Amused Cynic

I was reminded of that famous Oscar Wilde quotation  by Tony Blankley’s column in The Washington Times yesterday, wherein he elegantly skewers all the “Sarah Palin is finished” parrots from all sectors of the media flock. He is so spot-on with this [emphasis added]:

Professional politicians and political journalists don’t waste energy on political corpses. They reserve their energy — positive or negative — for viable politicians.

Thus, an intriguing part of the Sarah Palin phenomenon is the intensity of response to her every word and move — from both Republican Party and Democratic Party professionals and from the conventional media. The negative but sustained passion being expressed by the professional Washington political class against her tends to belie its almost unanimous assertion that she is washed-up.
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For instance, as the story was breaking Friday, fellow politically professional panelists were pointing out on-air how stupid Palin was to put forward her big story on a late Friday afternoon during a three-day holiday weekend. Everyone “knows” one buries a story that way. It became my grim duty to remind my fellow interlocutors — in case they had not noticed — that all the cable news shows were dropping their programming to switch to wall-to-wall coverage of the Palin announcement and that we were, at that moment, telling a national audience that the story we were talking about was being buried. The story persisted and expanded over the weekend, and my guess is that if any political topic came up at America’s millions of Fourth of July backyard barbecue parties, it was probably Sarah Palin. So, who’s the fool?

Beautifully said. Palin is in fact so ineluctably washed up that The Gray Lady’s resident gray lady, Maureen Dowd, has devoted not one, but two consecutive columns to the worthless Wasilla wench since she announced her resignation on Friday and everyone started to ignore her.

NBC’s Matthew Berger, writing at Politico, sounds irked that he will now have to spend his summer re-writing his book on Palin (”He is the author of a book on Palin’s campaign and political future, scheduled for release in the fall by Wiley,” the blurb at the end of his piece tells us), peevishly revealing himself to be one of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders crowd of amateur Palin psychologists, with repeated references to how Palin sees things “in her own mind” as distinct from reality.   But he will rewrite his book, because he knows it will sell.

The WaPo’s delusional high priest of African-American victimology Eugene Robinson  devoted an entire column yesterday to unintentional self-parody, trashing Palin for….creating a cult of flyover-country victimology.

There are basically two reasons why the political class and the commentariat continue to speak and write about Palin as if she were a substantial figure whose presence on the national stage is anything but a cruel, unfunny joke. The first is fear — not of Palin and her know-nothing legions, but of being painted as elitist and sexist.[...]The other reason why Palin is taken more seriously than she deserves is that she has a constituency. Heaven help us.

Yeah, that fear sure silenced her critics, didn’t it?

The obvious question, of course, is why do they keep beating this dead filly, if she’s really dead?  It’s because they know she isn’t dead.   Where does she go from here?  I don’t think even she knows that, but I’m sure she won’t waste her sizable opportunity to exact some retribution from her attackers.  I think she will write a reformist manifesto (she would do well to join forces with the pseudonymous “David Kahane” over at NRO—-read this piece if you haven’t already.  He is always a fun read, but there is some real blistering anger showing through in his latest satire, “I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin”.)

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but maybe now you’re beginning to understand the high-stakes game we’re playing here. This ain’t John McCain’s logrolling senatorial club any more. This is a deadly serious attempt to realize the vision of the 1960s and to fundamentally transform the United States of America. This is the fusion of Communist dogma, high ideals, gangster tactics, and a stunning amount of self-loathing. For the first time in history, the patrician class is deliberately selling its own country down the river just to prove a point: that, yes, we can! This country stinks and we won’t be happy until we’ve forced you to admit it.

In other words, stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it’s much more than that. We’re not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. Not just the party of Aaron Burr, Boss Tweed, Richard J. Croker, Bull Connor, Chris Dodd, Richard Daley, Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II. Not just the party of Kendall “Agent 202” Myers, the State Department official recruited as a Cuban spy along with his wife during the Carter administration. Rather, think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.

If you had any sense, you would start using our tactics against us. After all, you have a few lawyers on your side. Sue us. File frivolous ethics complaints against all our elected officials until, like Sarah, they go broke from defending themselves. (David Paterson would be a good place to start.) Challenge the constitutionality of BO2’s legion of fill-in-the-blank czars — none of whom have to be confirmed, or even pass a security check. (Come to think of it, neither did Barry.) Let slip your own journalistic dogs of war, assuming you have any, to find Barry’s birth certificate, his college transcripts, whether he applied to Occidental as a foreign student, and on which passport he traveled in 1981 to Pakistan with his friend Wahid Hamid, for starters.

You might also want to think about interviewing New York literary agent Jane Dystel, who a) contacted the totally unknown Obama in the wake of an adulatory New York Times piece in 1990 and b) got him a $125,000 advance for a memoir that c) he couldn’t write, even after a long sojourn in Bali, which d) got the contract canceled, whereupon e) Dystel got him $40,000 from another publisher, following which f) the book finally came out to glowing reviews and g) Obama fired her. Wouldn’t she have an interesting story to tell?

Of course, you won’t. You’re too nice, too enamored of history and tradition to realize that the rules have changed. Remember, I live and work in a town where, “Hello, he lied,” isn’t a joke; we men of the Left are perfectly comfortable lying, cheating, and stealing — hello, Senator Franken! — in order to attain and keep political power. Not for nothing is one of our mottos, “By Any Means Necessary.” You see, we’re the good guys, and for us the ends always justify the means. We are, literally, shameless, which is why Bill Clinton is now a multi-millionaire and Eliot Spitzer is already on the comeback trail.

In Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, “the fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” This is the book that “Reset” Rodham (what ever happened to her?) and BHO II grew up reading and continue to live by. If you don’t understand that that’s the way we see you — as the enemy — then you’re too dumb to survive. Remember that for us politics is not just an avocation, or even just a job, but our life. We literally stay awake nights thinking up ways to screw you. And one of the ways we do that is by religiously observing Alinsky’s Rule No. 4.

No rules in a knife fight, as I keep saying.
Andrew Breitbart had it exactly right in this excellent piece last week:

Most disturbing, Republicans seem to think Democrats can be their friends. Not only does the Republican Party not have a Ronald Reagan, the Democratic Party has no Tip O’Neill. Washington doesn’t have end-of-the-day, cross-party social sessions over single-malt scotches. There is no bipartisanship that doesn’t end in Republicans acquiescing in defeat of their core principles. A coordinated Democratic campaign against mainstream middle-of-the-road Republicanism is here to stay. And our strategy, as best as I can decipher it, is to be more liked than the last go around.

In the next election cycle, things need to be drastically different. Democracy is not Augusta National Golf Club. It’s a messy free-for-all, and in a two-party system, the GOP will not survive if it doesn’t accept the fact that the Democrats are its enemy and that it must begin to play for keeps. That means finding another Lee Atwater – only meaner – and not apologizing when we get him.

OK, enough rambling, so I’ll use an old blogging trick and close with another famous quote: Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
That’s one thing they sure can’t blame Sarah Palin for. The Republicans? Eh, not so much.

UPDATE: After closing with the Einstein definition of insanity, I read the Time Magazine cover-story interview with Sarah Palin (you see how nobody cares about her anymore?) and came away with a few extra thoughts. First of all, great minds really do think alike….Palin: “…it’s insane to continue down this road.” Heh.

Second, I don’t know how anyone could read that interview and come away with anything less than a complete understanding of why she did what she did. Makes total sense to me. The argument that her continued political viability depended on her returning to Alaska and continuing to preside as an effective governor falls apart when the press and her political opponents had colluded to ensure that she could not be effective anymore. The context had changed.

It’s that our administration is so stymied and paralyzed because of a political game that has been chosen to be played by critics who have discovered loopholes in the ethics reform that I championed that allows them to continually, continually bombard the state with frivolous ethics-violation charges, with lawsuits, with these fishing expeditions. We win the lawsuits, we win the ethics charges, we win all that — but it comes at such great cost. The distraction, the waste of time and money, the public’s time and money — it’s insane to continue down this road. And Alaskans who have paid attention to what’s going on, they understand that.

Now, there’s been some frustration with some in the media not fully reporting what’s been going on, so this may come as a shock to some Alaskans. We have sat down with reporters, showed them proof of the frivolity, the wastefulness — you know, millions of dollars this is costing our state to fight frivolous charges. And countless, countless hours from my staff, our department of law, from me every single day just trying to set the record straight. And it doesn’t cost the adversaries a dime in this game. It costs our state so much in time and in resources. Alaskans that have paid attention to that, despite the media choosing not to fully report on the circumstances today, Alaskans understand why there had to be a shift here. There has to be a change of direction, and it makes sense for Alaska, my final year in office, to not only be honest with them and tell them that I’m not going to run again, knowing that we’ve accomplished what we wanted to accomplish, but taking it one step further, saying I’m not going to put them through a lame-duck session where there will be, obviously, more wasted time and money because of the political game being played right now.
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And that’s why I’m trying to make it clear that the criticism, I invite that. But freedom of speech and that invitation to constructively criticize a public servant is a lot different than the allowance to lie, to continually falsely accuse a public servant when they have proven over and over again that they have not done what the accuser is saying they did. It doesn’t cost them a dime to continue to accuse. That’s a whole different situation. But that’s why when I talk about the political potshots that I take or my family takes, we can handle that. I can handle that. I expect it. But there has to be opportunity provided for truth to get out there, and truth isn’t getting out there when the political game that’s being played right now is going to continue, and it is. When you realize that it doesn’t cost them a dime and it’s a fun sport for some, you know it’s going to continue. I love Alaska too much to put her through this in a lame-duck session.

She also candidly volunteered the fact that the quandary she found herself in was in large measure due to deficiencies—”loopholes” she called them—that permitted the abuse of the very ethics laws she signed and considered to be among her top accomplishments.

My last observation on this interview says more about the MSM than about Sarah Palin. Much is being made today of her use of the term “department of law” (highlighted above in the quote), both in this interview, and in an ABC interview with Kate Snow. The writer of the Time article erred in not capitalizing the term in the context of his article, because there actually is a Department of Law in Alaska, and that is obviously what she was referring to.

The Department of Law is part of the executive branch of Alaska state government. The attorney general is the principal executive officer of the department, and is appointed by the governor of Alaska. The attorney general serves as the legal advisor for the governor and other state officers, prosecutes all violations of state criminal law, and enforces the consumer protection and unfair trade practices laws. The duties and powers of the attorney general are found in AS 44.23.020.

The Attorney General’s Office supports the attorney general in his performance as legal advisor to the governor and chief administrator of the three divisions of the Department of Law.

Snow makes a big deal of this usage, and is sure to capitalize the phrase in her own report:

As to whether another pursuit for national office, as when she joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the race for the White House less than a year ago, would result in the same political blood sport, Palin said there was a difference between the White House and what she had experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the “department of law” would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

“I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we’ve been charged with and automatically throw them out,” she said.

There is no “Department of Law” at the White House.

A related piece by Snow and a Rick Klein describes the statement this way, and the “gotcha” intentions of the “reporters” is evident in the fact the the department of law comment is part of the headline….really:

“I don’t think it will be the day after day after day of ethics violation charges that are frivolous, that are ridiculous. I think on a national level your department of law there in the White House would look at this, the things we have been charged with, and automatically throw them out, not make somebody hire their own personal attorney to get out there and fight.”

There is no “department of law” at the White House, though Palin appears to have been referring to the White House counsel’s office.

This is the kind of MSM crap that really frosts me. As Michael Goldfarb asks at the Weekly Standard’s blog, “Is it really that crazy that Governor Palin would suggest that the White House equivalent of her Department of Law would handle the kind of frivolous ethics complaints she’s been forced to deal with on her own?”

Of course it isn’t, and Kate Snow could have done what I did (Google “alaska department of law”) and found out what I did (and Goldfarb did) and shared that with you to provide some context, which is what reporters used to do. She also might have asked Palin for clarification, instead of sniggering to herself “I’ve got this rube now.” She might have learned that the Alaska Department of Law combines in the Attorney General the roles of counsel to the chief executive and chief law enforcement officer for the state, which has helped to make Palin’s situation especially awkward (and expensive) in dealing with the phony ethics charges….which of course, must be prosecuted by the Department of Law. She might have pointed out to her readers that the Office of the Counsel to the President was created by FDR for exactly this reason.

But Kate Snow didn’t do any of that, because that would have spoiled “Sarah Palin is a dumb rube” narrative, and because Kate Snow thinks we’re too stupid to figure it out. And maybe some of us are. Anyone who thinks that the governor of any state doesn’t know what the US Department of Justice is is as dumb as a sack of guitar picks.

UPDATE 7/9/09: John Zeigler, who knows a great deal about the media war on Sarah Palin (his Media Malpractice DVD is excellent) has a great post at Big Hollywood today containing a clip from his radio show in which Sarah Palin clearly telegraphed that her “surprise” resignation was being contemplated and clearly on the table. He provides some unique insights and makes some excellent points.

The media-created perception of this woman is the most corruptly inaccurate I’ve ever seen, and their attacks on her and her family are the most outrageous and dangerous I’ve ever been aware of.

Every single American, regardless of their politics, should be frightened by what’s happened to Sarah Palin. I truly believe that if they knew just how false the impression of her is they’ve been spoon fed for the sake of ratings, political agenda and, as she herself said, “blood sport,” there would be an uprising.

There’s a lot of blame to go around for how and why this has been allowed to happen, but I want to make special mention of some my conservative media “friends” (that is just an expression, I don’t really have many friends in the media) who have once again revealed just how weak, shortsighted and willing to sell out they really are. Regardless of what you think of Sarah Palin, every single conservative who attacks her by buying into media-created falsehoods so they can curry favor with the media elite should be seen as traitors to the movement. You have been duped and used as cover for a public lynching.

The latest to fall into this trap is CPAC’s Chairman David Keene who ripped Palin (mimicking a false claim put forward by several prominent conservative commentators) for “whining” about press coverage and declared her unfit for a Presidential run. Could someone PLEASE show me just ONE legitimate example (no one making the claim has even bothered to try) of where Palin has “whined” about something that has been said about her publicly?! Are these people saying you can’t set the record straight about lies? Are you not supposed to fight back against illegitimate attacks? Gee, that strategy worked so well for President Bush. And these are the so called leaders of the movement? No wonder we are where we are.

Along the same lines, I have been astonished that a majority of conservative media members have completely skipped over an incredibly important phase in the process of accepting that Palin is not likely to be elected President in 2012…

Outrage.

Are we really so numb that we jump right from shock to acceptance and even criticism of the victim without bothering to express outrage over the crime itself?!! Have conservatives really become that wussified? Can you imagine how the left/media would react if one of their stars had been taken out in such a vicious and unprecedentedly inappropriate manner??! Michael Jackson’s funeral might have even been preempted!

For all the left’s many flaws, you have to give them this, they play for keeps. They understand this is a war. If the apparent destruction of Sarah Palin doesn’t make conservatives wake up and realize that they’re bringing butter knives to gun fights and must start protecting their warriors, there simply won’t be anyone left standing to carry the flag.

RELATED: The Stoning of Sarah P
ALSO: A nice piece by Tim Lindell
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