Sunday, December 06, 2009

Palin at the Gridiron Dinner


I'm an ambivalent Sarah Palin "fan." Ambivalent because I'm just not sure she has what it takes to be President (as if Obama did--HA HA HA), yet I like her, yet I'm sort of afraid she'll run for POTUS in 2012 and screw up, yet she drives the Leftists bat shit crazy--they DESPISE her, so. . . you see what I mean.

She attended the Gridiron dinner last night, and from all reports was very funny and really wow'd 'em.

Here's one of her jokes. Whoever wrote this speech for her, they are quite funny. And of course, Palin had to be able to deliver the material well for it to go over as funny. She needed (and evidently had) good timing to pull off these lines. And duh--a sense of humor is as good an indication of intelligence as I know. Does Obama have one? Not that I've seen.

As President Barack Obama, Palin joked that she was looking at a magazine cover of Obama and Chinese President Hu Jinato during an airplane flight. A nearby passenger stated, "Hu's the Communist," she related.

And, Palin said, "I thought he was asking a question."

There's more at Politico.

Update on the Gridiron speech. Oh, she had some good lines. The whole speech is here.

I'm reading her book, Going Rogue: An American Life. The first part of it, her childhood and young life, was tedious and over-long. I don't care about every detail she can remember concerning her early life. She could have gotten the point across with much less. However, I actually enjoyed the Alaska energy policy-wonk details about her days as mayor and governor before she was tapped to be the VEEP candidate. Either she's doing a huge spin-job in this book, trying to get readers to take her seriously, or else she really enjoys the energy policy details that she got into when she was governor. She certainly comes across as smarter than she's been portrayed, but since the lamestream media has portrayed her as something of a hyena, being "smarter than we thought" wouldn't be much of a trick. One of the things I like the most about her in this book is that she seems to say what she means and mean what she says.

Having said that, I have to admit that she doesn't come across as someone I would particularly like. I can't figure out if she's disengenous or just the most ludicrously positive person I've ever read about. Is it really possible to be as upbeat as she sounds throughout the whole book? If so, then this is a woman who hasn't experienced a single moment of serious adult depression. I'm sure there are people like that, but honestly, I don't know anyone like that.

That being said (see what I mean--ambivalence), she and her family faced the most mean-spirited, outright disgusting, vile, and vicious "reporting" that any politican in the history of this country has ever faced during a campaign. My fear is that of course this bilge will continue if she decides to run in 2012. Her comments in the book about the media coverage of her pregnant daughter Bristol, for example,  were much more charitable than I would have been in her shoes. I don't understand reviews that call her a "whiner" about the media coverage of her and her family. She's hardly that. If anything, she's much too nice to them. I like this article I found at the American Thinker that suggests conservative men should step up and defend their women. Yeah, they should.

I'm only on about page 300, where it's about October of 2008, and the McCain campaign clearly knows it's in trouble. What I really want to hear in this book is her rationale for quitting her position as governor. I didn't get it when she announced that she was quitting, and I thought it would hurt her if she has her eyes set on a big career in politics--which I think she does.

Update on the book. I finished this last night. I think it's pretty obvious that Palin is positioning herself for a 2012 run. She doesn't say so specifically, but that's certainly the sense I get on finishing the book. She evidently quit the governor's job because the constant Freedom of Information Act challenges were making it impossible for her to govern, since so much of her time (and a lot of state money) was taken up with answering them. She mentioned just one that included 26,000 pages put together by her staff. Her explanation seems credible. After reading the book, I think I understand her better; she's an Alaskan woman, and geography means everything to her. She also has an incredible extended family and friend support system. Washington elites, the kind who have never been off a sidewalk, have no frame of reference for even beginning to understand Alaska or the people who live there and the geography and climate that create the tight-knit communities; plus I don't think there's much drive in "sophisticated" east and west coasters to understand Sarah Palin in the first place. They hate her, period, and if she decides to run for POTUS, the "thumpin'" she got from the Left for running for VEEP will look like a care bear telegram.

Oh, and P.S. The AP assigned a group of 11 reporters to fact-check Palin's book. Are you kidding me?

Here's a "review" of the book from  Amazon.com. This country is filled with serious Sarah Palin haters, which is the main reason I wish she would find herself a good role in the 2012 elections that has nothing to do with running for office. She absolutely twists the Leftists into knots, and the Right should use that--just not as someone campaigning for POTUS. She's irresistable comedy gold for Leftists who hate her. That's MHO.

A family walks into a talent agency. The talent agent takes one look at the family, shakes his head, and says "I don't represent family acts." The father begs the talent agent to give them two minutes to demonstrate their act. The talent agent sighs and acquiesces to the father's plea. The father takes a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence out of his valise and smashes it over his daughter's head. The daughter takes out a pen knife and stabs her father in the kneecap. The mother starts clucking like a chicken and vomits on her son. The son, caked in vomit, then takes out a guitar and starts playing "We Didn't Start the Fire," but sings the lyrics in Mandarin while tap dancing on one foot. And this is where it gets weird ... Dad takes the penknife out of his knee and then writes "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy" on the wall in his blood three times, which prompts the mother to pull some fake vomit out of her valise, throw it on the ground, and say "That's gross. Who did that?" The daughter then throws eggs at the guitar-playing, Billy Joel-in-Mandarin son who then smashes his guitar on his sister's head. The sister laughs at her brother in a Woody Woodpecker voice, pulls out a boombox, and plays Celine Dion's version of "You Shook Me All Night Long," which prompts everyone to grab their chests and keel over. The talent agent is speechless for about three minutes, but manages to sputter out, "That's the most amazing act I've ever seen, what do you call yourselves?" On cue, the family jumps up and shouts: "THE ARISTOCRATS!!!"

So much for the Palin haters. Is she and her family an easy target, or what? Good Lord.

I want to end this post with this video, a tribute to conservative women, from the guy who wrote the article at the American Thinker, Lloyd Marcus. Thanks, Lloyd.

No comments: