Why I Won't Watch Sarah Palin's Alaska

Image from source, The New Yorker

Since her debut on the national stage only a little over two years ago (if you can believe it), Sarah Palin has grated on my nerves.  Why that is, is difficult to articulate, a problem Palin herself often has. It isn't because she's a woman, a charge usually lobbed first. It isn't that she's conservative. It isn't even her specific policy ideas, particularly, though I disagree with her on virtually everything.

It's a combination of things. For one, Palin proved herself to have a rather shallow knowledge of virtually any topic she was asked about during the campaign. So, however insightful or clever her followers may believe she has become, her political knowledge is almost entirely new. Since she lost her bid to be Vice President, she briefly went back to Alaska as Governor, and then promptly quit. So, her actual political experience ended very shortly after McCain/Palin campaign closed up shop.  All of her new learnin' coincided with becoming a political celebrity rather than an actual politician.  Even so, her every utterance is treated as newsworthy. Her every action is viewed though the prism of "will she or won't she" run for President.  Her presumed relevance bugs me for much the same reason that Newt Gingrich's does. 

But if you want to get right down to it, even all of that doesn't top the list of things that irritate me about Palin. It's her voice. Her grating, screeching, you betcha, colloquial gooberish, long word salad spewing voice.  That and the fact that her tangled syntax is cut with a wink, and a heavy dose of meanness.  And even after all that, I still don't think I've encapsulated it very well. But somebody has. I found a piece in The New Yorker that so perfectly encapsulates my "Palin Derangement Syndrome" that it saddens me greatly that I'm not that good a writer.  I've excerpted my favorite part below, but the entire article merits reading. 

[Excerpt]

Mush! Sarah Palin takes us for a ride.


. . .When it comes to Palin specifically, there is the fundamental problem that some of us don’t want to see or hear any more of her than we have to. And there are those whose objections have a physiological basis as well as an ideological one: the pitch and timbre of her voice, the rhythms of her speech, her syntax, and the way she coats acid and incoherence with cheery musical inflections join together in a sickening synergy that distresses the listener, triggering a fight-or-flight reaction. When Palin talks, my whole being wails, like Nancy Kerrigan after Tonya Harding’s ex-husband kneecapped her: “Why? Why? Why?". . .

Read more at:  The New Yorker

Vanity Fair Spoofs New Yorker Obama Cover

Image from source, The Saccharinist

Vanity Fair magazine has come up with a cover spoofing the recent New Yorker Barack and Michelle Obama "satire" cover. It's pretty funny, and unlike the cartoon on the New Yorker, has the benefit of being real satire. Check it out.

[Excerpt]

Vanity Fair Spoofs New Yorker Cover

Now this is funny because it's true.Vanity Fair has spoofed the ridiculous New Yorker Cover of the Obamas, but unlike the New Yorker cover, it is an accurate portrayal of the facts of the McCains's lives. . .

Read more at: The Saccharinist



Previously:
New Yorker Cartoon Response #1
New Yorker Cartoon Response #2
What the Hell? Anti-Obama New Yorker Cover

New Yorker Cartoon Response #2

This is the second cartoon I found in response to the New Yorker cartoon that is causing so much controversy. I think it's great, but it has two of the required elements of satire: context and an element of truth. The New Yorker piece lacked both, in my opinion.



Source: AmericaBlog

Previously: New Yorker Cartoon Response #1

New Yorker Cartoon Response #1

By now, most everybody has seen or heard of the New Yorker cartoon, depicting Barack and Michelle Obama in a very unflattering light. There are as many opinions about it as there are people who've seen it, of course. My opinion was similar to Air America Radio host, Thom Hartmann's on today's program.

The cartoon is allegedly intended as satire. As Hartmann said today, satire requires context and truth to be satire. Context could have been provided by having a Sean Hannity asleep in bed with the cartoon appearing as a dream (nightmare) he's having. Truth could only have been provided by drawing an entirely different cartoon.

I've found a couple of "response" cartoons on the web (I'm sure there are by now dozens), the first on Hartmann's own web site:


Source: ThomHartmann.com

What the Hell? Anti-Obama New Yorker Cover

Image from source, AmericaBlog

Seriously? Talk about inflammatory. . .

[Excerpt]

New Yorker cover shows Oval Office with Obama as tribal African, wife as afro-70s-woman with machine gun, Osama on the wall, and flag on fire

Okay, what do we do about this? I want suggestions. This is what we have to deal with in America, as Democrats. A liberal media that bends over so far backwards to be "fair" that it becomes just as bad as FOX News. A liberal publication like the New Yorker thinks it's funny to make Mrs. Obama some radical black panther, Barack Obama basically a terrorist (you'll note that he looks just like Osama bin Laden on the wall), and they're even burning the American flag in the Oval Office (that's supposed to be the White House, get it?). They put Osama bin Laden on the wall of the Oval Office. And this is funny? Is the New Yorker so out of touch that they don't realize that much of America, or at least too much of America, harbors these very concerns about Obama and his wife?

Read more at: AmericaBlog

New Yorker Profiles MSNBC's Keith Olbermann

Image from source, The New Yorker

I've gotten into a battle or two over at a site called OlbermannWatch. It's even provided fodder for a few posts here on this blog. Now, I'm a fan of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and watch it regularly. And so, it is interesting to check out what Olbermann's detractors have to say about him and the show. Well, not so much interesting as morbidly fascinating.

To that bunch, and others like them, you must hate or love news/political personalities. You must adamantly defend your heroes and viciously attack your "villains." It must be sad to live in a world with no colors between black and white. So while I have no problem saying I'm a fan of Olbermann's, I am not a disciple. I don't find it necessary to make excuses for him or anybody else when they screw up. And I can take it when my "heroes" are scrutinized.

Case in point is this article in The New Yorker. It is a lengthy profile of Olbermann, and it is not an entirely flattering picture. But it is fascinating just the same. It reminds me of a recent Entertainment Weekly article on actor Mike Myers, which was also a blend of negative and positive. Apparently, both men are extremely good at what they do, but tend to rub people the wrong way. That doesn't make me dislike their work.

[Excerpt]

One Angry Man: Is Keith Olbermann changing TV news?

[After a "Special Comment" against President Bush]

. . .At MSNBC, the feedback was slightly more cautious. Olbermann’s original script identified the “cold-blooded killers” as everyone at the Pentagon and in the Bush Cabinet; when a colleague noted that that would include such relative moderates as Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Olbermann modified the line. Phil Griffin, the senior vice-president in charge of MSNBC (“Phil thinks he’s my boss,” Olbermann says), raised the matter of tone. Why did Olbermann need to end his commentary by telling the President of the United States to “shut the hell up”?

“Because I can’t say, ‘Shut the f**k up,’ that’s why, frankly,” Olbermann responded. . .

Read more at: The New Yorker