The last socially acceptable prejudice in our multicultural, touchy-feely, oh so sensitive America is revulsion at hicks from the West or South, “extreme white people” in the words of camp film director, John Waters. He goes on to say that the white under-class “look incredibly beautiful until they’re 20, and then they look about 50”. Alas, speaking openly about “white trash” sounds too judgmental even for coastal elites (unless of course they are chatting among friends) so what we get instead is passive-aggressive condescension in the press, movies, the media, and in the reactions of city folk generally.
According to Phillip Lopate, there is a kind of joie de rube evinced in such edifying fare as Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, True Romance, and Wild at Heart, each about “two greasers…stuck in a nowhere town, who meet cute, fall in love, and then find a gun.” With rare exceptions that prove the rule, the military are portrayed as shattered people, permanently twisted by the evils of war. The men are dim troglodytes, racist and bitter, clinging to God and guns. Thankfully the women have a choice: they can either be slutty little airhead gold diggers, or they can appear as mouth-breathers cranking out babies at an alarming rate. Erin Brockovich is a twofer — elites can admire her plucky fight against the big bad company while remaining smugly superior in the certain knowledge that she’ll eventually make a mess of her life, perhaps with that awful biker guy.
The condescension turned decidedly less passive and a lot more aggressive with the arrival on the scene of Sarah Palin. Within minutes of her nomination, the press and the Obama attack machine (pretending for the moment there is a difference) swung into action. Unable to paint her as a dumpy denizen of a trailer park, they attacked her religion and family. Her Down’s Syndrome son, Trig, wasn’t really hers, he was the incestuous spawn of Bristol and her father—so much for hypocritical family values, huh? Or he was hers, but his condition was caused by her late-term air travel (nice scientific touch). As governor she had harassed a poor state trooper who had the misfortune of being an in-law. Never mind that the guy was a chronic drunk who had Tasered Palin’s 10-year-old nephew, shot cow moose out of season while drinking beer in his patrol car, and threatened to kill Palin’s sister, father, and Palin herself. The preferred liberal response was to enroll him in an anger management class, and appeal to the UN for sanctions. Still, they must have been deeply concerned about the moose — better sic PETA on him. Fifteen ethics charges were filed. All fifteen were defeated, most of them dismissed as frivolous. The headlines? “Let Palin be a warning, the actual ethics charges…”
Well, heck, that’s just some slutty-flight-attendant-looking bimbo from Alaska, it’s not like a government official. AmeriCorps Inspector General Walpin, you say? They had to hit him, he’s old. He practically drools at the meetings, for crying out loud! Besides, Michelle’s former chief of staff can fill that slot. It had nothing to do with his investigation of Obama crony, Kevin Johnson. Neither did the firing of IG Neil Barofsky at Treasury. Ditto for Judith Gwynne at the International Trade Commission. Apparently, there is an epidemic of incompetence among independent watchdogs. It’s Bush’s fault.
It’s all a coincidence, like the release of the sealed divorce records of Blair Hull and Jack Ryan. Hey, if they had nothing to be ashamed of it wouldn’t have been a problem. Can Obama help it if bad things happen to his enemies? What do you want him to do, torture his staff to get to the bottom of this? Obama decries the politics of personal destruction and respects everything about the law. To wit, the judgment of career prosecutors at DOJ in the case of Black Panthers who were falsely accused of intimidating voters at a polling station in Philadelphia was overturned and charges were dropped in the interest of justice. They had Billie clubs, but it’s not like they used them. Get over these petty distractions and look at the good work President Obama is doing in the criminal justice system; lowering penalties for crack cocaine, for instance. If you’re like me, you’ll agree that one thing we just don’t have enough of in America, it’s crackheads hanging out in Philly.
So Sarah Palin is painted as a hysterical airhead whose case is an isolated one. It is not indicative of any shenanigans but of her imagination. And besides, if she can’t stand the heat she should get out of the kitchen. Jeez, where’s her sense of humor? She should expect jokes on network TV about the rape of her 14-year-old daughter; it just comes with the territory. Or how about these gems? On June 24th the author of ethics charges in Alaska posted a PhotoShop picture of Trig. Not upscale enough to count? There was this from the Huffington Post on July 3rd: “Palin Will Run In ’12 On More Retardation Platform”. Just some harmless yuks, I guess. Arianna took it down, but not at the behest of Barack “I Bowl like a Special Olympian” Obama. Heck, mentally retarded white folks be funny, brother. Didn’t you see Forrest Gump?
Pundits this weekend (including too many clueless Republicans) cluck their tongues and wonder what kind of pantywaist would get so huffy about a few jokes. Paul Begala, big time strategist for the party that stands for women, the poor, and the oppressed, opines reasonably that, “Sarah Palin makes Mark Foley, the congressman who sent filthy emails to pages look almost normal. She makes David Vitter, the senator who was hanging out with hookers, look almost boring. She makes Larry Craig, caught hitting on a cop in a men’s room, look almost stable. She makes John Ensign, the senator who was having an affair with a staffer, look almost humdrum (and compared to the rest of the GOP whack-jobs, he is). And she makes Mark Sanford, the governor with the Latin lover, look positively predictable”. How almost normal, boring, stable, humdrum, and predictable, Paul.
Now here’s my question — what did Sarah Palin do to any of these people to warrant this kind of sustained, vitriolic, ad hominem attacks? I’m glad I asked. Behind the nastiest political smears we’ve seen in our lifetime is the deep-seated fear of the Democrat elites. Palin is the quintessential all-American girl from the heartland. Where the elites see white trash, Palin sees the men and women who fight our wars, drive our trucks, grow our food, and believe in America. She doesn’t need 15 minutes to order a pimento-cheeseburger with arugula at Ray’s Hell-Burger. She doesn’t need to fund black ops to embarrass and humiliate opponents and thus avoid facing election contests. She doesn’t need focus groups to explain to her the insanity of dealing with the Mad Mullahs while slapping down constitutional democracy in Honduras. It is obvious that any healthcare plan she championed would not sacrifice the handicapped, developmentally disabled, or elderly to save money—all groups who would be thrown under the bus with Obamacare. And since she actually has kids and grandkids it is unlikely she would favor saddling them with trillions of dollars of debt in the interest of pumping up the coffers of race-baiting schmucks from ACORN and La Raza (Das Volk, in the original German). She is clean and genuine and commonsensical. In short, she is everything the thugocracy in Washington is not.
It would be understandable if Palin withdrew from politics and raised her family like a normal person. Who could blame her? But personally I hope she looks these animals in the eye and sweeps them out of office. They look down on her as a hokey rube when she says “You betcha” and “Hell yeah!” But even they recognize that she connects with us, the last people in the country it’s okay to mock. Let’s see fund-raising and campaigning in 2010 to retire the 8 Republicans and 39 vulnerable Democrats who voted for the Cap & Trade Bill. They sweep another 15 into office with them and we have the House. The IOUs she collects for her work give her an amazing base to send the snake oil man back to Chicago with the rest of the thugs. Her message should be short and sweet, like Churchill when he defied Hitler in a speech on July 14, 1941: “We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang that do your wicked will. You do your worst–and we will do our best.” The elites can rant and rave all they want. We the people, the objects of their scorn, love Sarah Palin. And we won’t forget they started this.
That is all…
And a Happy Independence Day to you too!