Sarah Palin as Dagny Taggart….
Dagny is the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and according to Google, I’m not the first person to note the similarity.
What made me think of it this morning, though, was Andrew Breitbart’s piece, which appeared in the Washington Times, and at his own indispensable site, Big Hollywood. Breitbart’s column is reminiscent of the famous Martin Niemöller quote which begins “First they came for…” and ends “Then they came for me…and there was no one left to speak for me.”
In Breitbart’s update, first they came for George W. Bush, then they came for Joe the Plumber, then they came for talk radio, then they came for Sarah Palin, then they came for Carrie Prejean, then they came for a Cambridge cop, then they came for the Tea Partyers and the “town hall mobs”… and this leads to a succinct dissertation on the modern American Left’s implementation of Saul Alinsky’s Rule 12:
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
Breitbart takes it a step further, and wonders:
…one could make the argument that the Republican Party, usually slow on the uptake, has finally figured it out. There are no major Republican targets out there opposing Mr. Obama and his aggressive agenda. The conservative movement appears leaderless, but perhaps for the best.
Maybe that is the strategy: Standing back and letting the Obama machine flail in its pursuit of its next victim.
A grass-roots movement of average Americans has stood up, making it extremely difficult to isolate and demonize an individual.
I like this. Why do you think the American Left has been trying so hard to discredit the Tea Parties and the Town Halls as “AstroTurf” instead of “grass-roots?” When the Left tries to attack Rush Limbaugh, they are flailing away at the airwaves…when they attempt to attack their dearly departed Sarah Palin, they are now swinging their switchblades at cyberspace…Facebook and Twitter. How rich is that? The Alinskyite “looters” of Rand’s novel can’t find a physical target anymore, even though they know she’s out there somewhere…. Boo! Might a political machine that survives by igniting straw men actually die in a brush fire of its own making?
I speculated a while back that Sarah Palin was positioning herself as a new Rush Limbaugh—probably not a radio personality, but something like Rush, a rallying point, a Joan of Arc sort of figure, Neo in The Matrix.
The agents are very afraid. Oh, and congrats to Chris and the gang, and all the contributors who are helping to “spread the fear.”
Old Fart Chris:
Thanks, you Cynic, you!
17 August 2009, 4:14 pmhindoo:
What a fetching picture of Sarah Palin. Damn, but she’s one good-looking broad! As a plump, middle-aged woman with bad hair, I despise her with every fiber of my being! … Re: “Atlas Shrugged.” Read it once, years ago. Didn’t much like it. Seemed to prefer “The Communist Manifesto.”
Seriously, as brilliant as you are, driver–and I do mean that–I’m surprised that you’re as ideologically rigid as you come across in your writing. IMHO, the far right isn’t necessarily always the right place to be, nor is the far left. Perhaps a little navel-gazing wouldn’t hurt either one of us. Or not.
17 August 2009, 5:40 pmdriver:
I’m only ideologically rigid when it comes to opposing such obviously fallacious games as the notion that the Constitution of the United States is a “living, breathing document.”
It’s not….it’s a legal document that says what it says, no less, no more, and it ceases to have meaning if people won’t vociferously defend it from onslaughts of demagogues like Obama, Ayers, and Alinsky and the rest of the “Red Diaper Baby” crowd.
P.S…..did you know that Charlize Theron has been pushing to play Dagny Taggart in a screen version of “Atlas Shrugged”? I say to heck with Charlize, give the role to the more charismatic woman who actually believes in the character.
17 August 2009, 6:10 pmHindoo:
You don’t think that times change, even a little bit, over a period of centuries? Our founding fathers in the 1700s may not have been able to conceive what America would be dealing with 250 years later. I’m all for some flexibility in interpretation of the Constitution–just as I’m all for some inflexibility in interpreting the Bible.
17 August 2009, 10:48 pmdriver:
Of course times change! So, do the hard work and amend the Constitution. Don’t pretend that it now means whatever you feel it should mean, based on your latest whim.
17 August 2009, 10:59 pmCM16:
I just had one of those really intense musical moments where the song I was listening to (with headphones of course) intersected so perfectly with what I was reading that I had to stop to catch my breath! Radiohead always does this for me.
These are my Twisted Words
These are my twisted words
went off the roof still walking
I know I should not look down
but I’m so sick of just talking
when are you coming back?
I just can’t handle it
when are you coming back?
I just can’t handle it
when are you coming back?
I just can’t stand it
I just can’t handle it
You nailed it Driver… they are flailing in the wind. Lost without a proper target.
http://www.waste.uk.com/Store/waste-radiohead-twisted+words.html
18 August 2009, 1:33 amRearden:
Any resemblance besides that of gender between S.Palin and D.Taggart is the most absurd thing I have heard in a long time. In what way has Palin showed any resemblance of competence? The heroine of Atlas Shrugged was an extremely well educated, well cultured character who never gave up when everyone was doubting her. Palin has a sub-par education, very little experience with culture outside the US, and she gave up her position in office when the country needed a hero/heroine the most! I don’t see how these characters could possibly be any different, less the fact that Palin and Ayn Rand are at the forefront of contemporary American satire. Dagny was polarized for being an elitist, Palin for being nothing more than a pawn.
1 September 2009, 3:18 pm