By: Matt Taibbi
The really beautiful thing about the culture war, from an entertainment standpoint, is that it is fundamentally irresolvable. There isn’t a concrete set of issues involved, where in theory both sides could give in a little and find middle ground, reach some sort of compromise.

That’s because there are no issues at all. At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).

It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.

And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we’ve now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.

Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming’s sake generation. The people who dismiss her book Going Rogue as the petty, vindictive meanderings of a preening paranoiac with the IQ of a celery stalk completely miss the book’s significance, because in some ways it’s really a revolutionary and innovative piece of literature.

Palin — and there’s just no way to deny this — is a supremely gifted politician. She has staked out, as her own personal political turf, the entire landscape of incoherent white American resentment. In this area she leaves even Rush Limbaugh in the dust.

The reason for that is that poor Rush is an anachronism, in the sense that his whole schtick revolves around talking about real political issues. And real political issues are boring.

Listen to Rush any day of the week and you’ll hear him playing the old-fashioned pundit game: he goes about the dreary business of picking through the policies and positions and public statements of Democrats and poking holes in them, arguing with them, attacking them with numbers and facts and pseudo-facts and non-facts and whatever else he can get his hands on, honest or not, but at least he tries. The poor guy nearly killed himself this summer trying to find enough horseshit to arm himself with against the health care bill, coming up with various fairy tales about how state health agencies used death panels to try to kill cancer patients who just wanted to live a little longer, how section 1233 is Auschwitz all over again, yada yada yada.

Rush is no Einstein, but the man does research. It may be fallacious and completely dishonest research, but he does it all the same. His battlefield is world politics and most of the time the relevant action is taking place in Washington. As good as he is at what he does, he still has to travel to the action; he himself isn’t the action.

The Palin Chronicles | Conservative Anti-Obama Baboonery

Sarah Palin’s battlefield, on the other hand, is whatever is happening five feet in front of her face. She is building a political career around the little interpersonal wars in the immediate airspace surrounding her sawdust-filled head. And in the process she connects with pissed-off, frightened, put-upon America on a plane that’s far more elemental than the mega-ditto schtick.

Most normal people cannot connect on an emotional level with Rush’s meanderings on how Harry Reid is buying off Mary Landrieu with pork in the health care bill. They can, however, connect with stories about how top McCain strategist and Karl Rove acolyte Steve Schmidt told poor Sarah to shut her pie-hole on election day, or how her supposed allies in the McCain campaign stabbed her in the back by leaking gossip about her to reporters, how Schmidt used the word “fuck” in front of her daughter, or even with the strange tales about Schmidt ordering Sarah to consult with a nutritionist to improve her campaign endurance when she herself knew she just needed to get out in the fresh air and run (If there’s one thing Sarah Palin knows, it’s herself!).

Complaining about the assholes we interact with on a daily basis is the #1 eternal pastime of the human race. We all do it, and we get to do it every day, because the world is full of assholes. Me personally, I waste an enormous amount of time seething over people who get onto crowded subway cars with big backpacks on and/or talk in the Amtrak quiet car and/or drive 57 mph in the fast lane or, my personal favorite, walking with glacial slowness in a horizontal row four overweight tourists across on a New York City sidewalk. We all get into furious arguments at work that make us want to explode in self-righteous fury (in my office dramas I always realize I was actually the asshole a day or so later) and when we get home from work, this is usually what our loved ones hear about for at least the first hour or so.

Not health care, not financial regulatory reform, not Iraq or Afghanistan, but — assholes.

Sarah Palin is on an endless crusade against assholes. It’s all she thinks about. She doesn’t really have any political ideas, in the classic sense of the word — in fact the only thing resembling real political convictions in Going Rogue revolve around the Trans-Alaska pipeline and how awesome she thinks it is.

Most of the rest of the book just catalogs her Gump-esque rise to national stardom (not having enough self-awareness to detect the monstrous narcissistic ambition that in reality was impelling her forward all along, she labors in the book to describe her various career leaps as lucky accidents or mystical acts of Providence) and the seemingly endless parade of meanies bent on tripping her up along the way. The book is really about her battles with these people, how much they did and do suck, and how difficult and inherently unfair life is for a decent hardworking American gal who just wants to live life, serve God, and try to be president without being bothered all the time.

Viewed through the prism of this particular brand of insanity (Palinsanity? does that work?), Katie Couric’s notorious Palin interview last year really was a cheap shot. After all, Katie was trying to nail Palin — which is mean! Who among us can’t sympathize with the experience of being sandbagged by some slick professional rival who catches you in a moment of weakness and, instead of lending a helping hand, drives a fireplace poker through your eye?

You’d have to be thinking about the broader picture, about the fact that the president of the United States ought not to be a drooling yahoo whose two favorite Supreme Court cases are Roe v. Wade and Roe v. Wade and who thinks living near Canada counts as foreign policy experience, to not see what an asshole Katie Couric was being. And that other reality, the reality where one worries about a national political candidate having the brains of an innertube, is less immediate than the five-foot airspace radius around the Palin bobblehead. It’s harder for the average person to connect with, I guess.

Palin’s extraordinary ability to inspire major national controversies around these injustices done to her immediate person is going to guarantee her some kind of major role in American politics for the next dozen years. In this regard she is going to have a willing ally in her supposed keen enemy, the mainstream media, which likewise loves nothing more than a political narrative that has nothing to do with politics. It’ll be a virtually endless war over nonsense like this latest Newsweek cover, which hilariously is being seen as one or the other of a) a liberal media plot or b) a sexist assault on a prominent female politician by the male-dominated media world when in fact, as all of us in this dying print media business know, the magazine’s motive was grounded entirely in the nihilistic desperation to sell newsstand copies.

And Sarah Palin sells copies. She is the country’s first WWE politician — a cartoon combatant who inspires stadiums full of frustrated middle American followers who will cheer for her against whichever villain they trot out, be it Newsweek, Barack Obama, Katie Couric, Steve Schmidt, the Mad Russian, Randy Orton or whoever. Her followers will not know that she is the perfect patsy for our system, designed as it is to channel popular anger in any direction but a useful one, and to keep the public tied up endlessly in pointless media melees over meaningless nonsense (melees of the sort that develop organically around Palin everywhere she goes). Like George W. Bush, even Palin herself doesn’t know this, another reason she’s such a perfect political tool.

With Going Rogue, the 2012 reality show has already begun. As brainless political theater, she can’t be topped. It’s just too bad for conservatives that she happens to be unsustainably divisive and, as Newsweek points out, a really good bet to permanently marginalize the Republican party by reducing it to a pissed-off, semi-coherent mob that repulses independent voters on a visceral level. To paraphrase John Doman’s Deputy Ops Rawls character from The Wire, she’s “brilliant — fuckin’ shame it’s gonna end our careers, but still.”

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“Former Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin will appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on November 16th – one day before the release of her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

The interview will mark the first meeting between Palin and Winfrey, who campaigned for Barack Obama during the presidential campaign. She had never previously endorsed a candidate.

There is perhaps no better platform than Winfrey’s show to drum up sales for a book: Her “Book Club” has consistently driven books to the bestseller list.” [ READ MORE ]

First of all let’s dispense with the fiction that Sarah Palin wrote a memoir, any praise or criticism for “Going Rouge” belongs to the ghostwriter Lynn Vincent. Palin can barely compose a 140 character tweet, never mind write an autobiography in just a few months.

I don’t think anyone would dispute that Palin isn’t much of a writer, but she’s also not a prolific reader. During the presidential campaign when Palin was interviewed by Katie Couric she couldn’t name a magazine or a newspaper that she read on a regular basis. I wonder if the former governor of Alaska has read her own memoir?

Appearing on Oprah Winfrey was a no-brainer for Palin, any book that Oprah promotes on her book club becomes a bestseller. Oprah could turn a book written by a dyslectic kindergartner into a bestseller.

Shame on Oprah for inviting an illiterate and non-entity like Palin to appear on her show. The only way that Oprah can redeem herself is by being as tough on her as she was on James Frey. (The guy who wrote the fake memoir.)

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[emiminall]

I don’t expect a vice-presidential candidate to be familiar with all the nuances of the Kyoto treaty, but I do hope that he or she will know more about politics and current events than the average elementary school student.

Sarah Palin has all the gravitas of a feather duster, the former beauty queen is blissfully ignorant of the world outside of Alaska. The only time she comes in contact the outside world is when Putin’s head hovers over the governor’s mansion.

Palin proved herself to be an airhead when she flubbed her interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson, but until now we had no idea about the breathtaking extent of her ignorance.

“Cameron, the Fox beat reporter for the Republican presidential ticket, said he had been told by unnamed sources — and on the condition he not report the details during the campaign — that Palin could not name all of the countries that are part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

He did not mention which one (or ones) she whiffed on, but there are only three: Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Nor, according to Cameron, was Palin aware that Africa is a continent. (Perhaps she was hamstrung by the fact that no part of that land mass can be viewed from her homestate.)” — [MORE]

Palin’s handlers were handed a mission impossible, how could they possibly prep the clueless diva to face the media? No wonder that after the disastrous Couric and Gibson interviews, Palin had sit-downs only with Republican sycophants like San Hannity of Fox News.

John McCain ran one of the dirtiest and most inept presidential campaigns in history. McCain ran an undisciplined campaign that sifted focus every few days, but his most colossal blunder was selecting Palin as his running mate. With that one cynical, reckless, desperate and dangerous act, McCain forever ruined his legacy as a maverick and war hero. McCain put his own selfish ambitions ahead of the interests of his county.

McCain is guilty of treason, he put the security of the United States at risk by choosing a woefully unprepared and unqualified fool to be his VP.

In Japan when an individual commits an unforgivable transgression or a huge mistake he commits Hari Kari. I’m not suggesting that McCain commit ritual suicide, although I wouldn’t shed a tear if he did, but at the very least he should retire from Congress.

Sarah Palin’s Greatest Hits

The 1988 Bentsen-Quayle Vice Presidential Debate

DAN QUAYLE: I have far more experience than many others that sought the office of vice president of this country. I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency. I will be prepared to deal with the people in the Bush administration, if that unfortunate event would ever occur.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator Bentsen.

LLOYD BENTSEN: Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy. (Prolonged shouts and applause).

Debate Transcript: Read Here

Debate Video:

….and here is Dan Quayle mis-spelling “Potato.” — Mr. Quayle’s most famous blunder occurred when he corrected a student’s correct spelling of “potato” to “potatoe” at an elementary school spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey, on June 15, 1992. According to his memoirs, Quayle was uncomfortable with the version he gave, but did so because he decided to trust what he described as incorrect written materials provided by the school.

He informed student William Figueroa that he had misspelled the word “potato,” when in fact Figueroa had spelled it correctly. Quayle then had Figueroa add an “e,” not only making it incorrect, but once again making himself a target with this misspelling. Quayle was widely lambasted for his apparent inability to spell the word “potato.”

Figueroa was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman(NBC) (Now, The Late Show at CBS) and was asked to lead the pledge of allegiance at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

…..and here is the kicker! — [The 'Wisdom' of Dan Quayle]

…and in 2008 Vice-Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin, a JOURNALIST by profession, cannot name a single news source she reads:

Well?

Can’t wait for the Thursday night debate — It will be a CATEGORY 5 GAFFE FEST! LOL!

Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, “to spend more time with her family“? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS’s Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn’t help. When asked how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:

“It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where–where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to–to our state.”

There is, of course, the sheer absurdity of the premise. Two weeks ago I flew to Tokyo, crossing over the North Pole. Does that make me an expert on Santa Claus? (Thanks, Jon Stewart.) But even beyond that, read the rest of her response. “It is from Alaska that we send out those …” What does this mean? This is not an isolated example. Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. (“We mustn’t blink.“) But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.

Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that’s why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street’s most toxic liabilities. Here’s the entire exchange:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the–it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

CNN’s Jack Cafferty: Sarah Palin Is NOT Qualified

This is nonsense–a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN’s Campbell Brown, have argued that it’s sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that’s causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.

Domestically, the bailout and reform of the financial industry will take years and hundreds of billions of dollars. Health-care costs, unless curtailed, will bankrupt the federal government. Social Security, immigration, collapsing infrastructure and education are all going to get much worse if they are not handled soon.

And the American government is stretched to the limit. Between the Bush tax cuts, homeland-security needs, Iraq, Afghanistan and the bailout, the budget is looking bleak. Plus, within a few years, the retirement of the baby boomers begins with its massive and rising costs (in the trillions).

Obviously these are very serious challenges and constraints. In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/161204
From the magazine issue dated Oct 6, 2008

[Enlarge] About The Author: Farid Zakaria is Newsweek’s International editor and PostGlobal co-moderator. Fareed Zakaria was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000, overseeing all Newsweek’s editions abroad. The magazine reaches an audience of 24 million worldwide. He also writes a regular column for Newsweek, which also appears in Newsweek International and fortnightly in the Washington Post. Starting this year, Fareed has been hosting a new foreign affairs show on CNN Worldwide — Fareed Zakaria GPS, an hour-long program that takes a comprehensive look at foreign affairs and the policies shaping our world. Every week they bring you an in-depth interview with a world leader, as well as a panel of international analysts who examine the major global developments of the week. As always, Fareed’s emphasis is on new ideas and innovative approaches to solving the world’s toughest problems. Fareed Zakaria GPS airs each Sunday, at 1pm, on CNN.