Behold, A Palin Horse

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. - Revelation 6.8

I’m not going to say who I’m voting for, mostly because I still don’t know myself. But I do wish to make two observations about the upcoming election.

1. John McCain’s nomination of Sarah Palin is not reason enough to vote Republican.

2. The liberal establishment’s treatment of Sarah Palin just might be.

Just a couple of pop-culture observations. First: standing in line at the local HEB the other day I noticed a couple of magazines in the impulse rack. Both were slick-paper jobs, pitched to the popular market, something on the level of “People” or “Good Housekeeping.” One featured a photo of Barak Obama, his strikingly handsome wife and his two beautiful daughters. The headline said something about his family being his strength. The other showed Ms. Palin and hinted darkly at new “revelations,” with bullet-points about dark secrets suddenly unearthed. Second: reading the Sunday comics I came across the strip “Luanne” by Greg Evans. Two teenagers are shopping and one asks the other if she ever thinks about her future. The friend, who is African American, replies in the affirmative, noting that so many possibilities lie open to her. “Barak and Hillary proved that,” she observes. Well, at the moment one possibility lies open to Sarah that does not lie open to Ms. Clinton.

And then of course there’s the SNL skit. A recent article in the New York Times quotes head writer and cast member Mike Meyer’s observation that “the trick with all of these people is to try to come out as fair and evenhanded as possible.” He goes on to give it as his opinion that having a Hillary Clinton impersonator as part of the sketch “made it safer to mention things about Sarah Palin without making it seem like an attack piece.” As far as I can tell (I haven’t seen the whole thing, only snippets), the bit consisted of the faux-Clinton scoring points off ditzy statements from the pseudo-Palin. Calling that balanced is like saying a rape is fair because the sexes are equally represented. Mr. Meyers himself described Governor Palin’s professed enjoyment of the skit as “weird,” so plainly he realized it was a one-sided hack job. Not to mention the interesting choice of having their Palin impersonator duke it out with a Hillary stand-in when Hillary isn’t one of the options . . . by Barack Obama’s own choice.

Now, all of this gives me two reasons for voting Republican that I would not otherwise have.

First of all, the left has shown its hole card and that card turns out to be the fifth ace. What I mean is this: both sides in this election bark about their support for the middle class, about how in touch they are with Joe Sixpack, Walmart shoppers, and Soccer Moms (or Hockey Moms, with or without lipstick - or was that a pig?). But the Democratic reaction to Sarah Palin reveals the reality beneath (way, way beneath) the rhetoric. As columnist William Kristol observed, John McCain “didn’t just pick a politician who could appeal to Wal-Mart Moms. He picked a Wal-Mart Mom.” And the liberals immediately tore into her like a shark on a seal pod. She’s from a small town! (As opposed to simply stopping at one and drinking coffee with the locals before moving on.) She hunts! (As opposed to just strapping on a khaki vest and Elmer Fudd hat to blast a few rounds over the heads of the press corps.) She goes to church regularly and takes her faith seriously! (As opposed to tacking “God bless America” onto the end of a speech.) We’ve never heard of her! (As opposed to a candidate who simultaneously claims to be an outsider and to be a known quantity.)

Now, I’m not saying that any of those things means that Governor Palin would make a good VP or, potentially, president. What I’m saying is this: I don’t live in a major city. I know lots of people who hunt, though the passtime never really appealed to me. My church and my faith are central rather than peripheral to my daily life. Nobody’s ever heard of me. If you want to know what the left thinks of people like you and me, look at how they actually treat one when it becomes possible that such a person might enter a place of power. The left loves the middle class the way kings love subjects or scientists love lab rats- raw material, not as equals. Sarah Palin is the tumbril at the gate of the Bastille of liberal elitism, and les aristos are not best pleased.

Second, there’s this: in an election where neither candidate really offers much of a significant choice, I’m left with a final criterion for voting: what will hack off the media establishment the worst? For a while Barak Obama was running right up there. For two days he kept the news networks frothing and panting like dogs whose master holds up a treat, waiting to hear whom he would pick as his running mate. And then he went over their heads and texted his pick straight to his constituency! It was a thing of beauty, telling the Cerebrus of print, television and blogosphere that he didn’t need them, that they could all go chase their collective tail. But then McCain goes and picks someone the journalistic establishment never heard of. To quote William Kristol again,

They’re offended that McCain picked Palin without, so to speak, consulting them. The establishment media take pride in their role as gatekeeper to our political process and social discourse.

So the gatekeeper media’s reaction has been: Who is Sarah Palin to suddenly show up on the national stage? We didn’t vet her. And we don’t approve of her.

So it begins to look as if electing Sarah Palin vice president would make the media angrier by far than electing Barack Obama. She’s not so much a dark horse as, in the eyes of the latte left, the pale horse of death itself, an apocalyptic messenger sent to tell them that they don’t rule the world. And with Ron Paul out of contention, that could just be reason enough.

This entry was posted on September 19, 2008 at 10:42 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.