The Temptations of Sarah Palin
I've never been a fan of Sarah Palin, but I admit a certain inability to resist clicking on all the latest internet mentions of what she is into and what others are into when it comes to her. The very latest is that a guy named Joe McGinnis has written a book that is intended to reveal her darkest aspects, of which the most striking is the claim that when she was in her 20's and taking a fling at being a sportcaster just months before she married the T. Palin guy, she also had a brief fling with a Rainbow basketball star when he was in town for a tournament. Now people who don't like her are gleefully saying that this revelation will suddenly sink her political career right now, without a bubble.
Though I can't see how anyone could choose her to be the President, to me this incident, far from being a fatal drawback, actually gives her some dimension, of a kind that's been largely absent from her story till now, save for the facts that she's been raising five children, and that one has Down's Syndrome, while another has been grappling with the rigors of being a teenage mother. And I very much hope that those narrow minds who are the overwhelming majority of that political side that she has so mistakenly and resolutely embraced by the hindparts (or "hindpots" as that term was always pronounced in the surroundings of my early days) will not summarily toss her overboard just because once a long time ago she succumbed to a temptation regarding someone of the hated hue.
I think that Palin's has been a very interesting story and maybe even the biggest political fable of these times, unfolding ever since J. McCain pulled a shocker on everyone by plucking her out of the Alaskan obscurity and placing her squarely front and center in the American attention, as his idea of one or the three or four persons best qualified to lead the nation, ahead of all the other 300 million plus people in the U.S., even though, just for starters, she hadn't even begun to pay the dues that had already been paid by thousands of others through the years. But that was before she opened her mouth.
It has been a fable that will make great reading for future generations, when it will be long enough past the time when the stuff that does come out of her mouth will have lost all its present ability to raise the rabble. At that point I think she will be seen as having been a woman of quite modest intellect whose career was a classic example of how one who is in possession of such a supposedly great asset as a striking physical appearance and with a 100-watt smile to go with it, both of which will probably not diminish much in their appeal, if any, no matter how old she gets, still has to be on constant guard, because of the way that her looks keep leading to temptations being offered up that are hard and at times impossible to resist. That is the story of her life -- succumbing to temptation, not so much because she's weak but because there's been such an overwhelming number of enticements, and because in the days when the biggest stars visible to her were sports ones, she could never have dreamed that much larger siren calls would not only sound in her ears but would also actually come to pass, such as not only becoming the governor of a state, but, just a little later, landing her in a truly Alice in Wonderland manner in a position that was just one step away from becoming the second in command of all these United States -- just as if she had been born to be a favorite of God Himself.
That's why I never called Palin a "quitter" (at least I hope I didn't) for resigning midway through her term as Alaska governor. Instead, after she had abruptly and unexpectedly tasted the big times in the "lower 48," I saw it as a case of her simply seeing no point in further confining herself to the Arctic Circle. And besides, since she had come into such great demand, the prospect of constantly flying in and out of her home state had to have lost all attraction. The geography of much of Alaska and western Canada is noticeably stingy in its offerings of nice, safe emergency landing strips, you know.
Then there were all the other temptations that kept dropping in her lap -- all the goodies she bought for herself and her family by using all that free campaign money, and the reality shows, the book about herself, and above all the thinking by so many that even after all her many verbal missteps she was still and forever a credible candidate to be the next U.S. Prez.
Therefore it can be no wonder that much earlier in life, Ms Palin could also have succumbed to a sexual temptation involving a renowned athlete from out of town. This kind of thing happens with young people all the time. Like hungry polar bear cubs ready to taste anything that looks even remotely edible, young people succumb to nearly any temptation that offers itself, secure in the certainty, as they are in their mortality, that they will never be called out for it. To them, and rightly so, that's as ridiculous as a witness in a courtroom drama being called to task for not being able to remember where they were at some particular minute on some particular day in some particular month in some particular year, years earlier.
So if S. Palin does get pulled down completely by this escapade, and providing that that encounter with the ballplayer actually happened, it will only be because of that old color bugaboo that has long since permeated all of American life and keeps rearing its ugly head out of the fabric and the threads of the flag at every opportunity, no matter how much that nether side of American politics that puts it to so much use keeps trying to deny its presence.
Though I can't see how anyone could choose her to be the President, to me this incident, far from being a fatal drawback, actually gives her some dimension, of a kind that's been largely absent from her story till now, save for the facts that she's been raising five children, and that one has Down's Syndrome, while another has been grappling with the rigors of being a teenage mother. And I very much hope that those narrow minds who are the overwhelming majority of that political side that she has so mistakenly and resolutely embraced by the hindparts (or "hindpots" as that term was always pronounced in the surroundings of my early days) will not summarily toss her overboard just because once a long time ago she succumbed to a temptation regarding someone of the hated hue.
I think that Palin's has been a very interesting story and maybe even the biggest political fable of these times, unfolding ever since J. McCain pulled a shocker on everyone by plucking her out of the Alaskan obscurity and placing her squarely front and center in the American attention, as his idea of one or the three or four persons best qualified to lead the nation, ahead of all the other 300 million plus people in the U.S., even though, just for starters, she hadn't even begun to pay the dues that had already been paid by thousands of others through the years. But that was before she opened her mouth.
It has been a fable that will make great reading for future generations, when it will be long enough past the time when the stuff that does come out of her mouth will have lost all its present ability to raise the rabble. At that point I think she will be seen as having been a woman of quite modest intellect whose career was a classic example of how one who is in possession of such a supposedly great asset as a striking physical appearance and with a 100-watt smile to go with it, both of which will probably not diminish much in their appeal, if any, no matter how old she gets, still has to be on constant guard, because of the way that her looks keep leading to temptations being offered up that are hard and at times impossible to resist. That is the story of her life -- succumbing to temptation, not so much because she's weak but because there's been such an overwhelming number of enticements, and because in the days when the biggest stars visible to her were sports ones, she could never have dreamed that much larger siren calls would not only sound in her ears but would also actually come to pass, such as not only becoming the governor of a state, but, just a little later, landing her in a truly Alice in Wonderland manner in a position that was just one step away from becoming the second in command of all these United States -- just as if she had been born to be a favorite of God Himself.
That's why I never called Palin a "quitter" (at least I hope I didn't) for resigning midway through her term as Alaska governor. Instead, after she had abruptly and unexpectedly tasted the big times in the "lower 48," I saw it as a case of her simply seeing no point in further confining herself to the Arctic Circle. And besides, since she had come into such great demand, the prospect of constantly flying in and out of her home state had to have lost all attraction. The geography of much of Alaska and western Canada is noticeably stingy in its offerings of nice, safe emergency landing strips, you know.
Then there were all the other temptations that kept dropping in her lap -- all the goodies she bought for herself and her family by using all that free campaign money, and the reality shows, the book about herself, and above all the thinking by so many that even after all her many verbal missteps she was still and forever a credible candidate to be the next U.S. Prez.
Therefore it can be no wonder that much earlier in life, Ms Palin could also have succumbed to a sexual temptation involving a renowned athlete from out of town. This kind of thing happens with young people all the time. Like hungry polar bear cubs ready to taste anything that looks even remotely edible, young people succumb to nearly any temptation that offers itself, secure in the certainty, as they are in their mortality, that they will never be called out for it. To them, and rightly so, that's as ridiculous as a witness in a courtroom drama being called to task for not being able to remember where they were at some particular minute on some particular day in some particular month in some particular year, years earlier.
So if S. Palin does get pulled down completely by this escapade, and providing that that encounter with the ballplayer actually happened, it will only be because of that old color bugaboo that has long since permeated all of American life and keeps rearing its ugly head out of the fabric and the threads of the flag at every opportunity, no matter how much that nether side of American politics that puts it to so much use keeps trying to deny its presence.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:35 AM
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