Salon.com: The Sarah Palin Pity Party ("Cry Me A Freaking River")

[Hissyspit]

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/30/palin_pity/?source=newsletter

The Sarah Palin pity party
Everyone seems to be oozing sympathy for the fumbling vice-presidential nominee. Please. Cry me a freaking river.

By Rebecca Traister

Sept. 30, 2008 | Is this the week that Democrats and Republicans join hands -- to heap pity on poor Sarah Palin?

At the moment, all signs point to yes, as some strange bedfellows reveal that they have been feeling sorry for the vice-presidential candidate ever since she stopped speaking without the help of a teleprompter. Conservative women like Kathleen Parker and Kathryn Jean Lopez are shuddering with sympathy as they realize that the candidate who thrilled them, just weeks ago, is not in shape for the big game. They're not alone. The New Republic's Christopher Orr feels that Palin has been misused by the team that tapped her. In the New York Times, Judith Warner feels for Sarah, too! And over at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates empathizes with intelligence and nuance, making clear that he's not expressing pity. Salon's own Glenn Greenwald watched the Katie Couric interview and "actually felt sorry for Sarah Palin." Even Amy Poehler, impersonating Katie Couric on last week's "Saturday Night Live," makes the joke that Palin's cornered-animal ineptitude makes her "increasingly adorable."

I guess I'm one cold dame, because while Palin provokes many unpleasant emotions in me, I just can't seem to summon pity, affection or remorse.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just like all of the rest of you, part of the bipartisan jumble of viewers that keeps one hand poised above the mute button and the other over my eyes during Palin's disastrous interviews. Like everyone else, I can barely take the waves of embarrassment that come with watching someone do something so badly. Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem, Sophia Coppola acting in "The Godfather: Part III," Sarah Palin talking about Russia -- they all create the same level of eyeball-squinching discomfort.

- snip -

In her "Poor Sarah" column, Warner writes of the wave of "self-recognition and sympathy (that) washed over" her when she saw a photo of Palin talking to Henry Kissinger. Palin -- as "a woman fully aware that she was out of her league, scared out of her wits, hanging on for dear life" -- apparently reminded Warner of herself. Wow. Putting aside the massively depressing implication that Warner recognizes this attitude because she believes it to be somehow written into the female condition, let's consider that there are any number of women who could have been John McCain's running mate -- from Olympia Snowe to Christine Todd Whitman to Kay Bailey Hutchison to Elizabeth Dole to Condoleezza Rice -- who would not have provoked this reaction. Democrats might well have been repulsed and infuriated by these women's policy positions. But we would not have been sitting around worrying about how scared they looked.

In her piece, Warner diagnoses Palin with a case of "Impostor Syndrome," positing that world leaders sitting across from Palin at the U.N. last week were recognizing that "she can't possibly do it all -- the kids, the special-needs baby, the big job, the big conversations with foreign leaders. And neither could they." Seriously? Do we have to drag out a list of women who miraculously have found a way to manage to balance many of these factors -- Hillary Clinton? Nancy Pelosi? Michelle Bachelet? -- and could still explain the Bush Doctrine without breaking into hives? This is not breaking my heart. It is breaking my spirit.

- snip -

So here it is, finally. And as unpleasant as it may be to watch the humiliation of a woman who waltzed into a spotlight too strong to withstand, I flat out refuse to be manipulated into another stage of gendered regress -- back to the pre-Pelosi, pre-Hillary days when girls couldn't stand the heat and so were shooed back to the kitchen.

MORE AT LINK

[CampLo]

1. on point

Can't say I haven't felt a tinge of sympathy before, but now it's infuriating just hearing that woman's voice.

[Number23]

2. Hell.Yes.

"I agree with Coates that the McCain camp was craven, sexist and disrespectful in its choice of Palin, but I don't agree that the Alaska governor was a passive victim of their Machiavellian plotting. A very successful woman, Palin has the wherewithal to move forward consciously. What she did was move forward thoughtlessly and overconfidently, without considering that her abilities or qualifications would ever be questioned."

.....

"Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness."

I have been saying the same thing almost verbatim. Happy to Rec this piece.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. If you want a commentator that doesn't have sympathy for Palin ...

read Matt Taibbi. At this stage, he doesn't have much sympathy for Caribou Barbie or the US electorate either.

Mad Dog Palin

by Matt Taibbi

SNIP

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into a sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague they were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation at the Xcel gates.

"She totally reminds me of my cousin!" the delegate screeched. "She's a real woman! The real thing!"

I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed middle-American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin' Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

SNIP

Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV -and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/100551/mad_dog_palin_/

[OnTheOtherHand]

11. a bit out of phase with Palin's 40% approval rating

but quite the spirited rant, no doubt.

[OneGrassRoot]

4. I want you guys to share my pain...

My daughter introduced me to the Broadway musical soundtrack for "Wicked."

This one song embodies my feelings about Palin and I CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD:

"Loathing, unadulterated loathing, for your face, your voice, your clothing...I loathe it all!"

LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG6iW7v6ttI

The chorus of the song starts shortly before 2 minutes. It's perfect. You'll see.


:)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG6iW7v6ttI

[WritersBlock]

5. Kick! I just finished reading this, and agree whole-heartedly.

That woman is an insult to intelligent and hard-working women everywhere.

AND I still say she's a threat to national security because of her incompetence.

[SpiralHawk]

6. Why do republicons HATE women?

Why do they put the least competent up for national ridicule?

[lunatica]

7. Yeah? Well she raises her high powered rifle and shoots wolves from helicopters

That's what I think of when she opens her mouth. No pity here.

[Supersedeas]

8. but wouldn't she make an excellent Mocker in Chief -- as long as she has script and no follow-ups

Gregory has not problem with that.

[2008]

9. "She is a politician who took the national stage and sneered at the work of community activists."

I love this. It's well worth reading the entire article.

Christopher Orr writes sympathetically about the scenario that Palin may have envisioned, in which she tours the country on the wave of adoration that buoyed her out of St. Paul and through a post-convention victory lap. In his mind, she might well have continued to give winning, grinning interviews, charming the pants off regular folks all across the country, if the accursed McCain campaign hadn't nervously locked her in a no-press-allowed tower. Orr compares Palin to a talented athlete who, as a result of being over-coached, doesn't soar to new physical heights but instead gets "broken down, (loses) confidence in his game, (becomes) tentative, second guessing himself even to the point of paralysis."

Surely if Palin's political muscles were as taut and supple as Orr suspects, the campaign would not have been so quick to put her on a special training regimen.

--snip--

Sarah Palin is no wilting flower. She is a politician who took the national stage and sneered at the work of community activists. She boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge.

--snip--

I don't want to be played by the girl-strings anymore. Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness.

[gratuitous]

10. When someone thinks she can bluff her way through

I have damn little sympathy when her bluff gets called. Sooner or later, everyone has to lay their cards on the table. If you've reached the age of 25 and haven't figured that out yet, you're a blooming idiot. Just call her Palin the Petunia.

[Maven]

12. K/R - the real feminist take on Palin.

This says it all:

I don't want to be played by the girl-strings anymore. Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness. It's a disservice to minority populations of every stripe whose place in the political spectrum has been unfairly spotlighted as mere tokenism; it is a disservice to women throughout this country who have gone from watching a woman who -- love her or hate her -- was able to show us what female leadership could look like to squirming in front of their televisions as they watch the woman sent to replace her struggle to string a complete sentence together.

I just read this and was about to post - glad you did.

[Solly Mack]

13. K&R

[2008]

14. kick

[cbayer]

15. K & R

I posted this after you (did not see yours on search) and it sunk. I think it's a great article and will kick it for the evening crowd.