She Is Quite Scary

There is a petition to have her removed from a TV network.

There is an unauthorized biographer -- and harsh critic -- who has rented the house directly next door to her so he might more fully observe her family.

There are the countless remarks weekly made about her in sundry TV programs, newspaper columns, blogs, and "social networking" sites, like Facebook.

The object of all this attention is the apparently inimitable Sarah Palin. But I ask: Why is she such a threat to my leftist peers? Why their fixation, or perhaps more pointedly, their obsession?

The logic of it all seems rather simple. If Sarah Palin is the idiot her critics claim she is, then there is no threat whatsoever. Hers would have to be a rare sort of incompetence to have the power to threaten the country; her inadequacies would really have to be a veil over a well-concealed genius for her to destroy, as her critics fear, the work of the Founding Fathers in the name of her "favorite" Founding Father, which, as you know, is actually "all of them." Thus, the obsession seems remarkably misplaced, and nearly pathological.

I call it the Palin Drone.

But really, why the fear, the anxiety, and the attendant derision? If, as so many of my leftist friends have taught me, one fears what one does not understand, is this corporate angst naught more than a failure of comprehension? Is Ms. Palin too abstruse for my friends to interpret? Is she too foreign for them to find a thread of shared humanity with her, one that ties them, no matter how tenuously, to a common language, history or worldview? Do they really fear her because they fail to understand her?

I don't know anything, really, about Sarah Palin. I had never heard of her until her name was announced -- in late August 2008 -- as the woman then-presidential candidate John McCain chose for his running mate. The first time I heard her speak at length was her quite unforgettable speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Nor would anyone ever confuse me for a Sarah Palin fan. I am simply an outsider looking in through nascent cataracts. But there is one thing I do know in all of this: She is not feared for being stupid. And if she is not feared but merely loathed -- I also thought that folks loathe only what they fear and fear what they don't understand -- I ask, "Why?"

I shall tell you why she is loathed in a moment.

Let me posit that if Ms. Palin is indeed feared because she is incompetent, such fear has nothing to do with her. She is not the object of fear at all. What is the object of fear is the whole process of democracy. For it is democracy that permits, even encourages, the participation of ALL citizens in the legislative process. No voice is too dumb, feeble or poor to be heard. By definition, democracy must allow† even the most insipid or dull to seek public office; if this were not true, then democracy would only be open to the elite, and hence would not be democracy at all. No, no. Democracy by definition contains within itself the means to elect to the highest stations the very stupidest people in the land. It must permit that possible outcome.

But does any reader believe leftists who obsess about Ms. Palin are really worried about democracy? Or is leftist anxiety about Ms. Palin proof that leftists ultimately abhor democracy?

Honestly, I think it all a bit simpler. I believe Ms. Palin is not so much the object of fear but the object of punishment. The obsession is really about retaliation; this is all a tremendous scolding for her sin.

What was that sin? Well, I've told you before; it's a sin she commits nearly every time she speaks in public. Her sin, nearly a mortal sin (she has committed an unpardonable sin, which I will mention presently), is that she laughed at liberals. She dared to poke fun at them. She mocked them. And she did this at the Republican National Convention. She even did it all rather effectively; any objective person knows that Ms. Palin delivered her punchy jokes with aplomb. She was indeed rather funny. Thus, she infuriated the Democratic Party, particularly the leftists in that party.

But let me stipulate that the Democratic Party is not a humorless bunch: they can laugh at themselves. They can be poked. They can be playfully prodded and gently mocked. With one exception. They cannot allow themselves to be mocked by someone they deem stupid. Only the truly bright have permission to be witty, sardonic, satirical. 

This then is Ms. Palin's mortal sin, and it is this that the left is bent on making clear to her: She has not understood her place. To the left, Ms. Palin merits ridicule and attack because she fails to see her stupidity; and she fails to see that, by comparison, those she ridicules are far above her station. This is the message leftists must drive home, that stupid people cannot -- and must not -- ever laugh at the them.

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High school comes to mind when I think about this whole drama around Sarah Palin. I am thinking of those kids who believe themselves eminently superior to many of their popular peers. You know the set: the group of quasi-academics racking up good grades, distinguishing themselves from "those other" kinds of people. I am talking about the snob set, those who confuse good grades with moral character and intellectual ability. I am talking, perhaps, about the distinction between the National Honor Society's insouciant ironists (who often seethe with envy) and the apparently less metacognitive jocks (two groups that are not mutually exclusive, of course). Ms. Palin, as you know, was indeed a high school jock; you also know she didn't attend a "real" college. Surely you remember that wickedly self-righteous, "most-likely-to-succeed" group in high school? And surely you see them at work today in all sorts of affairs, public and private, looking down from on high, perhaps even down the aquiline arcs of their glorious noses, no? Surely you hear them now: Sarah Palin is an idiot.

Odd, but Barack Obama strikes me as exactly the sort of person who believes that if he gives an answer today that would have given him an A+ in college yesterday, he has not only given the right answer, he's achieved greatness. In other words, he's the kid in high school who confuses the A+ with real achievement and aptitude.

Granted, I ramble.

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The other day I was thinking that graduating summa cum laude from the greatest school on the planet might actually be meaningless. After all, is it not conceivable that a school could be flat-out wrong about much of what it dispenses as "real" knowledge? If so, it follows that a student could excel at error, at falsehoods. Imagine for a moment the valedictorian at the University of the Flat Earth, or the feted professor emeritus at the College of Alchemy and Phrenology. Surely they both may relish in their many conceits, but their achievements would mean little in the world of the real. What if the "wise" are the fools? Isn't it likely that fools actually believe themselves wise?

Admittedly, I am in the netherlands here. There is little to be gained from such musings. I am a fool, which, I know, proves I am wise.

A fool's conclusion, for sure.

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One last thing. A beef, if you will. It has to do with being judgmental.

Let me put it this way. If someone is going to write that Sarah Palin is a terrible writer, that person better be a better writer than Ms. Palin. If a person is going to call Ms. Palin stupid, he or she better be smarter than the former governor of Alaska.

It's about using measures, for, as you know, "whatever measure you use to judge others will be used against you." If you can't count to 5, you better not be laughing at the person who can only count to 12.

And if you're going to call someone a dope, you better be ready to prove you're more than a mediocrity.

Peace.

†See Raphael Demos' very important comment here. 

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