Sarah Palin's Friday resignation missive--a rambling, typically incoherent stab at some point which has apparently eluded everyone (as usual)--reminded me of Bobby Jindal's animated and inept response to President Obama's February 24 address to congress.
Our collective response to Palin's failed lakeside verbal hike reminds me of Rachel Maddow's funny and plaintive response to Bobby Jindal's 'dark hallway, bad tie' speech.
Delivered from the front yard of her lakeside home with ducks quacking in the background (reminiscent of the turkey-slaughter press conference but more serene), Palin again surprised not in how she said what she said, but that she said it at all. At least we all seemed surprised by her out-of-left-field announcement.
We should not have been surprised at all.
Palin is a liar, and her history is repleat with lies from everything about her family's insurance to her husband's AIP membership. I cannot say the woman is clinically pathological, but clearly, she is a liar.
Follow me over the fold.
From the beginning, Palin was foisted upon us by a man who proved to be one of the most irresponsible and desperate presidential candidates in modern American history. Remember this classic campaign era video, The Vet who Did Not Vet?
Were we all surprised by McCain's pick? Yes, most of us were. And as the days and weeks went by, we were all equally delighted (if shocked) by the sheer calamity that was everything Palin.
We came to know Palin as a street-smart political slasher gifted in rhetoric, slain by facts, with the intellectual depth of a spoon hanging with Hank Williams Jr. (who called Palin a "dish" at one point in this painful-to-watch video, so you pretending to be shocked--simply shocked--at attacks on her because of her gender, just shut up) at campaign stops that bent the mind but nonetheless drew huge crowds.
If nothing else, Palin used her knife-sharpe tongue to whip and encourage the call for blood-letting of all to the left of racist, anti-immigration, anti-tax, anti-gay, anti-choice, pro-God and theocracy wingers. And she was damn good at it. Hate is easy.
Palin single-handedly delivered the jingoistic anti-everything bunch into one alphabetic cesspool: Candidate Obama was simultaneously socialist, communist, Nazi, fascist, gay, foreign, Islamic, liberal Christian, the anti-Christ and in all cases, the threatening great evil.
Meanwhile, McCain was drawing small crowds and rambling on about the fundamental soundness of the economy, flipping positions and lying as necessary to appear relevant and Mavericky as Palin's history was being dissected by the media and bloggers.
It was fun times.
Within a week of the November 4 McCain/Palin loss, Palin had given more interviews to the press than she had through the entire campaign. It was clear to the media and clear to Palin watchers why, especially after her disastrous interviews with Gibson and Couric. As always after a failed election, interviewers were asking Palin about her future plans.
But perhaps the most interesting thing I recall relevant to Palin's recent resignation is Palin's statement to Larry King on November 13, 2008:
KING: We're almost out of time. So quickly, do you pledge to the people that you will serve out your term?
PALIN: I pledge to the people of Alaska, I will do anything and everything that I can to progress the great state of Alaska. I will do what the people of Alaska want me to do. Larry, if they call an audible on me, and if they say they want me in another position, I'm going to do it. I'm not going to -- especially here, today -- tell you, tell anybody, what some crystal ball is going to show me because we don't know what that crystal ball has within it. And there again, there again, my hands -- my life is in God's hands. If he's got doors open for me, that I believe are in our state's best interest, the nation's best interest, I'm going to go through those doors. [emphasis mine]
As an aside, what the hell is "an audible"?
Well, what did and do Alaskans want Sarah Palin to do and why? Well, I can only assume, given Palin's King quote and given her well-known honesty on all things, that Alaskans want her the hell out of Alaskan politics. I can hardly say I blame them.
But that doesn't jibe with today's facebook statement ala the NY Times:
"How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country," Ms. Palin wrote on her Facebook page on Saturday. "And though it’s honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. But every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it’s right for all, including your family." [emphasis mine]
Let me see, Governor Palin, where exactly did Alaskans say they wanted you to resign for a "higher calling"?
Bruised, by attacks much, Governor Palin? Thin-skinned, Governor Palin? A quitter, Governor Palin? Heat in the kitchen a little to high for you, Governor Palin?
A liar, Governor Palin?
You betcha.
Update: Recc List... Thanks, everyone, for a bit 'o fun on the fourth!