Adriaan Lanni and Wesley Kelman may have nailed the reason the political elites, including stuffed shirts like David Frum & David Brooks on the right, have condescended to and even smeared Sarah Palin. The leftists hate her because she is a genuine small-town blue-collar woman who made it on her own, not by attaching herself to a cheatin' hubby's coattails. Or garnered acceptance by Washington-Insider longevity, as Kay Bailey Hutchinson would have done.
Like Clarence Thomas, who disliked affirmative action, Sarah Palin dislikes feminism & its outlier lesbian man-hater doctrines [except of course if said man is a "girly-man" in the Schwartenegger phrase that describes many Dem commentators of the male persuasion.]
And unlike the political elitists who live in gilded cage ghettos, Sarah & family live in the greatest outdoors in the USA:
Their hometown may be a dingy Anchorage exurb, but it has cheap, plentiful land bordering a vast and beautiful wilderness, which is crisscrossed by Todd (the "Iron Dog" champion) and the Palin children all winter. (By comparison, in the Northeast many leisure activities are brutally segregated by income: Martha's Vineyard vs. the Poconos, the Jersey Shore vs. the Hamptons.)
Her husband is a union member who also works for an oil company, and fishes commercially during the season. And she has a biographical narrative that only the two Left Coasts' phony elites who serve as Lenin's "useful idiots" can be stupid enough to attack:
Palin certainly has more credibility than McCain to attack Democrats' economic policies. More subtly, Palin embodies a notion that Republicans can create a society like Alaska—where the culture has a heavy working-class influence, state taxes are nonexistent, economic prospects are good for people regardless of formal education, and bricklayers can make the same money as urban lawyers (and have more fun in their spare time).While Democratic policy tries to help blue-collar workers by making it easier for them to attend college and get office jobs—that is, by encouraging them to cease to be blue-collar—Palin's Alaskan story offers hope from within the blue-collar culture. She validates the goodness of life in rural America because she has embraced a particularly exotic, turbocharged version of this life. Her biography, bound to be emphasized by Republicans, thus makes a powerful appeal to one of the country's most decisive constituencies.
Real blue collar people don't like political elites who consider themselves their "betters" patronizing them as Joe Biden, who long ago graduated from working class to blathering lawyer to inside-the-Beltway posterchild, and of course the superior Obamanable Showman does effortlessly. Even though their credentials are fake and Palin's are real, fighting big oil as Alaska's Oil Board Commish & corruption in a state riven by earmarked pork of colossal dimensions, then being elected this Frontier State's first female governor. She has an 80% approval rating for a reason----the tough as nails Alaskans spot a fraud a mile away and she is the real thing---unlike the ethereal Obama & his America-hating spouse. And Biden is as real as his hair-plugs and plagiarizing quotes.
Finally, a biographical anecdote, as I am in my dotage occasionally wont to do: April Glaspie, US Ambassador to Iraq in 1990 who faced off Saddam Hussein & was punished for following SecState james Baker's instructions, once told me that she was at the free-throw line of the womens' basketball championship of British Columbia at the end of the game----April missed both free throws to lose the championship. Sarah Palin, or Sarah Barracuda, had the same experience, albeit with a stress fracture of an ankle, and MADE HER FREE THROWS to win the Alaska womens' high school championship. I am very superstitious and hope that this is an omen which will make Palin a winner nationally [as poor April was brutally savaged for following orders, and effectively had her career end. She told me that missing those two free throws was a greater disaster than being fired for doing the right thing.]
Just to show that I'm not totally partisan, the constant repetition of "my friends" is beginning to wear down my patience with McCain's impulsive quirkiness. Slate has an article on previous "M-F'ers," including the inimitable chameleon-on-plaid FDR. The phrase belongs to the age of William Jennings Bryan & tends to make John-boy look like Bob Dole, personally likeable, but unfathomably attached to tics & mannerisms that simply are off-putting if not pruned from the candidate's repertoire. Remember poor Bob crashing through a picket fence as he fell off a stage after giving a speech? McCain also projects that accident prone vibe, even though he is head, shoulders, and upper torso above Obama in substantive experience & moral courage.
We're not asking McCain to wear earth-tones and undergo numerous personality changes like the clueless protean amoeba Al Gore. Just some self-editing, please. "Fellow Americans" did in LBJ & I don't want that to happen to a real American hero.
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