July 13, 2009 -- Please dear God, how can we make it go away, the constant stream of information about the person NYT columnist Frank Rich calls a “born avatar,” Sarah Palin. And in that description lies an ugly story.
Despite what Rich calls her “combative resignation soliloquy” she refuses to go away. This reminds me of a problem the police department of Port Arthur, Texas once faced. To train agents and dogs to detect marijuana they planted a crop in one of the police official’s backyard. When training was done they tried to get rid of it. But no matter what they did it kept coming back. In desperation, they finally just paved the whole area with cement. I know it would be inhumane but one wishes for a solution akin to what happened in the old 1944 black and white movie ”The Canterville Ghost:” in which Charles Laughton was walled up in the castle. Come to think of it he then haunted the place for another three hundred years and we don’t want that. It feels like we are being haunted already. And we have to live with a new expression: “Pullin’ a Palin.”
Certainly her decision to “drop out and cash in” (Rich) has provided fodder for chewing over the subject by everybody who has a keyboard, a camera, a mike or a platform from which to comment. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker claims the media invented Sarah Palin, and quotes H. L. Mencken as follows: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
In that vein this latest maneuver has actually boosted her standing with the GOP as per the latest Today/Gallup poll which shows that 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president! NYT columnist Maureen Dowd in a spoof has Palin saying “Pundits think I should read a book before I write one?” Our eggiest-headed columnist extant, David Brooks, sees this contrast between a Palin and an Obama: “Palin: unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust” as opposed to “Obama: exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson refers to “Palin and her know-nothing legions” who rail against what they see as the “elitist and sexist” criticism.
This may just seem like pundit fun and games but the born avatar aspect of Palin is a cover for a serious and ugly aspect of our society, which is what Frank Rich agonized over in today’s column. As he says, too hitch-hike on the old Colin Powell expression, she broke the Republican Party, now she owns it. What with sex scandals and all else, there is no other Republican to be the face of the party (Mike Huckabee, he says, is Palin-lite). And what she represents is a movement of “dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind.” It’s “emotional, not ideological.” Racist? (“not like you and me”). She’s for “real America,” or white rural America. And as he writes “The politics of resentment are impervious to facts.” Palin “puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions” and that is both scary and a sad commentary on society.
With or without Palin, as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen puts it, GOP candidates seem determined to “stay uncorrupted by knowledge” and all of them “must be vetted by the party's Grand Inquisitor, Rush Limbaugh, a belch from the gutter.”
Republicans have Palin, Democrats have Al Franken, and what a contrast that is. Franken the comedian? How about Franken the Harvard grad with honors and a degree in political science. Author. Keen observer of the political scene all his life. Friend and supporter of the late beloved Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone (killed in the crash of his plane, which led Franken to consider entering politics to carry on his goals). Family man, but of course things being what they are that might not hold now that he is officially sworn in to the Senate (giving the Democrats a clear majority allowing them to focus on fighting now among themselves) … must be something in the water. I’ll take the Democratic face any time. “Live from Washington it’s the Senate in Session.”
As the Frankens move to Washington another American family is taking the Grand Tour. The Obamas first toured Russia after which the President received generally good reviews for an agreement to reduce nuclear arms stockpiles and a compromise on Afghanistan. No luck on Georgia. And no report on exactly what he saw in Putin’s eyes that George Bush saw before, except strength and determination.
On then to Italy and the Gang of Eight (are we beginning to sound like the Chinese, which we might as well get used to?). No agreement from the G8 on climate abatement but they did pledge $20 billion over three years, $5 billion more than expected, for agricultural investments and to fight hunger, and the kids probably got to see where authentic pizza comes from.
The most interesting part of the Italian visit was a session with the pope in which, according to E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post the pontiff greeted the President as a potential ally on matters dear to his heart. Parts of the hierarchy are working with the Administration on health care reform, immigration and climate change legislation. According to Dionne, Benedict is not as bent out of shape over abortion and stem cell research as the bishops in America, and the most intriguing thing is that he is much farther to the left than Obama on many things.
Pope Benedict XVI and many of his advisers also see Obama as a potential ally on such questions as development in the Third World, their shared approach to a quest for peace in the Middle East and the opening of a dialogue with Islam. The Pope is seen as a conservative who views Obama more favorably than do most Catholic conservatives in the United States when you read his latest encyclical of a few days ago. We have the unusual situation of a Pope preaching what some would call socialism to an American President: "Distributive justice and social justice, redistribution of wealth, world political authority to oversee the global economy in the name of the common good." Sounds great coming from the Pope. Coming from Obama would be political suicide.
In Ghana Obama put on his community organizer hat, calling for responsibility and stability. That line might have been suitable in Italy at the moment, come to think of it.
It is ironic that a Supreme Court over here stacked with Catholics is swinging so far to the right in direct contrast to the Pope’s encyclical. In the Supreme Court term just up workers, voters and the environment took it on the chin big time. The rights of workers and voters to be free of discrimination were repeatedly cut back. Time and again rulings went for big entities over individuals. All five environmental cases were against defenders of the environment, overturning at least four long-standing precedents. Oh well we always worried about the Vatican trying to dictate our politics. We need new blood on the Court, but first there is apt to be new blood on the floor of the upcoming conformation hearing.
Politics. The seemingly never-ending theme of the subject of sex in the political arena is startling to an old guy like me who grew up when the thigh of the chicken was called the “second joint,” the word ”thigh” being a little too racy to use in mixed company. Maybe it’s better to relax and face it, rather than repress it. Now it turns out Nevada Senator John Ensign’s wealthy parents gave almost $100,000 to his former lover and her family, but that wasn’t black mail or payoff. It was just out of the kindness of their hearts. We have prenuptial agreements; why no pre fooling around agreements? NYT columnist Gail Collins enumerates Ensign’s family values credits. In Washington, he lived with some other conservative Christian lawmakers in a building known as the “Prayer House.” Ensign was “one of the people who demanded that President Bill Clinton resign over the Lewinsky affair, that he votes against financing for education and contraception services to combat teenage pregnancy and that he supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.” Before his $96,000 affair.
As for Mark Sanford , the South Carolina Governor, this piece from the Jewish Daily Forward says it all:
NEWS ITEM: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford disappeared for a week explaining he would be hiking in the mountains on vacation. Actually, he engaged in a secret tryst in Argentina with his inamorata.
Should we forbid a governor
From dallying with sweet amour?
His job is hard beyond belief,
So why deny him some relief?
South Carolina is the state
Whose governor just couldn’t wait.
To Argentina off he flew,
Sub rosa, to his sweetie-poo.
At home he left his lawful spouse,
Abandoned in their vacant house.
He told his staffers quite a fib:
That he was going hiking! Glib!
Cavorting in the Argentine,
The governor, adulterine,
Resembled more a fugitive
Than top most state executive.
It never ceases to perplex,
What men will do, impelled by sex.
One must be hardened to resist
Enticements of romantic tryst.
What unsigned laws were on his desk
While he pursued the picaresque?
What duties did the gov neglect
While primal urges went unchecked?
Big problems rise in governance
When breathing comes with hottest pants.
Such happenstances should we rate
And simply dub “affairs of state”?
(Thanks to friend Arthur Hersch for forwarding the above to me.)
Personally inspired by all of this, being a male with normal instincts, I submit the following:
TRAV’S LAMENT
I wish I gotta’
Inamorata
A nice consort
That I could court
For me I want a
Sweet amante
A covivant,
My own romaunt
To have a mistress
And not be tryst-less
Why don’t they have
Just one for Trav?
I’m forced to lie
With succubi.
