A Roundabout Farewell (to Sarah Palin)

My own mother took me to task for what she termed the heartlessness of my reaction to the Sarah Palin resignation.

Now she's a woman who is so soft-hearted that she's a hero and a prize and also, incredibly annoying.  Like the other day there was a pot of dead flowers and I was throwing them away and she was, literally, trying to talk them back to life:  "you're gonna be okay, you just need a little more time!", and I was all, fine, I'll take them out to the back garden and plant them in a corner and we'll see if they come back to life, ok? Humoring her like a five year old. I poked a hole in the soil with my finger and jammed them in the ground. 

We went off on our trip to Ohio and it rained a lot and we came back and not only had they returned to life but put out little pink blossoms. The little floral bastards.  Mom still talks to them, commiserating in a condescending voice when I am in earshot: "See! Some people are so mean, but I knew you just needed One More Chance."

So Mom thinks that people were being mean to Sarah Palin and she just needed One More Chance, and that she probably resigned in order to spend more time with the kids' math tutoring, anyway.

And I (hardhearted) feel like the whole nation is like Angela Jolie in "Wanted" dodging a deadly bullet in very slo mo.

But the blog Jezebel one of my favorite faves, had a pretty good exchange about it here, filled with good links, and  noting two things.  One, Palin's craziness, including threatening to sue the New York Times and Washington Post not because they've published the worst rumors about her resignation--they havent't--but because they've been "asking questions." And threatening to sue the whole Internet for everything else. 

But also, two (this is a very good point):  When the rightwingers and mainstream press went after Bill Clinton like this--totally insane and paranoid rumors, unbridled contempt--we on the Democratic side hated it and saw the terrific damage it was doing to public discourse. Do I now embrace the same firehose of public vitriol because it's deployed the other way?

Now, Bill Clinton was a successful president of  great accomplishment, and Sarah Palin the owner of 50% of 1 term as governor of a tiny populace, but still. 

As Jezzie editor Megan Carpentier and guest Spencer Ackerman ask, is there a chance that too much over the top Palin hatred leads in fact to creating a new reserve of sympathy for her among folks who will see her as wronged: "a very useful tale for her, filled with martyrdom at the hands of the liberals and naturally leading into the redemption-filled fourth act?"

Oddly enough, I watched some of HBO's magnificent "John Adams" last night, and though no one could less resemble the Founding Fathers in any way then the Palin, there was this connection: faction, discord, animus, our own emotional shortcomings, have been one of the greatest threats to our ideal of a nation, since the outset.

ETA: all high-mindedness aside, though, this is almost beyond satire.

Comments

[kathleen]

I wish you'd write a book about living with your Mom! The combo of love and frustration is so great, so funny and so real. I love the way you write!!!