She's Like Me!

Americans want someone who is like me, or worse
--Rob Riggle, explaining the Sarah Palin phenomenon
on 9/11 Jon Stewart show

I can rub & scrub this old house
'til it's shinin like a dime
Feed the baby, grease the car,
and powder my face at the same time
--I'm A Woman, Peggy Lee

So-uh, are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
--Are you experienced?, Jimi Hendrix

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Ranger Observation:
Every time Palin and McCain are photographed together,
body language suggest Palin is the alpha
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Sarah Palin is everywhere. She was in Barney's Cafe in Mt. Airy, N.C.; she was in New York, Vermont and Maine, too. She is all over the Deep South.

All of these everyday women look so very much like her, and drive the same SUV's I imagine Ms. Palin to drive. Their prime concern is their backyard, and they don't know too much about the news cycle. They don't need to.

With Sarah Palin's VP nomination, we see the great leveling impulse in America reaching for the highest office of the land. Sarah Palin is us, or at least, a large portion of us. She is the Obama antivenin.

Why? Because he is too slick, too cool, too modern. We are not there yet, aside from some privileged East and West Coasters. We are potato and corn eaters, and when we vacation, a hunting trip and a little venison might be a big treat.

JFK spoke in his 1961 inaugural speech of a "new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war. . . proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

Today's generations do not know their history, and they stand mute witness to the slow undoing of their own civil rights, and the violation of others human rights around the world. They are prey to the dictates of the media. They imagine they are free, because they do not know from absolute servitude.

Talk about your Equal Rights: Sarah Palin, can shoot, field dress AND cook the moose. She is both 1808 and 2008 for much of America. Forget the bits about rolling back reproductive rights and all the rest. Palin is a palliative, a sop to Americans for whom America is moving too fast.

She is not slick with that Midwestern nasal accent, but she is a bulldog. We have never had a Winston Churchill, but she will suffice. Basketball player/beauty queen contestant, every schoolboy's high school dream. And life gets so complicated after high school, so Palin is a happy throwback. She is the John Mellencamp nee Cougar of the political scene. She is "Jack and Diane," and sometimes girls get knocked up when they dribble off their Bobbie Brooks without using a prophylactic.

But the "sin" is turned into God's will, transmuted into a miracle which thereby obliterates the stain. When you give humans dominion over the earth, dismiss evolution and subjugate the reality of the biological imperative to procreate in everything from amoebas to yaks, it is easy to do.

What if Trig, Palin's Down Syndrome baby of questionable parentage, were not seen as a gift from God, but rather a curse? It has been speculated that Trig is actually Palin's daughter's illegitimate child. In any event, Trig, and every other difficult offspring of such unions may just be God's punishment to the offenders of his law. Just a thought.

And what if Trig were not born into the family of the lady governor. What if he were the spawn of a crack whore, a child that ends up in the state orphanage system. Is he still a "gift"? If so, who is gifted? Trig works well as a prop to buoy up the rhetoric of the "beliefs" of a conservative fundamentalist politician. But all is perspective.
Palin is the champion of every woman who conceives out of wedlock, especially those hypocrites who claim to be religious adherents, condemning fornication. She symbolizes shotgun weddings, both hers and her daughter's. Obama declaims that the press mayn't probe into Ms. Palin's family secrets, much as he told the press his own family was off limits. But Obama's perorations are off-base.

Candidate Obama was supposed to bridge the gap, bringing black and white worlds together, co-opting the ministerial oratory of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Rev. Martin Luther King. Raise us up to another level. The problem is, most Americans like who they are, just like most people in general. They resent uppity Michelle Obama telling them her husband will take them to a new place, from which they will never be able to go back. We are Green Mountain Boys, not Red Octobrists.

Outdoing Obama on the in-the-hood street cred comes white bread Ms. Palin, daughter preggers at sixteen or seventeen by another high schooler. Palin thrives precisely because she is lacking. Her rhetoric and stated ideals are not consistent with the messy realities of her and her family member's lives. With every new revelation, every attempt to skewer, comes a greater sympathy, because "She is like me."

For many black Americans, the Huxtables of the Cosby show are not their reality. It takes a village because there is a daddy dearth. Obama and family present a tidy image, but the dream is not the reality.

The dream of Camelot may have flown in JFK's day, and Jacqueline Kennedy was an image of refinement to which many aspired, but today, we have the apotheosis of "Lost" team members and reality shows whose members are admired for their thick carapaces and willingness to eat grasshoppers.

Madison Avenue has known this little secret for ages. The women in your household ads must not be too glamorous, for the consumer must relate to your product, and even feel a little better than the actor, if possible. All of this is written in full understanding that politics should concern itself with matters of state, but in full sorrowful realization that it is in fact a beauty contest.

Ergo, Sarah Palin, American candidate extraordinaire. Karl Rove would be proud.