Category: Sarah Palin

‘Civility,’ Unless It’s Sarah Palin

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“Yo, let me tell you something about Sarah Palin, man. She’s good masturbation material. Glasses and all of that — great masturbation material.”
— Tracy Morgan, TNT, Inside the NBA

You can’t make this stuff up, nor can you explain it. At Salon.com, Ethan Sherwood Strauss flounders around with an attempted intellectualization:

It takes a certain social judgment to grasp that our TV mores accept the vague objectification of famous women, but not the explicit stating of how this objectification manifests. Of course, Tracy might have known better, and cared less.
In non-televised life, I’ve heard many guys say exactly what Morgan said. And it’s undeniable that Palin is fetishized in conservative circles and that this fetishization gives her a certain political cachet. But, we’re a Puritanical culture, replete with public euphemisms. We also have modern gender sensitivities that I wouldn’t dismiss as mere “political correctness.”

This completely misses the point, although I must confess to being somewhat shocked to hear a writer for Salon proclaim that among his acquaintances it is commonplace to “say exactly what Morgan said.”

No, Mr. Strauss, what happened here was not about “the vague objectification of famous women,” nor was it about our “Puritanical culture” or “modern gender sensitivities.” Rather, what happened is the result of Tracy Morgan correctly reading signals from the liberal commissars of pop culture who have decided that Sarah Palin is the demonized Other, about whom it is permissible to say anything at all, except praise.

Remember when a reporter moved in next door to the Palin family and no liberal objected? Remember when Palin was blamed for the Tucson shooting and no liberal objected? Remember when Janeane Garofalo called Palin “small-minded and mean-spirited“? Remember what Kathy Griffin said about how Palin got the 2008 vice-presidential nomination? “That must have been some blow job.”

Liberals never raised any objections to any of that, because they fear Palin as a threat to Obama’s popularity. Sarah Palin has been made a latter-day Emmanuel Goldstein, except that her “Two-Minute Hate” has lasted more than two years.

Of course, TNT makes the perfunctory apology, but all of Tracy Morgan’s show-business friends will high-five him for those remarks. He will not lose any work as a result. He will not be made a pariah. The demonization of Sarah Palin has been made entirely acceptable by liberalism’s culture commissars, who declared open season on her in August 2008.

And yet they consider themselves the proper persons to lecture the rest of us about “civility.”

Palin Derangement Syndrome Prevents Bristol’s Appearance at University

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Nothing says “academic freedom” like kowtowing to a few hundred students who signed up for an anti-Palin Facebook page:

Anger over a decision to pay Bristol Palin several thousand dollars in student fees to talk to Washington University students about abstinence led to a decision Thursday night to nix Palin’s appearance on a panel here next month.
Washington University’s Student Health Advisory Committee had extended an invitation to Palin, a spokeswoman to prevent teen pregnancy, to speak on abstinence as part of the university’s Student Sexual Responsibility Week. . . .
A Facebook petition to compel the school to nix Palin’s appearance had hundreds of signatures Thursday evening. “It’s not necessarily in opposition to the ideas that are being presented,” explained Philip Thomas, the Washington U. student who initiated the petition. “People are getting so angry because of the opposition to Palin’s lack of expertise and the high cost she is charging,” especially in light of budget cuts that have adversely affected other student activities, he said.

Let us stipulate that, at any university in America, there are hundreds of students who would sign an anti-Palin petition. Washington University has 13,000 undergraduates. The student who organized the anti-Palin petition posted this last month at his blog:

The Economist on Dec. 9 2010 quotes Gallup polls that state that only 6% of scientists self-identify as Republican. It tickles me that, among those pursuing the systematic search for truth, so few align with Republican beliefs. Politically, the irrational actions of the GOP reinforce this poll quite clearly.

So a Democratic student organizes an anti-Palin petition and the university administration caves. What if there were “hundreds of signatures” on a student petition against a campus appearance by Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Al Gore or Barack Obama?

Why is it always Republican speakers whose speaking appearances are the objects of these hateful efforts to silence them?

So much for the “systematic search for truth,” eh?

(Via Memeorandum.)

Who Is Michael Scherer?

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Among other things, Michael Scherer co-wrote the thoroughly dishonest Time magazine cover story claiming that Barack Obama admires Ronald Reagan.

In fact, Barack Obama despises Ronald Reagan and everything Reagan stood for, and so does Michael Scherer. You know who really admires Ronald Reagan? Sarah Palin. And so let’s look at what Michael Scherer thinks of Sarah Palin:

You get the drift: Michael Scherer wouldn’t vote for a Republican if you put a gun to his head — which is why he’s working for Time magazine, writing dishonest cover stories to help Democrats hijack Reagan’s centennial as an occasion to promote Obama.

UPDATE: “Sputnik Moment” for Sarah Palin: “I’m seeing up close how ‘Palin Derangement Syndrome’ can compel otherwise intelligent people to foam at the mouth and babble nonsense to prove they’re right and she’s wrong.” (Via Instapundit.)

‘Man Was Born Free, And He Is Everywhere In Chains. . .’

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by Smitty

“. . .especially where the ideas of Rousseau are linked,” to paraphrase ol’ Jean Jacques.

If Kabul was a movie, it would be Groundhog Day. I can’t lay any claim to the big picture, but I hope all the blood and treasure invested here amounts to something.

The tempermental WiFi service was OK the other day, and I bought Pawlenty’s book after its mention on Insty. Continue reading ‘Man Was Born Free, And He Is Everywhere In Chains. . .’ →

Washington Post Leads Palin Boycott

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Being a professional Sarah Palin-hater worked out so well for Keith Olbermann, now Dana Milbank and the Washington Post join the parade — which looks a lot like lemmings going off a cliff.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Why they do it:

After days of relentless attacks by media across the fruited plain, Sarah Palin’s unfavorable rating hit an all-time high this week. …
From January 8 [the day of the Tucson Massacre] through January 16, CNN ran 80 stories that included the name of the former Alaska governor.
That’s roughly nine pieces per day, during which her name was mentioned approximately 664 times or over 70 times every 24 hours!

(Hat-tip: Van Helsing at Right Wing News.)

UPDATE II: William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

Rarely do we get such a clear example of the bias of the mainstream media and the extent to which it fears and hates Sarah Palin.
But since she is “not electable” because of this media bias, we should throw Palin overboard and demand she not run and not be taken seriously by Republican voters, right?
Because Dana Milbank and the Editors of The Washington Post get to pick our candidates, right?

Fear of a Republican Uterus

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James Taranto gets very close to the core of the dynamic behind Palin Derangement Syndrome: 

Why does their hatred of her burn so hot?
Ask them, and they’ll most likely tell you: Because she’s a moron. But that is obviously false. . . .
They say she is uneducated. What they mean is that her education is not elite — not Harvard or Yale, or even Michigan or UCLA. They resent her because, in their view, she has risen above her station. . . .
For many liberal women, Palin threatens their sexual identity, which is bound up with their politics . . .
It used to be a trope for liberal interviewers to try to unmask hypocrisy by asking antiabortion politicians — male ones, of course — what they would do if their single teen daughters got pregnant. It’s a rude question, but Palin, whose 17-year-old daughter’s pregnancy coincided with Mom’s introduction to the nation, answered it in real life. . . .
Liberal women are the active, driving force behind hatred of Sarah Palin, while liberal men’s behavior is passive and manipulative.

Taranto is very close to something here, and I wonder if the reason he doesn’t push the argument to its logical conclusion is because he is afraid that he would be denounced by hysterical women — yes, even Republican women, even some “conservative” women — if he spoke the blunt truth.

One of the necessary consequences of the Modern Professional Feminist Career Woman Lifestyle is that it tends to limit women’s procreative capacity. It isn’t merely that feminism’s embrace of the Culture of Death elevates abortion to sacramental status. Rather, it is that feminist notions of Progress require that women foresake (or at least postpone) the love-marriage-motherhood model of happiness in pursuit of careerist equality. Continue reading Fear of a Republican Uterus →

Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist Obsession:
‘He Wanted to Watch It All the Time’

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Kudos to the Arizona Republic for this follow-up reporting:

Loughner began fixating on a documentary: “Zeitgeist: The Movie.”
The movie is a bramble of conspiracy theories involving Sept. 11, the international monetary system, and Christianity.
“There are people guiding your life and you don’t even know it,” the trailer for the movie intones.
“He wanted to watch it all the time,” Osler said. “It was cool at first. But then it got weird. It was all he wanted to do.”
Loughner developed a seeming obsession with currency, grammar and literacy rates. They were becoming the objects of his rants and screeds. Those around him didn’t understand.

OK, so on Wednesday, ABC News was first to report on Loughner’s obsession with this conspiracy-theory cult flick:

“I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Loughner’s mindset and how he views the world that he lives in.”
– Zach Osler, friend of Tucson gunman

Four days later, the Arizona Republic finally follows up on this angle and we learn how intensely involved with this movie the killer became. Loughner already had serious problems — drugs, alchohol, dropping out of high school — but it seems to have been the “profound impact” of Zeitgeist that signaled his descent into deadly schizophrenic madness.

In their haste to shift blame onto Sarah Palin, Fox News, talk radio and the Tea Party movement, the elite media have overlooked what appears to be a major clue to the motive of the Tucson massacre.

As of noon Sunday, there were 39 search results on Google News for “Loughner+Zeitgeist.” Most of those were passing mentions. Meanwhile, a Google News search for “Loughner+Palin” returned 10,395 results. There were 595 results for “Loughner+Limbaugh.” Continue reading Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist Obsession:
‘He Wanted to Watch It All the Time’ →