Sarah Palin’s America

(Or: “I See white people—in the White House”)

Now I’m not the kind of guy who sees racism under every rock and around every turn. For instance,  I had to date a Jewish girl before I realized anti-Semitism didn’t go out with goose-stepping and Benny Goodman records. (She was so Jewish that when we went to a stage performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” I had to explain the plot and characters to her.)

So if I hear an incitement to the worser angels of our nature in what is supposed to be a standard political stump speech, it is not because I went into it looking for racially-sensitive areas over which to wring my hands and gnash my teeth.

Usually, that’s the sort of thing that has to be pointed out to me. A speaker would have to really go out of his or her way to make my ears perk up at what sounds like overt race-baiting.

Which brings me to Sarah Palin, and her appearance this week at the big gathering of Conservative heavy-hitters in Washington (CPAC).

She emerged from relative seclusion for the event, looking eerily exactly like she did four years ago. I’m not suggesting she’s had work done, or owns a portrait of herself that is aging exceptionally poorly up in the attic… although either could be true, it’s important to remember the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

(Don’t cry “sexist!” at me. If I was writing about, say, John Edwards, I would also lead with how he looks if it was the first thing I noticed. When a big part of a celebrity’s appeal is their attractiveness, they themselves have put the subject on the table.)

I have a little bit more ad hominem attack left in me. Hang on… The only difference I saw between now and four years ago is, if possible, Palin’s Darth Vader helmet hair is even bigger, and her waist even tinier. How the latter can support the former remains a mystery to me. Maybe Palin’s avowed lack of trust in science makes circumventing its laws that much easier…

I remember how scared all us Lefties were the first time we heard her speak, at the last GOP convention. She came out, stuck to the script, and blew the roof off the dump. If she hadn’t gone all rogue-y on the ticket after her Katie Couric interview debacles, we might be trying to unseat an incumbent President McCain now.

Thank you, Sarah.

And now she’s back to help some more.

Addressing her fellow, eh, Conservatives (I am now leaving behind the ad hominem attack portion), Palin said, “We don’t have a red America and a blue America, we have a red, white and blue America!” The 99% Caucasian crowd went nuts. To make sure the gathering of both hard- as well as party-liners did not miss her point—that their opponent is not red, white, or blue—Palin added, “And Barack Obama, we’re through with you!”

Wow. She’s, like, the Maya Angelou of hate speech.

Thank you, Sarah. For making it rhyme so we could all understand it.

She also took the occasion to land a well-placed, barely-veiled f-bomb at the feet of the approving Family Values and Moral Majority crowd of totally non-hypocrites. While trash-talking Obama’s jobs program, she quipped [warning: hold your sides, big scripted-comedy moment ahead] that the acronym for the administration’s admittedly poorly-named Win The Future program is WTF.

Did you catch that? In spelling-challenged, but social media-savvy middle America, they may not know what the WPA was, but they are ROTFLOL if they don’t know what WTF means.

That Obama. WTF, right? Ohhh, thank you Sarah. Sometimes it’s good just to laugh.

She also took the occasion to say that she thinks a brokered GOP convention would be a good thing for her party, not the internationally televised circular firing squad it would actually be. The last time either party had a brokered convention was decades before the rise of the 24-hour news cycle and cell phone battlefront reporting.

When I think about it, I can suddenly understand the appeal of Roman gladiatorial combat (besides the leather dresses). Four candidates enter the ring, only one emerges; his bruised and battered body slick and hot with the blood and brain matter of his broken, humiliated opponents.

Wow, that really would be great for Democracy! In that it would tend to promote the re-election of the unflappable terrorist-killer from Kenya [REMEMBER HE’S NOT WHITE LIKE YOU AND ME] who currently occupies our country’s highest office.

Thank you, Sarah.

While pretending to support the GOP’s putative nominee on the Fox News Sunday morning politics show, she just coined the phrase “ObamneyCare” with an alleged slip of the lip.

Sarah, stop it! You are being just way too generous. People are going to start to talk.

What will Sarah Palin do next to help promote American democracy? (Third-party run! Third-party run!) After all she’s given already, is it too much to hope that she still has another card left to play this election cycle? (Third-party run! Third-party run!) It’s a little late in the game to be anything more than be a spoiler in the GOP nomination process (Third-party run! Third-party run!) and I can’t imagine what someone with her Gringrichian-scale delusions of grandeur could do to further her party’s opponent’s re-election (endorse somebody else’s third-party run! Third-party run!), setting herself or someone she anoints up as the Conservative front-runner in 2016 as soon as the polls close this November 6 (Third-party run! Third-party run!)…

Hey, it’s Sarah Palin! What am I worrying about? She’ll think of something.

Let me just say in advance… thank you, Sarah.