December 5, 2010

"She’s like the ominous blob in the horror films: the more you shoot at it, the bigger and stronger it becomes."

If a conservative columnist had come up with that image to describe a liberal politician, liberals would gasp and scold about the violence seething in the conservative brain.

But this is the liberal NYT columnist Charles Blow, complaining about how attacks on Sarah Palin aren't doing what they're supposed to do. His idea is lefties need to stop talking about her:
People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.
So the reason for calling off the attacks is that they're not working. Whatever happened to the "restore sanity" movement that briefly bubbled up — the idea that civility was a free-standing value? I assume the idea that moderate discourse is an end in itself was always only a pose. That is, the idea that civility was an end was a means to an end. When that end wasn't achieved — liberals lost the elections — the means was abandoned. Attacks flared. But attacks failed. At least Blow isn't pretending to believe in civility as an end in itself.

84 comments:

campy said...

The Left excels at Dishing It Out.

Taking It? Not so much.

Opus One Media said...

What is "failed" in this context? If like the Krell in Forbidden Planet the monster only gets stronger when your mind feeds it...well I guess so. But please don't forget it is Madame YappingGrizzly who is usually making the first insertion and when shot back at yelps like crazy over her mis-treatment.

Like all bad ideas, and Ms. Sarah is the ultimate bad idea egg layer, she needs to be rebutted at ever turn otherwise some people are in desperate danger of being sucked into that empty mind.

Anonymous said...

Like all bad ideas, and Ms. Sarah is the ultimate bad idea egg layer, she needs to be rebutted at ever turn otherwise some people are in desperate danger of being sucked into empty mind.

The idiot, HenHouse, penned this statement:

"Muslims are the new Jews."

This man is too stupid to be allowed out of his house without assistance.

And, he think we should listen to his bitching about Palin intelligence?

Anonymous said...

People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.

Translated: Palin is an effective opponent the left hasn't been able to silence or defeat.

I suspect she'll be around for decades, and will ultimately triumph.

mesquito said...

Hating Palin is cultural shorthand for I'm the right sort of person. And Althouse is dead right about civility. It's only lamented when liberals are losing an argument, or have found themselves caught up in one that they really really really don't want too have.

Ann Althouse said...

"What is "failed" in this context?"

Read Blow's column. If you think the attacks aren't failing, that's one more lame thing about Blow's column. Please aim you attacks at Blow.

Kirby Olson said...

She's substantial rather than hollow, and this points out how unfocused and dimwitted the left is, and helps to put THEM into perspective. She's by no means dim. The left likes to believe that she's got an IQ that makes it difficult for her to feed herself. But not only can she feed herself, she would help the nation get back to feeding itself if we could just help Sarah get the tube that the left is fitting to the back of Uncle Sam's head off, and get back to the idea of workin' for a living. It won't kill you, you know. Palin has lawyers and judges in her family tree.

She's not the evil dummy that the left would have us believe. They are.

What riles the left about Palin is that she's a woman. She is supposed to be on their side. So they keep trying to necklace her, but in so doing, they necklace themselves.

Lincolntf said...

The Liberals need something to keep the hate flowing, otherwise people will begin voting with their intellect rather than emotion, which would be the death blow to the Dems recent stab at hyper-Leftism.
Now that they've bankrupted the rage over "war crimes" and their attempts to panic people with apocalyptic prophecies of climatic doom have fizzled, Palin is all they've got. They'll make her out to be the next Hitler, as some already do, because only the fear of a Hitler could make someone so blind as to vote for any of the current Dems.

ricpic said...

Mouth frothing hatred of Middle America. That's what the Left's anti-Palin frenzy is all about. Now if middle America would only wake up to how much it is hated and quit the Democrat Party. Never again would the Dems, reduced to their core of resenters and crazy cranks, win a national election.

Clyde said...

The Left needed someone as a target for all of their free-floating hostility after George W. Bush left office. The same people who had Bush Derangement Syndrome are the ones who hate Palin the most. But unlike Bush, who pretty much ignored them and didn't fight back nearly hard enough, Sarah's not gonna take it lying down, and their ineffective attacks just make her stronger. They show the attackers for the moral midgets that they are.

Kirby Olson said...

Refudiate is the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year for 2010:

http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/woty_us

Anonymous said...

Totally O/T, but here's a very thoughtful reply to a Facebook posting of mine in which I attributed the spread of hairlessness to pornography:

Porn itself picked up the hairless model from an already present American cultural trope: body odor is bad. The whole idea that a smooth, clean-surfaced, odorless THING is somehow "sanitary" or "healthy" is what made porn pick up the unshav...en thing in the first place. Remember, guys got unshaven too (and not just their members to make them look bigger) but chests, backs, etc. Hairlessness = Godliness is just an update of the Cleanliness = thing...and in the USA that thinh...goes WAY BACK. And what the USA says, thinks, does (and above all, FEELS) is the way the world ends up doing too.

The war on body hair is a war on smells, textures, roughness, rusticity, animality, and the earth. The bald look isn't pedophiliac, pace Mister Rosa...pedophilia is itself a rejection of our animality in favour of prelapsarian non-gendered, unhairy, unsmelly, inhuman innocence. And that's what you strange wonderful infuriating fascinating but basically craaaazy Yankee peoples down there have been riffing on since City On A Hill took over your brains.

Food (heh) for thought: hairlessness may find an echo in the contemporary hyper-concern for germs and sanitation, e.g. the practice of using hand sanitizer after touching just about anything. Note that this hyper-concern may be linked to the weakening of immune systems and the spread of antibiotic-resistant super bugs.

Peter

Opus One Media said...

@kirby

i thought it was mornonicmamagrizzly but maybe i misread it

@ann..hey i went for forbidden planet rather than vintage steve mcqueen.

Anonymous said...

What, after all, is supposed to be so stupid and threatening about Palin:

1. She's your basic Reagan Republican.

2. She embodies traditional middle class American values like devotion to family, Christianity and self-reliance.

That anybody would consider these values stupid and threatening says more about them than it does about Palin.

Anonymous said...

i thought it was mornonicmamagrizzly but maybe i misread it

HenHouse, you are the one suffering from IQ deficit.

You've proved it, as I've already pointed out.

You're not qualified to be in this debate about Palin's IQ? So, bow out. You're in way over your head, dummy.

Bob Ellison said...

Blow's column was quite good. His readers are liberals, not conservatives. He writes in a style that draws them in, and he's telling them something they are reluctant to hear: lay off Palin, because it's not working. His reasoning wouldn't appeal to most conservatives, but that's not his goal, and his use of a silly movie metaphor to set up his argument doesn't do anyone any harm.

[wv: pultur. Perhaps Palin would say "We need liberals to stop refudiating the American pultur!"]

TWM said...

I like Sarah Palin for a lot of reasons, but mostly because she drives the left crazy. Granted that is more of a short walk than a drive, but still, just her very existence pisses them off. Of course, the very existence of anyone who disagrees with them pisses them off, but Sarah has a special talent for it.

God love her, she might not make a good president, but I'd risk four years of her just to see liberal heads explode all over the country.

As to Blow, very few liberals actually believe in civility - and certainly not any of the liberal elite. Oh they expect it of conservatives but the rules don't apply to them. Like all rules.

Once written, twice... said...

Ann, throwing out more Palin bait to your Althouse Hillbillies to keep them on your porch this morning?

Too predictable and boring.

Unknown said...

If you want to know why Blow's idea, bad as it is, will never work, take a look at HD. He can't stop obsessing about her and how dumb she is supposed to be (and, of course, how smart he thinks he is, by comparison).

As a number of people here have noted, she keeps hitting the Lefties with common-sense rebuttals to their idiocy and they can't stand it because they see the traction it gets.

Meade said...

Charles Blow: So left-leaning blogs like The Huffington Post plaster pictures of [Sarah Palin] and [Sarah Palin's] family all over their sites with entries about [Sarah Palin's] latest gaffe or sideswipe. But [Sarah Palin is] barely mentioned on popular conservative blogs.

Number of Sarah Palin posts at the "left-leaning blog," Althouse, in 2010: 83

pm317 said...

"If a conservative columnist had come up with that image to describe a liberal politician, liberals would gasp and scold about the violence seething in the conservative brain."
---------------

Come on Ann, let us not get carried away here. Your commenters and other conservatives (GoP, is that the same thing?) have gone after Hillary day after day. Drudge and many of the righty blogs go after her even now. The hate toward Hillary oozing from your commenters and other republicans is not much different.

roesch-voltaire said...

I don't read Blow as focusing on civility as much as noting that dissecting and repeating the usual Palin shortcomings has become a media circus of chasing Palin who chases the media. But I do think he is on to something when he notes people on the left like to bash her because they see her as hollow, dim and mean, which has become its own self-serving image,and deflects the focus from more important issues. But I would not characterize the criticism as failure, after all the polls do not show her popularity/presidential rating as hight except among certain hard core believers, and her influence in Alaska is less than it was a year ago--poor Joe Miller. Now is the time to let go and simply let Palin go on and on with her show, which I predict will become simple too much of a good thing for most folks who will then go on to change the channel and vote for a fresher face.

Opus One Media said...

edutcher said...
.. take a look at HD. He can't stop obsessing about her ..."

no no no dumbdumb

if someone puts out the idea that she is smart i simply tell the truth that she is a sly fool. if someone thinks she has a good idea (i know i know but some get fooled) then it is my role to counter it.

i never bring her up first in any conversation or blog or thread...only in response to boneheaded opinions or misstatements of fact.

mesquito said...

Your commenters and other conservatives (GoP, is that the same thing?) have gone after Hillary day after day.

Indeed. Althouse's comments are sort of a clearing house for Hillary Hate. There are all sorts of examples, but I don't have time to search them out.

Anonymous said...

The ultimate end of killing the devil is justification for any means possible, right?

Even if you have to destroy the nation to save the nation.

Rather than two citizens - two equals trying to find right and wrong, now there is not absolute right or wrong, so it becomes a god trying to kill a devil.

And, darn it, the devil just won't go away.

(Or maybe you're not really a god, because a god should be able to kill a devil, dontcha think?)

Fred4Pres said...

I thought the ominous blob was rising on the counter. How did that turn out?

Darcy said...

Huh. "sly fool"?

I guess it makes sense to some?
To me, it is an oxymoron. :)

somefeller said...

Most of the mouth-frothing I'm seeing here is coming from those supporting Palin and going into frenzies about the Left.

Anyway, there's another group that isn't generally impressed with Sarah Palin. Educated and affluent Republicans. And unfortunately for Palin, that group turns out to vote.

I have to give Palin a lot of credit, though. She's managed to keep herself in the public eye, and she's making serious bank by playing on the insecurities and resentments of one (not insubstantial) portion of the conservative coalition. The only question is whether it's necessary for her to run for President in 2012 to keep that gravy train rolling. If the answer is yes, she runs. If the answer is no, she doesn't.

Terry said...

I don't think that the reason the Left hates Palin is her politics. It is that she does not embody left wing values.
If she had divorced her husband and abandoned a son to work on a post-doctorate degree in another country, they'd like Palin just fine.
Say, did you know that Stanley Ann Dunham was an unmarried teenager when she got pregnant? Just like Bristol Palin.

Anonymous said...

assume the idea that moderate discourse is an end in itself was always only a pose.

Then you haven't thought about it long enough, Ann.

It's not a pose ... it's a strategy!

Liberals are always whining that conservatives refuse to debate in a civil manner. This does not mean that liberals wish to do so ... only that they wish their opponents to do so.

That's good strategy.

If you can get your opponent to set limits for themselves in the debate that you yourself have no intention of setting for yourself ... then you've got the advantage.

Liberals don't want civil discourse. They want REPUBLICANS to engage in civil discourse.

Liberals don't care about violence against women candidates. They only want REPUBLICANS to care about that.

That's not posing ... it's deliberate strategy.

It's unethical, but they don't really give a fuck about ethics.

Liberals are by definition unethical.

somefeller said...

Also, as R-V pointed out above, the Blow article isn't really about civility, it's about liberals spending too much time talking about Palin.

Frankly, if one wanted to be a conspiracy theorist, one might argue that this is all a great charade to make any 2012 GOP Presidential candidate seem more palatable to the American people, including many liberals, by simply pointing out that whoever the GOP nominates, better that person than Palin. (I gotta stop watching Alex Jones.)

Terry said...

Oops! Should have wrote 'graduate' not 'post-doc'.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Your commenters and other conservatives (GoP, is that the same thing?) have gone after Hillary day after day.

Really?

Provide some day after day attacks on Hillary from the posters on this blog.

Note: merely disagreeing with Hillary's political stance or her political actions, does not constitute attacks.
Put up or shut up.

AllenS said...

Yeah, like the lefties are going to give up going after Palin. How many lefty commenters on this blog are going to take Blow's advice? None.

AlphaLiberal said...

It's not The Left that's ballyhooing Sarah Palin. That is the old, dreaded, MSM.

She tweets some BS and CNN and others trumpet it.

The Left focuses on her gaffes and embarrassments. Like how she profits so hugely from her followers. Or when she attacks the FLOTUS.

I usually like Mr Blow's writing but he's all wet (and sputtering) on this one.

Telling that this is probably the only time Althouse quotes him -- when he goes after The Left.

Bender said...

Those on the left by their very nature are consumed with resentment and hate. So that there are mouthfoamers on the left who hate and attack Sarah Palin is to be expected.

But there is also the Palin-hate of the Republican establishment and elite, which is just as irrational and self-destroying as their lefty counterparts. Rather than directing their ire at Obama and Pelosi and Reid, et al., seeking to defeat them, they are spending their time spewing venom at someone on their own side -- NEVER critiquing her on any issues, but always descending and condescending into the personal ad hominem.

Even lefty Washington Post columnist Colbert King gets it (he got his one-right-opinion-per-year in just in time) --
"The recent attacks on Sarah Palin by establishment conservatives make her Democratic opponents seem like wusses. . . . Their opposition to Palin smacks of something else. Call it what it is: elitism.
Palin, on the cusp of a possible presidential run, now finds herself facing a solid wall of conservatives who believe that, by virtue of their intellect, experience and such distinctive attributes as cultural tastes and social standing, they are her superiors.
They refuse to take her seriously and believe she shouldn't take herself seriously, either.
That opposition, by the way, is insulting, not only to Palin but to her supporters as well. . .
"

Make no mistake, now that they have exposed themselves, the Republican establishment and elite are as much of the problem, and getting rid of them is as much as the solution, as is the case with Obama, et al.

James said...

A few weekends ago I changed my truck battery and lost my radio presets. While retuning the radio I stumbled across a Wisconsin Public Radio station broadcasting what sounded like a poor man's version of "A Prairie Home Companion" but with lots of references to Neenah and Menasha.

The host interviewed a geologist he introduced as the "Rock Lady" from UW-Fox Valley. Early in the interview the host remarked insultingly that the guest sounded just like Sarah Palin. Immediately some audience members starting hissing and booing and the guest tried unsuccessfully to change the tone of her voice.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing especially since it was the Sunday after the elections where the Dems got creamed. I didn't stick around to hear the station ID but I did look at UW-Fox Valley website and the "Rock Lady" turns out to be Joanne Kluessendorf. Apparently to her, and many in the audience, there is no greater insult than being told she sounds like Palin.

Unknown said...

somefeller said...

Anyway, there's another group that isn't generally impressed with Sarah Palin. Educated and affluent Republicans. And unfortunately for Palin, that group turns out to vote.

Educated and affluent Republicans = RINOs.

PS What Darcy said.

Franco said...

I am an anti elite who first warmed to Palin but have become very wary of her.

Palin is not the person the GOP should rally around. She has said nothing of substance and shown me nothing other than the ability to agree with what I and many other ordinary Americans have already concluded. OK, she agrees with me, so what? She doesn't articulate anything other than the standard pablum that you can hear from Sean Hannity when he is trying to fill time between promos.

Her appeal seems largely based on the fact the left hates her. For me that isn't quite enough.

I think there are actually large segments of the political left who do not fear her at all, and would love for her to be the GOP nominee.

She comes very close to reveling in being victimized by unfair attacks from the left. She gets sympathy perversely by claiming these attacks don't phase her, but she loves talking about them. Hmmm.

KCFleming said...

Democrats get a new strategery every week.

Would that some brave plan involving sound economics held the same interest as bowing to their union and corporate owners.

But all they can counter with are bread and circuses, this one with Palin the Gladiator, foiling their recreation of the battle of New Carthage ...i.e. Chicago.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

AlphaLiberal said...

It's not The Left that's ballyhooing Sarah Palin. That is the old, dreaded, MSM.


There's a difference?

Michael McNeil said...

phase her

Personal nit: the word is “faze,” not “phase,” which is something else entirely.

Terry said...

AlphaLiberal wrote:

Telling that this is probably the only time Althouse quotes him -- when he goes after The Left.

That's because he usually just rants about Hillbillies chasing him through the streets of Gotham with a Bible in one hand and a noose in the other.
Don't you read blow, Mr. Liberal? It's all cut-n-paste from Frank Rich and Bob Herbert.

Ann Althouse said...

"I don't read Blow as focusing on civility as much as noting that dissecting and repeating the usual Palin shortcomings has become a media circus of chasing Palin who chases the media. ..."

I don't either. You might want to reread my post.

blake said...

if someone thinks she has a good idea (i know i know but some get fooled) then it is my role to counter it.

Duty calls!

Clyde said...

@ HDHouse

"if someone puts out the idea that she is smart i simply tell the truth that she is a sly fool. if someone thinks she has a good idea (i know i know but some get fooled) then it is my role to counter it."

Let me guess: You always rooted for Wile E. Coyote and could never understand why all of his brilliant schemes failed so spectacularly.

The Crack Emcee said...

It always fails. As I say here, many of my liberal friends seem obsessed with trying to convince me she's a cultist, sending me anything - anything - they can find that might, in their feeble minds, be construed as proof. It's crazy.

BTW - doesn't Charles Blow have a great name for being such an obvious loser?

somefeller said...

edutcher says: Educated and affluent Republicans = RINOs.

Click the link I provided. It shows that educated and affluent Republicans = voters, particularly in key GOP primary states. But keep telling yourself that such GOP voters are just RINOs, if it makes you feel better about not being part of that group.

Unknown said...

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chuck b. said...

"At least Blow isn't pretending to believe in civility as an end in itself."

Key word: pretending.

Liberal persecution is one of Sarah Palin's most vaulable assets. She's a symbol of persecution (among other things) and many people identify with her and stand with her.

She's been v. successful resisting her opponents' efforts to write her over.

Riding the high-speed semotics train to nowhere, Obama is a symbol too (e.g., liberal white guilt, etc.), but so he's been much less successful at resisting the write-over.

People always want to minimize symbolism as what motivates their politics. A neutral assessment yielded substantive reasons! There's no point arguing. I just nod and smile.

Bruce Hayden said...

Click the link I provided. It shows that educated and affluent Republicans = voters, particularly in key GOP primary states. But keep telling yourself that such GOP voters are just RINOs, if it makes you feel better about not being part of that group.

The question is going to be, when it comes to the election, would they really pull the lever for the wost President since at least Carter, and maybe even before FDR? Who drove the economy farther into this recession, significantly increasing unemployment, by figuring that he shouldn't let the crisis go to waste, and so spread the country's wealth around for all his friends? Killed even more jobs with health care and financial "reform"? Is doing all he can to keep our souther borders open to Mexican gang violence?

Or, will they do like they did with Reagan, hold their nose, and do the right thing, voting for Palin?

somefeller said...

Or, will they do like they did with Reagan, hold their nose, and do the right thing, voting for Palin?

Fair questions, but first she has to get through the primaries to put such voters in a "hold your nose and vote" position. If the numbers cited in the article linked are correct, her path to the nomination may be more challenging than a lot of her supporters (and detractors - I'm looking at you, Andrew Sullivan) seem to think.

Terrye said...

I am no lefty and I do believe their over the top aversion to Palin has probably made her more of a celebrity with the right...but I have to say, I don't mind a day without Palin every now and then myself. I have wondered if in the end the thing that might be her greatest threat will be over exposure.

roesch-voltaire said...

As I read it, because Blow calls off the attack with a hyperbolic image, Alhouse indirectly points out how this represents the seething violence of the liberal mind that only pretended it wanted moderate discourse . But given the over-all tone and civil put down of the left as well as of Palin, and the general tone of all of Blow's columns, I think this is a bit of a reach to ask what happened to the move to restore sanity. But I can understand this question, which may be a bit defensive since so much of the right-wing rhetoric is in constant attack mode--I mean how many times do we have to evoke the Nazi image to portray this administration?

Bruce Hayden said...

Fair questions, but first she has to get through the primaries to put such voters in a "hold your nose and vote" position. If the numbers cited in the article linked are correct, her path to the nomination may be more challenging than a lot of her supporters (and detractors - I'm looking at you, Andrew Sullivan) seem to think.

I may be wrong, and we shall see, but I think that right now she has the inside track for the nomination. Partly, it is the enthusiasm gap, and partly it is that the field against her is so splintered. Of course, things can, and likely will, change a lot before the Republican Convention. For example, one of those white men running may start to stand out from the crowd. We shall see.

Alex said...

Charles - you BLOW.

Alex said...

Read Blow's column. If you think the attacks aren't failing, that's one more lame thing about Blow's column. Please aim you attacks at Blow.

The attacks ARE working. Sarah Palin's unfavorable is up to 53% on Gallup.

Bruce Hayden said...

After my previous posts, I am now taking the other side, somewhat.

Palin does have a problem with a certain segment of the Republican party. I would call it the Country Club part. Not so much RINO, but definitely more educated. The Republicans whom I grew up with, the doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc. Call it the upper middle class, as opposed to the middle and lower middle class.

Palin isn't one of them, but, then again, neither was Reagan. But pretty much every other Republican between Eisenhower and McCain nominated by the Republicans has been. It isn't really a money issue, but rather a class issue.

This segment of the Republican base is typically into the same sorts of things that the gentry liberals running the Democratic Party are. They often send their kids to private schools to get them into the best colleges. They mostly expect those kids to get graduate degrees, and then follow their parents into the professions, whether that be law, medicine, stocks, banking, business, etc.

For many of them, and their view of reality, Palin doesn't uphold their upper middle class values. She didn't graduate from a top college, and her husband doesn't even have a degree. The Palins are solidly working class, and their "betters" have a hard time supporting such.

I say this, having watched the reaction to Mrs. Palin in my extended family. The majority of us are Republicans, but only maybe half like her, and the other half really don't. It wasn't like the choice last time between Romney, McCain, and Huckleberry, where, at least with the first two, they could analytically compare the the candidates. It is emotional.

I still think that there are a lot more working class Republicans now who would walk through fire to vote for Palin than their country club brethren who just don't like her. But the issue, again, is whether they will accept her gracefully if she wins the nomination, and vote for her in the general election.

Opus One Media said...

Alex said...
"The attacks ARE working. Sarah Palin's unfavorable is up to 53% on Gallup."

Wait til the other 47% really get to know her!

Alex said...

HD - I have no doubt that you ghouls will get it up to 70% by 2012.

JimM47 said...

Ms. Palin's main political talent seems to be to illicit hyperbolic and ugly reactions from certain quarters on the left, reminding people just how much contempt those quarters have for people who identify with her.

I am not a Palin fan, but I continually find myself defending her against attacks, only because they are unfair, nasty or overblown.

But that gets tedious. Debating whether Sarah Palin is treated fairly is satellite litigation. I'm glad to see Mr. Blow speaking up for getting back to the real business.

Synova said...

"...if someone puts out the idea that she is smart i simply tell the truth that she is a sly fool. if someone thinks she has a good idea (i know i know but some get fooled) then it is my role to counter it."

But you don't "counter" anything. You issue tautologies or declarations as if they mean something when they don't. (I had a ghost writer for the word "tautology".)

Your statements of belief do not contain any actual information, not even in the weakest form of anecdote. (I had a ghost writer for that word, too.)

Kirby Olson said...

It's like the Free Speech movement of the 60s. Free Speech until they're in power, and then it's Speech Codes.

The Crack Emcee said...

Blow/Schmow:

CURTIS GOT SLAPPED BY A WHITE TEACHER!!!

Opus One Media said...

@synova...point well taken. proving a cypher is a zero is fairly difficult. somethings you just have to take on faith, experience and a fair amount "well I sure know it when I see it".

Some see Sarah the super mom, I see a make-believe donna reed with a money bag and a note that says hands up.

Opus One Media said...

Alex said...
HD - I have no doubt that you ghouls will get it up to 70% by 2012."

awww give momabeserk some credit. she can hit 72 on her own. it will take us to push her over that.

BJM said...

@AL

It's not The Left that's ballyhooing Sarah Palin. That is the old, dreaded, MSM.

Buhwahahahah!

One really can't make shit like this up.

Trooper York said...

Sarah Palin elicits the unreasoning hatred of the same people who spilled vitriol against Richard Nixon. And like Nixon she gets a lot of support because of the enemies she makes.

I bet hd still has a tape of the Watergate hearings in his Betamax to lope the mule to on cold winter nights.

Sarah just lends a little variety to his life. Enjoy.

BJM said...

@Bruce Hayden

But the issue, again, is whether they will accept her gracefully if she wins the nomination, and vote for her in the general election.

Much depends if the Repubs got the message last month. If they did and the GOP emerges as the strong horse then Palin is weakened and I'm betting she won't run.

The recent developments in the Latino-American sector will also be a factor, if they form a 4th party, as they are now threatening, then all bets are off.

Both national party's worst nightmare would be a TEA party - Latino party coalition.

Trooper York said...

Sarah Palin would be in a unique position to appeal to a Latino/tea party mix.

Most Latino's are cultural conservatives who are religious family oriented people. Who work hard for their money whether they are legal or illegal immigrants. If she found a way to split the difference on the immigration front she would be impossible to stop.

On immigrants she could be Nixon goes to China. Just sayn'

Fen said...

Libtard: It's not The Left that's ballyhooing Sarah Palin. That is the old, dreaded, MSM.

The Left. The MSM. The same thing.

David said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
jamboree said...

This is what i love most about her. I've never seen anything in my lifetime like the wall of bile and shit that was released on Palin and her family, and she not only survived but thrived. Hah. Makes me happy to see it and their reaction.

jamboree said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Blair said...

I think it's honestly almost impossible now to have a purely objective view on Sarah Palin. The veracity of both her supporters and detractors borders on the insane. On the other hand these people who sort of say that they used to like her but don't now strike me as peer-pressured wimps.

Probably the most one can say is that she is now a phenomenon, rather than a simple politician. What does that mean? Will she win the nomination? Who knows? This is uncharted territory. This is new.

Fen said...

The veracity of both her supporters and detractors borders on the insane.

I think you meant voracity, from voracious?

Regardless, your attempt at false equivalency failed. The attacks on Palin and her "teabagger" supporters (to include actual assaults by MoveOn and SEIU goons) are greater by several degrees.

traditionalguy said...

Blow has a blow by blow appreciation of how to handle Sarah. They must simply ignore her... like Obama said the other day. That is causing a severe whiplash among the Progressives who have for 40 years made personal destruction of their enemies by the media their version of a doomsday machine. She has their number and is quickly and effortlessly making all of the escapes and counters that a trained political wrestler would make. Who is this woman?

mariner said...

Meade,

Number of Sarah Palin posts at the "left-leaning blog," Althouse, in 2010: 83

Hell, that's not even two per week. Obviously your wife is a slacker.

Tell her to start pulling her weight in this cause, man!

blake said...

Isn't this (at least) the second time that we've gotten the "call to ignore" from the left?

Not long after the 2008 election, didn't someone write that the best way to deal with The Palin was to ignore?

Yeah, they couldn't stop then, either.

Tina Trent said...

Charles Blow represents a new low for the Times. A one-trick writer whose one trick is using the cover of pretentious, late-stage multiculturalism to vent his own prejudices and hatreds.

Is this going to be all that this generation, and subsequent ones, actually have to offer?

Phil 314 said...

Gee, I read it as "some on the left are obsessed with her; the media loves the ratings and she hasn't done much since she resigned"

Pretty accurate.

(I wouldn't anticipate him supporting her if she did start to do significant things but still he's described the status well)

David said...

HDHouse and the rest of you Palin haters. You continue to assert that Mrs. Palin is dumb, stupid, etc. Your assertions are not evidence. Please provide evidence for your assertions.

Bill589 said...

The GOP elite, the Dems, and the media hit Sarah Palin everyday. And everyday, she stands up, and stands taller and louder than anybody else against this big government progressivism. Some people tell us how they’ll lead. Sarah shows us.

John Paolozzi said...

You know what the difference is between liberals making a comment like this, and conservatives, I mean aside from this being a movie reference?

Almost all of the actual violence comes from the right. Oklahoma, the Olympics, and numerous shootings, all by rightwing extremists. It's you guys who are showing up at rallies with guns. It's you guys who talk about second amendment solutions, and revolutions.

So I'm sorry, but your attempt at equivalency just doesn't cut it.

That said... the people in your country should maybe try being nice to each other for a change. Stop with the crazy talk. Stop calling each other traitors because you have different ideas on how things should be done, and STOP talking about your fucking guns every 2 seconds.