follow the lead of Nina Simone, and leave the backlashers with the blues.

The Poetics of Plain-Talk: Palin As Scapegoat and Totem

What is the secret that the firm, erect, sticking out thing holds? Unused, it is a frontier, where no man has gone before. What is the secret that lies beneath the power of this image, this object? What most desired and most feared thing is masked behind the desire to be the first, or the biggest? What does (M)other lack? (1)

A few articles in question regarding Palin and language, starting with one from Julian Gough at The American Prospect, and an older one by a long-time blog colleague, Anil Dash.

Long time ago, OCIHACOSP asked, rhetorically, if Sarah Palin wasn't being set up to be a scapegoat for a GOP loss. This was long before the post-election bus-throwing and other tantrums by Newt and other prominent conservatives.

Turns out I was right.

Her use and abuse of the English language was part of the ploy, the game, and the show. And her gross mishandling by the GOP/RNC. A month and a half after the elections, some people are still falling for the act, apparently.

Though Gough may have been writing with tongue in cheek, there is something to what he says in such a funny way.

Here she is, in a work I have taken to calling “The Relevance of Africa.” (Not a single word or comma has been changed, but the line breaks are placed where they naturally fall.) In it, Palin blends the energy of free verse with the austerity of a classic 14-line sonnet.

It reads: “And the relevance to me /With that issue, /As we spoke /About Africa and some /Of the countries /There that were /Kind of the people succumbing /To the dictators /And the corruption /Of some collapsed governments /On the /Continent, /The relevance /Was Alaska’s.”

A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake.

Ohh, does OCIHACOSP love this imagery, since in my opinion this was the very door unhinged by the Sarah Palin pick, itself, her often-baffling use of English, included. A brief trip to Wikipedia's entry on Totem and Taboo explains it best.

In this essay, Freud considers the relationship of taboos to totemism. Freud uses his concepts 'projection' and 'ambivalence' he developed during his work with neurotic patients in Vienna to discuss the relationship between taboo and totemism.

Like neurotics, 'primitive' peoples feel ambivalent about most people in their lives, but will not admit this consciously to themselves [OCIHACOSP, in case it's not crystal clear by now, does not support this]. They will not admit that as much as they love their mother, there are things about her they hate. The suppressed part of this ambivalence (the hate parts) are projected onto others. In the case of natives, the hateful parts are projected onto the totem. As in: 'I did not want my mother to die, the totem wanted her to die.'

Freud expands this idea of ambivalence to include the relationship of citizens to their ruler. In ceremonies surrounding kings, which are often quite violent, – such as the king starving himself in the woods for a few weeks – he considers two levels that are functioning to be the "ostensible" (i.e., the king is being honored) and the "actual" (i.e., the king is being tortured).

What about citizens and pols who are potential rulers, especially those whose public image is geared to appeal directly to the libido, resulting in unintended consequences (such as perhaps this very blog) like behind-the-scenes reports of the very machinery masked by the wizard?

Dash's article, a linguist's analysis of Palin's speech patterns does find time for politics, begrudging may it be.

Key:

I firmly believe that Sarah Palin is a smart, talented public speaker who makes deliberate choices about her use of language to elicit particular responses from different segments of her audience. She's college-educated and has been a professional broadcaster, understanding the nuances of addressing a large audience. She is certainly experienced enough to understand that signifiers like "hockey mom" and "Joe Six Pack" are explicitly communicating to an audience that is white, overwhelmingly not college educated, and lives in rural or suburban areas.

This particular analysis goes against the grain of Palin-as-dipshit as promoted by television and online comics. But it's in line with OCIHACOSP's insofar as I feel that Mrs. Palin is very deliberately taking the far-right conservatives she and her glorious body were pimped to, on a major ride.

(Along with the conservative women who think she actually gives a damn about them, outside their vote.)

Is Camille Crushgirl Paglia one of them? Let's hope not. Her latest reflection invokes the everpresent under-buzz of Palin Messianism, called, "The Resurrection of Sarah Palin". And what is/was the Christian Messiah but the ultimate scapegoat, the king with the tarnished, underappreciated, woefully misunderstood crown; thrown under the bus by the once-adoring audience? I don't recall Palin having died being nailed to a tree, or really ever going so far away, but she is again used here as a stick to beat back Paglia's own bugbear, The Ivy League Academy/elitists/leftists/same thing.

I am very sorry that [a professor of hers at Yale], and so many other members of the educational elite, cannot take pleasure as I do in the quick, sometimes jagged, but always exuberant way that Palin speaks -- which is closer to street rapping than to the smug bourgeois cadences of the affluent professional class.

English has evolved, and the world has moved on. There is no necessary connection between bourgeois syntax and practical achievement. I have never had the slightest problem with understanding Sarah Palin's meaning at any time. Since when do free Americans subscribe to a stuffy British code of veddy, veddy proper English? We don't live in a stultified class system. In the U.K., in fact, many literary leftists make a big, obnoxious point about retaining their working-class accents. Too many American liberals claim to be defenders of the working class and then run like squealing mice from working-class manners and mores (including moose hunting and wolf control). What smirky, sheltered hypocrites. Get the broom!

Anti-intellectual academics...embrace the ambivalence, indeed.

The jazziness of blogspeak? Just where IS that whitey tape, anyway, hm. Same place as the smoking photos of a flat-stomached Sarah, and BHO's original birth certificate, I'm guessing.

OCIHACOSP is so disappointed that someone on the Blog Parent roll would engage in such a blindingly obvious straw man/person, playing the class card like a potential suicide in Las Vegas.

Again, the race card just begs to be played as well: had Sarah been Black, or if Condi had been the VP pick and spoke East Palo Alto as opposed to Stanford; had she had any kind of "ethnic" accent associated with anything but whiteness, there would have been no way, and/or we'd have NEVER heard the end of it from conservatives, busy busy busy yapping about the unmerits of "affirmative action".

What we're seeing now, as opposed to what Paglia considers "more neutral" coverage by news sites "and even laudatory, signifying that a shift toward reality is already at hand", is the pre-VP nom Sarah Palin, before the played-up accent and dropped-g's, before the winks and nods, before the size-too-small suits and crazy-sexy suede boots. That is the "shift" reflected in news coverage, that, and her own "laudatory", conciliatory, supportive attitude towards the President Elect.

Say it with us, Ms. Paglia, B-L-A-C-K-P-R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T-F-R-O-M-C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A-A-N-D-H-A-R-V-A-R-D.

Ah, Sarah, poor dear. She was, remains, and will go down in history as, the breaker of multiple public taboos, at once. American politicians aren't supposed to act like that. They're not supposed to look like that, dress like that, trot their kids around like that, express themselves like that, or throw their head back and laugh so confidently, unpretentiously, in their sexy wrongness like that. Not while having those kind of political views, or going to those kinds of churches, or giving interviews in front of dying Thanksgiving turkeys like that.

Alas, she did. She certainly signed up to the clothes, the enhanced accent, the GOP/RNC fiddling with her own lyrical rhythms, and the general manipulation of her own image by them of her own you-go-girl empowered volition.

But I seriously doubt she signed up for this other psychodoodle weirdness of the taboo and ambivalence we of the neurotic American electorate -- Paglia and other pundits included -- have collectively projected on to her, transfiguring before the cameras into every strange spectacle we needed her to be for us in that political moment, regardless of what party we ended up voting for.



(1) Jennifer Bloomer, "Big Jugs", in Fetish: The Princeton Architectural Journal, vol. 4, Princeton Architectural Press, 1992, p. 78.

Sarah Palin is a Feminist

I know. It's a horrifying thought, isn't it.

The Maid of Wasilla, with her visions of plowing through White House doors at the behest of God, would do well to heed the fate of Joan of Arc, whose unwavering religious fervor won her the favor of the illiterate hayseed/redneck French countryside, yet cost her something far, far greater.

As predicted in "Sarah Palin, Superstar", the very people who ushered her in with palm leaves in September are now grumbling about her in November.

If the Bible is to be believed, and I don't think it is, we have seen this tale, before.

Just in time for the appreciation post lauding Palin's ability to mess with conservative christian men and their massive gender hangups, some christowank at Crosswalk is currently grappling with his hypocritical Christian innards:

It is in this spirit of honest, forthright engagement with God and his word that I'd like to ask a question that couldn't help but come to me as I was reading the Bible this morning. I was in 1 Timothy 2, when I read this: "I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes .... A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

Now how in this world could I read that and not think of Sarah Palin? I didn't want to think of Sarah Palin. I didn't want to think of anything besides the glory of God's word. I hardly waded into my Bible this morning looking for trouble. But (alas) there it was.

So I'm honestly and truly asking, simply because I don't understand and want to: How do Christians who embraced and supported Sarah Palin in particular for her adherence to "traditional" Biblical values reconcile how utterly she violated Paul's injunctions to women to not wear expensive clothes, to stay quiet, to remain submissive, and to have no authority over men? If vigorously campaigning for Vice President of the United States (while, as we all know, wearing expensive clothes) isn't in direct, overt, purposeful, and sustained opposition to all four of those things, then ... then King Kong was a leprechaun. I would think evangelicals and Biblical fundamentalists would reject Ms. Palin for ... well, for one, so ambitiously seeking authority over men.

What do I say to non-Christians when they assert that Christians are being blatantly hypocritical and even opportunistically bigoted when they use Paul's words as justification for the condemnation of homosexuality, and at the same time ignore Paul's very explicit words when doing so suits their own personal desires and ambitions? How do we use Paul to argue for California's Proposition 8, but not use Paul to argue against Sarah Palin?

Poor thing. So confused. All it takes is a wink and a skirt. That's all it EVER takes with these males. Sorry fella, you've been punked by Sarah Palin; butch up and deal with it.

Meanwhile, the Iowa Independent further charts the Christian right's hypocrisy on the issue of a woman drawing attention herself and above all, holding authority over males, noting as John Shore did above, their utter failure to reconcile what the Bible states about women with what it allegedly proclaims about The Gays.

The charitable Christian will leave aside the implications of this injunction for Palin’s notorious $150,000 clothes shopping spree, and ask how biblical fundamentalists can accept Timothy’s teachings and still celebrate a female politician skilled in forthright rhetoric.

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.” ~ 1 Timothy 2:8-15

The answer is: Not very easily.

For those who believe that there is an all-encompassing plan by God as delivered in the Scripture, the complementarian view is fundamental. The belief in specific gender roles with men being in leadership positions over women cannot be separated from the order that the Bible says God created:

“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” ~ I Corinthians 11:3

These two findings help make up one reason I can say I appreciate Sarah Palin, not for being a "feminist" as defined by conventional 2nd wave pro-choice pro-equality activists, but for sticking it to her own conservative valiant male warriors, making them whimper and cry, and even go back to their Bibles to read what it actually says and think about it, as opposed to accepting what they have been told about the Bible and gender roles.

Yes, I appreciate that, very much. Thank you, Brown Eyes. In fact, these guys ought to be grateful she made their party lose, because if the McCain/Palin ticket had won, all you antiabortion control freaks trying to use Sarah Palin as a stick to beat the feminists would indeed find themselves with "a woman" "one heartbeat away" from being Commander in Chief, above countless males not only in the military but in the cabinet.

Oh, the travesty.

I always thought her "equality" and "progress" rhetoric would get her in trouble with the christofreaks from which she draws her support. I didn't expect them to jump ship before the elections, keeping themselves up for grabs. But I also didn't expect them to start throwing her under the theological bus so soon, not even a month after the election.

I guess it's a mark of the sore, male conservative loser: as with the cases of Eve, Lilith and Pandora, we can set our watch to the moment they blame the woman for their own strategic and tactical failures.

Too bad Sarah Palin seems so immersed in this world of scapegoating the always-already scapegoated, she can't quite see just how deeply scapegoated she is going to become amongst these people. Like Eve and Pandora who came before her, she may never be able to see it.

But those of us who can't stop watching, can. And after all the rightwing males suddenly discovering "sexism" because of her, after all the staunch ideological feminists trying to protect her from the same, it will be those of us who can see her for what she is -- the femme top Lilith/Pandora figure that just might have the ability to lift "feminism" to a height previously unknown and unfulfilled by the Steinems, the Lordes, the Paglias.

Welcome to Second Wave, 2.0, folks. A leftist didn't bring it on, a rightwing extremist did.

We're going to have to learn to reconcile it, because this is what history is going to recount.