Professional Left Podcast Episode #797: No Fair Remembering Sarah Louise Palin

“This Sarah Palin phenomenon is very curious. I think somebody watching us from Mars—they would think the country has gone insane.” -- Noam Chomsky

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Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Returns.

In response to the hundreds dozens seven imaginary email I got from my Mom about WTF ever happened to Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down, well I still watch the Mouse Circus and still jot down my little notes.

And in murky ugly of the due diligence needed to krill-filtering that data I noticed something.

Maybe you noticed it too.

Here’s a hint: “What do Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Al Qaeda, George W. Bush and the word "torture" all have in common?”

For the 5th or 6th week in a row - ever since the state funeral for Punkin’ Haid Russert -- the Mediopolis has banished every one of those topics -- along with all of human history and the rest of the planet (except various photogenic parts of Beijing) -- into the cornfield.

Because, as was summed up on "This Week…" a few weeks ago by Matthew Dowd (as always, all quotes are loosely translated by me from Kremlinspeak into the tongues of men):

“This election will not be about issues. It will be about how we feel about stuff.”

This meme has been repeated in every corner of the Mediopolis, and for the simplest of reasons:

A) Teevee exists to sell us crap.

B) The Dancing Mice on the Mouse Circus are there to do whatever it takes to hang onto our eyeballs long enough for their overlords to smoothtalk us about tiny pills and big investment portfolios that’ll get our dicks iron-hard, and gaudy cars and undetectable hair dye that’ll get us women so we’ll have something to do with all those iron-hard dicks.

C) Discussions about facts, policy and history and the thing that used to be called “news” that occurs when those things aggressively intersect are boring and make the eyeballs go away.

And if regular old news is boring (and therefore bad for advertisers), political conventions are, by their very nature, super-ooper-duper boring. As the immortal Gilliard (about whom more later) once said, party conventions are basically trade shows with better exhibits. Nothing even remotely approximating “news” happens at them – certainly nothing so vital that requires 400,000 journalists and bloggers hot on the scene for weeks with “…everyone using everyone else's coattails” to wipe their noses (quote from Ray Bradbury, “Fahrenheit 451”).

So...

1. Facts and stuff are hard.
2. Pundits are lazy.
3. The audience is dull.
4. And the advertisers want to push product.

And so, viola, the “news” is now finally jettisoned entirely and replaced by what pundits love best; feeling, hunches, opinion polls on likability, and “I hear he likes her, but he said that she said she like-likes him, but then my cousin – who knows a guy who’s in college – said she really, really likes this other guy” high school cafeteria rumor mongering.

Of course anyone who can had a teacher who made the London Fire come alive for them, or can even just remember all the words to “Conjunction Junction” after more than a quarter of a century knows that education isn’t boring at all when it’s done with joy and passion and flair.

But filling the public airwaves with Gossip Girl slag is so much easier, so there we are.

Sigh.

Onward.

Now as you may or may not know, before the national disgrace begins on Sunday, the local affiliates here run a local versions of Cirque de Rodent.

The LocalFaux is still chartered to run the talking points handed down from Massa’s House, but in Ultraviolet Chicago, it has to temper the cask-strength Red State ideology with the reality that they are deep inside enemy territory. We’re a city that’ll gladly have a beer with former Illinois State Treasurer/former Chair of the Republican Party, Judy Barr Topinka, or a glass of milk with former Republican governor Jim Edgar, and talk politics, but we are not tribe that takes a lot of shit off of NeoCon Pez Dispensers.

So sometimes LocalFaux is worth a mention, like today, when they gathered together and interviewed three local women of political prominence: the altogether awesome Representative from the Illinois’ 9th District (The Fightin’ Ninth! [h/t S. Colbert]), Jan Schakowsky (D), former Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Dawn Clark Netsch and very tall State Rep Christine Radogno (R).

To her everlasting credit, Representative Schakowsky challenged everything, as did Netsch, more-or-less and in an altogether more genteel way.

The same-as-it-ever-was Fox Frame for l’affair Palin would be familiar, even to those who have only ever seen Fox walking past Circuit City display windows:

"Is it fair that people are challenging Palin's fitness to serve based on her gender and being a Mommy?"

Schakowsky: Who exactly is saying that?

Fox: Y'know...people.

Schakowsky: Who? Specifically? Give me a fucking name, because I haven't heard anyone, anywhere say anything like that.

Fox: Er…ah…somethingsomething “bloggers”. You're not playing the game right!

Schakowsky: Oh and by the way, this "Palin the Maverick" thing is bullshit. Palin supported the “Bridge to Nowhere” until it started to stink up the nation press. Then she kicked it as it was already hitting the ground, but kept the money. Also, as mayor of North Mayberry, she actually hired a lobbyist. Got her dinky town some of that sweet, sweet federal handouts that she suddenly abhors so much. Thanks to Mayor McGovernment Cheese, the taxpayers of the Lower 48 States were forced to pay $1,000 in federal handouts for every man woman and child in Wasilla, Alaska.

/brief driftglass aside --

Alaskans under The Queen of All Welfare Governor Palin were the second greatest recipients of federal handouts per capita in the United States. On top of which, Alaskans pay no taxes and receive yet another yearly welfare check from their government.

You know, if my job was to fly around Illinois tossing bales of other people’s money out to the crowds, and then beg the federal government for more, I could probably be the most popular governor in America too.

Which begs the real question: Do you think the fact that Sarah Palin presided over one of America’s most welfare-dependent cities and states has anything to do with all of the unwed teen mothers running around up in The Last Frontier?

/end brief driftglass aside.

That’s one reason for you to know Schakowsky’s name. The other is, those in the know say she’s in the running to take over the Obama’s Senate seat should he win in November.

Random fragments from ABC's "This Week"…

George Will: The reaction McCain got from Rush Limbaugh was “Guns, God and Babies, Hot Damn!” which was also the reaction from his Party.

George Stephanopoulis: There are two competing gut reactions…

Martha Radditz: One thing that helps McCain is that Bush is out of the news.

David Fucking Brooks: McCain would have to get help from Dems and Independents anyway, ‘cause there aren’t enough Republicans to staff a Republican administration. Eight years of Bush have exhausted them.

Who knew looting the treasury and destroying the country could be so fatiguing?


According to John McSame on "Face the Nation"...

Sarah Palin excites America. She’s a lifetime member of the NRA. She was a point guard! And mayor’s are important. And stuff.

Also Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac being taken over by the Evil Liberal Gummit is a classic example of why we need change in Washington D.C. What with all the cronyism and corruption. And lobbyists. And special interests. And people at the top doing a horrible job and getting paid hundreds of millions of jobs.

Gonna have more regulation! Yesiree! The system is a failure because the Congress was so beholden special interests that wrote all those loopholes.

driftglass: You mean special interests loopholes writers like your close personal friend and economic advisor, Phil Gramm?

McSame: My advisors, friends, major funders and leaders of my Party may all be poster children for exactly the same kind of endemic evil that I am pretending to denounce…but that doesn’t count because…wait for it….waaaaait for it…now!

Not Bob Schieffer: What is "The Hanoi Hilton?"

McSame: Bingo!

Yay! What do I win?

Four more years of George Bush By Proxy.


Schieffer: What about the denigrating, derisive way your Party talks about “community organizing”, especially when you yourself called people to cut that shit out?

McSame: I think it was a reaction to the Obama campaign denigrating her job as a “small town mayor”.

Schieffer: There were 36 African-American delegates out of 2,600 at your convention. How can your Party survive like that?

McSame: We can’t . We have to reach out to African-Americans and Hispanics.

driftglass: And of course do that in a way so the army of bigots and reactionary idiots on which your Party depends don’t notice. Won’t that be a problem?

McSame: Not really. Those people are idiots.

driftglass: Touché, sir.


On NBC's "Meet the Press"...

Biden was Biden.

I just flicked past it every so often, because I can’t imagine he could really do anything implosive.

He did fine, but when did he acquire the horizontal nictitating membranes that hang uneasily over his eyes like little dime-store awnings?



The only real “news” came oozing out of "Fox News Sunday" and was rather a sight to behold.

The “bash the Liberal” part was…yawn.

Wallace: How are you gonna run against Sarah Palin?

David Axelrod: Were not running against Sarah Palin.

Wallace: Aren’t you eskeered of Sarah Palin?

Axelrod : No. We’re running against John McSame.

Wallace: But isn’t Hillary Clinton going to campaign for you? And by the axiom of association by menstruation doesn’t that mean you are misogynists who are super scared of Sarah Palin and hate her awesome vagina awesomeness?

And so forth.

But Little Ricky Davis – the stoat-shaped gentleman who is running the McSame campaign – was quite remarkable.

Wallace: Isn’t McSame’s campaign being run by orcs and lobbyists and evil trolls?

Davis: Go ahead and run again our staff. That was all six weeks ago a million years ago.

Wallace: What about all the sweet, sweet pork that Palin took when she was a Mayor? The lobbyist she hired? The Bridge to Nowhere bullshit. The half a billion in pork she went after when she was Governor.


Little Ricky just talks right over him. When Axelrod even tried to talk past Wallace to make his point, Wallace just upped the volume until he won the shout-down.

With Little Ricky, for the first 30 hours, Wallace just rolled over like a good doggy and took it.

Then…

Wallace: This works better if you let me ask questions. When will she agree to an interview?

Davis: When we fucking well feel like it. Look, your own network had a lovely, celebratory ass-kissing video about what an awesome Mommy she has been. So there you go.

Wallace But…that’s not the same thing as being questioned by journalists?

Davis: It’s not like there is no information out there. I don’t think our campaign is obliged to let the Evil Liberal Media set terms.

Davis: We run our campaign, not the news media. Why would we want to “throw Sarah Palin into the cycle with piranhas” that want to go after her family and children!

Davis: She will have to opportunity to speak to the American people. She gave a great speech last week.

Wallace (Now seeming genuinely bewildered. Like a very obedient pet suddenly confused and frightened over being beaten for no apparent reason.): But…but…that’s not answer questions.

Davis: The information that the news media has hardly been putting out about her has hardly been fair and balanced. She will be made available to he news media when and if we fucking well feel like it. On the terms that we decide.

Wallace: So you will not commit to having you candidate submit to interviews?

Davis: No.

Wow.

Sarah Palin -- coming soon to a “Modern Bride” or “Guns & Ammo” near you.


Finally, in the spirit of Senator McSame’s spirited denunciation of bitter, partisan rhetoric less than three days ago, Senator McSame’s campaign manager paused before leaving the Fox studio long enough to remind America that “Obama has put himself and his personal interests ahead of his Party and the country”.

But of course, you already knew that.

You call the Capt’n, “Capt’n”

Roger Ailes and Brit Hume explain to new DLC meat how thing work on Fox teevee.

“Any man loses his spoon spends a night doing ‘Fox and Friends’.”

For a vastly more bedazzling, ensorcelling taxonomy of the Classes and Orders of this phenomenon, hie yourself over to The GNB, pull up a chair and listen to LowerManhattanite tell the ancient tale of cowardice, amnesia, liebermans, fords, pillbugs and Monty Python.

Here’s a little center-cut taste:

…
Okay...I love Crooks and Liars, but I swear, I almost wanted to bop John over the head with his trusty media flashlight until the batteries exploded out, for his exposing me—us—to the reason why the pitiful, toadying, little gnome that is Harold Ford, was away for so long.

He wasn't missing. He was “away”” of his own volition evidently—hiding under a fucking rock with the rest of the pillbugs, and worms and all manner of many-legged creatures/pests you never see until you trip over said rock, and “ewwwwwww!”, there they are, exposed—all slimy and twitchy, and crawling around until you can get that rock back on top of 'em—hard, thank you very much—so you don't have to see them again.

Alas, not only didn't we get the rock back down—HARD!—quickly enough to re-acquaint ol' Harold with his natural habitat, but apparently, the annoying little bug wants to hang out in the light for awhile, and is scuttling for all he's worth to stay there.
…

I swear, just when you think the Muvah Tongue has gone a little thin and cottonmouthy, you find that the likes of LM and Digby have been husbanding vast, sparkly caches of Sekrit Transitives and Magyk Glottals under their floorboards and are a’comin’ over the hill like the Adjective Cavalry on fresh horses.

For the rest, you go here now.

Wake me when I’m Preznit.

Uncle Caesar of Petticoat Junction.

The political world has turned on is axis many, many times, but GOP Base has remained a constant and true-North beacon of crazy, and it is they who will decide who the next Republican Presidential Candidate.

In fact, if anything, they have grown even more delusional since they chose the half-bright, Bible-slingin’ waterhead Son of a Bush as their party’s standard-bearer.

To the utter mystification of the rest of the sentient beings in the space-time continuum, the Base flocked to a shallow, sniveling, sadistic frat-rat. A transparently fake vet, fake mogul, figurehead-governor-turned-fake-cowboy who sat on the prop porch of his fake ranch basking in the bogus light of his sham faith while the pig people sopped it up with a fucking biscuit.

So when I read things like this…

August 16, 2007
Fred Has Waited Too Long
By Reid Wilson

Fred Thompson's window of opportunity could hardly have been wider. His opponents were fatally flawed in the eyes of the socially conservative Republican base; he's well-known, can raise money, and speaks language that both Republicans and independents leaning right can embrace. Even thinking of entering the race put him above double digits in polls.

But, thanks to a number of missteps and opportunities his pseudo-campaign has failed to capitalize on, Thompson's window is now closed, making him more likely to go the way of Tommy Thompson than win the nomination.

The Law & Order star, running a "testing the waters" committee, raised approximately $3.46 million in June after launching June 4th. The campaign's goal was $5 million raised in the same period. Missed expectations are not enough to doom a campaign, but Thompson's media team did little to dampen expectations when they released the report on the last day of July, even though they had to know for weeks that the numbers were lower than expected.

…

Then there is the question of those conservative credentials. Recent reports have suggested Thompson lobbied for a pro-choice group before he served in the Senate. And his record on campaign finance reform isn't exactly what conservatives are looking for: We heard a rival campaign refer to the "McCain-Feingold-Thompson" bill recently. Those two strikes seemingly only need one more to make Thompson as unacceptable to the base as the other top candidates.

Finally, other campaigns aren't waiting around to hear whether Thompson is in or out. Mitt Romney is beginning to act like a front-runner, while Rudy Giuliani barely mentions Thompson. And the second tier may be creeping up on him: After a strong showing at the Iowa Straw Poll, it is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at whom conservatives are taking another look. While Huckabee has a smaller chance than Thompson of winning, Thompson can't afford to have others basking in what was supposed to be his spotlight. Had Thompson competed at the Straw Poll and finished second, Huckabee may have been at home in Little Rock, out of the race by now.

Fred Thompson had his chance to make a splashy entrance into the race. In fact, he has had many chances to do something to impress political watchers and his fans on the right. Time and again, though, he has missed those opportunities.

…

…I have my doubts.


I remember how Dubya’s whole campaign during the run-up to the wide-open 2000 race was to sit in Crawford, whittle, mutter platitudes about humility, Small Gumint and Sweet Baby Jebus until the last possible moment.

To give every appearance to being reluctantly forced into the race because this Quiet Man of Action-Figure finally concluded that Party and Nation were in such desperate shape that he just had to run.

And the Base went for this ridiculous okey doke in their millions. And then went for the vastly more dangerous but equally transparently ludicrous Commander Codpiece narrative four years later.

Now my sofa cushion money’s on Mitt, but not my rent money, because at no point in the last seven…or ten…or 15…or 30 years has the Base of the GOP shown any signs of, as I once said elsewhere, growing opposable thumbs and climbing down out of the Stupid Tree.

Instead, after seven years of the utter, bloody and predictable (and predicted) collapse of every one of the tenets of their bullshit creed, they are arguably more fanatical and bunker-mad than ever.

They have become the impacted fecal matter in the colon of our Body Politic, starved not for a genuine leader to help guide them out of the mine-studded-rubble they have made of everything they've touched, but for a Sooper Dooper Dubya to lead them even deeper into the witchbag of their own nightmares. For the next Strong Man on a White Pickup with a Confederate Accent to lead their ignorant army in glorious Christian jihad against the monsters under their bed.

Dying of the toxins they have belligerently swallowed for the last generation, the Base now kneel in a deepening pool of their own vomit and their own children's blood and demand "More Poison Please!"

And seeing this (and having read his shakespeares) Fred Thompson appears to be quite deliberately retreading this time-tested strategy…

(from “Julius Caesar”)

…

CASCA

You pull'd me by the cloak; would you speak with me?

BRUTUS

Ay, Casca; tell us what hath chanced to-day,
That Caesar looks so sad.

CASCA

Why, you were with him, were you not?

BRUTUS

I should not then ask Casca what had chanced.

CASCA

Why, there was a crown offered him: and being
offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand,
thus; and then the people fell a-shouting.

BRUTUS

What was the second noise for?

CASCA

Why, for that too.

CASSIUS

They shouted thrice: what was the last cry for?

CASCA

Why, for that too.

BRUTUS

Was the crown offered him thrice?

CASCA

Ay, marry, was't, and he put it by thrice, every
time gentler than other, and at every putting-by
mine honest neighbours shouted.

CASSIUS

Who offered him the crown?

CASCA

Why, Antony.

BRUTUS

Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

CASCA

I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it:
it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark
Antony offer him a crown;--yet 'twas not a crown
neither, 'twas one of these coronets;--and, as I told
you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my
thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he
offered it to him again; then he put it by again:
but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his
fingers off it. And then he offered it the third
time; he put it the third time by: and still as he
refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their
chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps
and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because
Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked
Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and
for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of
opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

…

and moseying and slouching it ever so slowly towards Bethlehem to be born.

Why the Mittster will win

the Republican nomination.


It has nothing to do with his policies, because other than “double the size of Guantanamo” he appears to have none that anyone can actually drive a nail into.

And it obviously has nothing to do with his core beliefs or "values": this is a man who leaps and flops away from his own words harder than Asian carp

on the Illinois River.


Instead, he will win the nomination on the strength of his raw,


indefatigable,

(Close-up)

bi-lateral symmetry.

(The same close-up, but with right-side deleted and left-side mirrored)

This from “USA Today” (emphasis added...as symmetrically as possible):

The beauty of symmetry

Can your looks be measured by a mathematical ratio?
Studies show that "beautiful" people actually are just "more proportional" people.

By Elizabeth Snead

Everyone knows the adage "Don't judge a book by its cover." But we can't help it; we do just that, day in and day out, consciously and subconsciously. We rate others on the basis of their appearance and compare our own looks with the enhanced images of beautiful women and handsome men in movies and magazines and on TV and billboards.

Beauty not only sells -- it pays off. Beautiful babies get more attention from parents and teachers. Good-looking guys get more dates than average ones. Pretty women get out of traffic tickets and into exclusive clubs. The list of pluses for being one of the "beautiful people" goes on and on.

So what makes a person attractive? Don't bother looking in the mirror; just get out a measuring tape. Widespread studies, such as those conducted by Randy Thornhill (University of New Mexico) and Karl Grammer (University of Vienna), confirm that beauty is simply balance: The more symmetrical a face, the more appealing it appears.

The concept applies to bodies, too. Physical symmetry is subconsciously perceived as a reflection of a person's youth, fertility, health and strength. And although bilateral (left-right) symmetry might not be a bona fide health certificate these days, it has been a marker of good health and genes throughout human evolution.

"Our sensitivity to beauty is hard-wired -- that is, governed by circuits in the brain shaped by natural selection," says Nancy Etcoff, author of "Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty". "We love to look at smooth skin, shiny hair, curved waists and symmetrical bodies because, over the course of evolution, people who noticed these signals and desired their possessors had more reproductive success. We're their descendants."

Symmetry also is sexy. In a study by biology professor Thornhill and University of New Mexico psychology professor Steven Gangestad, hundreds of college-age women and men were measured (including their ears, feet, ankles, hands and elbows).

"Questionnaires revealed that men who were more symmetrical started having sex three to four years earlier and had more sex partners than their asymmetrical counterparts.

(And then a little touch which should transport Chris "English Leather" Matthews into bed-wetting paroxysms of man-crush ecstasy.)

"Symmetrical people smell better, too.

"Thornhill and Gangestad found that women prefer the scent of symmetrical men, and vice versa. So much for Old Spice and Chanel No. 5.
…"

Just another small example of how far from its origins as a Party led by a weird looking guy...


(From the AP)

Lincoln may have had facial defect

By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Mon Aug 13, 11:03 PM ET

CHICAGO - Artists, sculptors and photographers knew Abraham Lincoln's face had a good side. Now it's confirmed by science. Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.

The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments — including smallpox, heart illness and depression — that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.

...

with good ideas, the GOP has fallen.