Bryan Zepp Jamieson: Sarah v2.012

In the land that rationality forgot!

Bryan Zepp Jamieson, July 5, 2009

Let’s suppose for a minute that the rumors, realistic as they seem, are
not true, and Sarah Palin didn’t suddenly up and quit as governor of
Alaska in hopes of mitigating some serious ethics charges. (There are
also rumors of criminal charges, but quitting office wouldn’t help her
there).

Suppose, instead, that she really did quit in order to make a run for
the presidency in 2012.

On the surface, it seems a daffy, even loony notion, and, it being Sarah
Palin, most people are content to assume that that’s because it really
is a loony, daffy notion.

I don’t even think it’s that well-calculated. I think that famous thin
skin of hers got to her one last time. Maybe she heard the phrase
“Wasilla Hillbillies” once too often, or heard someone opine that they
should stuff Sarah in a mental institution in someplace remote, like
Nepal, and have Tina Fey run in disguise. The main problem with Sarah
Palin is that she’s full of Sarah Palin. Very full of Sarah Palin. Much
too full of herself.

So it might have been nothing more than an egoistic snit that led to the
resignation.

But when I was a cub scout, we used to have contests at camp. Whoever
told the scariest story around the campfire, the one who made one or
more of the Tenderfoots pee themselves, was the winner. I often won.

So gather round, Tenderfoots. Uncle Zeppy wants to tell you a story.

There’s a route that leads from Sarah’s Third of July fireworks show to
the Oval Office.

First, we have to assume that any ethics and criminal charges that might
be dogging Sarah go away as of now. If you want to believe that Sarah
was as pure as the driven snow and that all those legal hassles were
just mean old libruls conspiring against innocent little Sarah, feel
free. It’s a free country, and you can believe any damn-fool notion you
want.

If you want to believe that the oil industry provides Alaska with 80% of
its state revenue, and so pretty much calls the shots as far as state
government is concerned. You’ll also have to believe that Sarah just
arranged for the state to pay for a gas pipeline that may or may not
ever pass gas, but is the state’s problem in any event, and so the oil
industry is pretty happy with Sarah. Finally, you have to believe that
governments in that kind of arrangement tend to be extremely corrupt,
and can manipulate the legal system to their own ends. As I say, it’s a
free country. You can believe that, too, if you want.

Oh, by the way, Sarah is threatening to sue any blogger who claims that
she’s facing charges of embezzling. So please burn the essay I wrote
Friday. I’m here to proclaim that Sarah is not facing charges of
embezzlement. Why, Sarah would NEVER do a thing like that! I’m shocked
that anyone would even think so.

Oh, and I also don’t think that she’s a thief, a liar, a hypocrite, a
fear-monger, and a fool. Are we clear on that? Good. I’m glad we had
this little talk.

So come the 26^th , Sarah’s out of work, and she looks at the calendar,
and realizes that the campaign for president isn’t going to take up more
than 5% of her time for at least another two years. There probably are
people like Mittens and Bo Jingles who will be working toward it full
time by this fall, but Sarah isn’t exactly your “full-time” sort. She’s
more the “cram for five minutes before the bar exam” type.

So she needs to have risk-free exposure without having to actually work
at it. What to do, what to do?

Well, who is the leader of the GOP, the main man, the invincible leader
that many Republicans look to for consistent, solid guidance, the one
who is impervious to all criticism and immune to the vagueness of the
criminal law system.

Why, Rush Limbaugh, of course!

He has a great situation. Loyal listeners cling to his every word as
gospel, no matter how inane, ridiculous, and flat out malevolent it
might be.

And when people point out that Rush is nothing but a clown and a
mouthpiece and an entertainer, those same supporters retort that COURSE
he’s a clown and a mouthpiece and entertainer, and so his critics
shouldn’t take him so seriously! They then go back to taking everything
he says seriously.

And he gets $80 million a year for that. He all but controls a major
political party, and can dismiss anything he utters with a “just
entertainment, folks.”

So Sarah has to go into the entertainment industry, and become the
latest in a long line of Howard Beales that Rupert Murdoch and Roger
Ailes have brought to American journalism.

What I envision is a format that is similar to Keith Olbermann’s
program. It can only be similar, because Olbermann writes his own
“Special Commentaries”, and quite often devises his own questions during
interviews. He also appears to read up on the topics under discussion,
with the result that he knows what the interviewee is talking about, and
can tailor his questions to open the other one up some. Obviously, Sarah
shouldn’t try anything like that. When she writes her own material, she
sounds like Donald Duck with Tourette’s.

But that’s OK. This is right wing media, and they excel at making
inarticulate morons sound vaguely like newsmen. Look at Bill O’Reilly.
You would swear the man had a three digit IQ, just from watching him.

So Sarah gets to watch carefully selected and recomposed ‘news stories’,
many of which might actually have something to do with current events,
and add pithy and pseudo-intelligent comments after each one which will
tell everyone that it’s entirely her show, and that she now only
controls what comes on the show, but tells us afterward what we didn’t
see for ourselves in each story.

Just a year of this, and the GOP can have bloggers and think tanks
mocking people who had questioned her intelligence in the past.

Next would be a twenty minute interview. Obviously, you aren’t going to
select articulate and intelligent people who might give her a rough
time, so you aren’t going to see Bill Moyers or Jon Stewart or Dennis
Kucinich on the show. But there’s no shortage of right wing ‘celebrites’
such as Ann Coulter and Matt Drudge and Mary Matalin who will appear for
an interview, along with Swift boat authors and people writing exposes
on the Obama daughters and making movies proving that socialized health
care is what killed 90% of the population in Ireland in the 1600s.

Finally, you can have the show end with a “Special Commentary”. Call it
that, so viewers will know that Sarah’s really sticking it to Keith
Olbermann, who (supposedly) thinks he owns the phrase. The “Special
Commentary” would just be the Faux talking point of the day, but Faux
viewers tend to be one fucking stupid load of people: when something is
repeated to them 15 times in a day, they just assume it must be
important. It never occurs to them that there are other reasons to
repeat something over and over. The Commentary would be a voiceover,
showing looped footage that makes Democrats and/or liberals look
foolish, weak, or inept. If it actually is something important, they can
record Sarah alone in the studio, looking into the camera earnestly and
speaking in a low, modulated voice. That will convince the viewers that
it’s live, it’s important, and that Sarah is talking to them personally.

Two years of this, and Palin is a major star of the right wing again.
She’s stayed in the public consciousness, but not in a way that does her
any serious harm, not even if she begs an enemy of America to attack
America and do substantial damage, because, hey, that’s just how
“conservative talk show hosts” talk. You gotta allow for a little
patriotic enthusiasm, you know. But at the same time, Sarah is learning
– if she can – to keep her fool mouth shut when it might really matter.

Now it’s July, 2011, and it’s just the right time to announce a
triumphant return to politics. The Dems lost ground in the 2010
election, losing four seats in the Senate, and 20 seats in the House, as
the economic depression dragged on, and now the GOP is in a position to
assure that the Depression will still be dragging on in November of
2012. People will lose patience with Obama, and while they may not, in
the main, be stupid enough to actually vote for Palin, enough of them,
disgusted, might stay home.

Republicans will point to her two years as a “news analyst” and crow
about how she has seasoned and matured, and developed the depth and
knowhow needed to keep the job. And, thanks to the campaigns of George
W. Bush, they already have plenty of experience in taking a drooling
moron and making it look vaguely like presidential material. They got
George W. Bush in the White House TWICE, and Sarah Palin, with the 2008
campaign and all the Wasilla Hillbilly stuff ancient history, can win,
provided she sticks to the script and doesn’t try to talk off the cuff.

Result: January 2013, President Sarah Palin is ready to outwit the
Russians, the Chinese, and everyone else.

OK, story’s over. Uncle Zeppy’s grumpy and wants to go to bed. Go wash
up and change your undies. Don’t bother sending me the dry cleaning
bill, because, after all, I -did- give you fair warning.

Sweet dreams.