Sunday, September 5, 2010

PALIN & W



Vanity Fair provides more than just a good read at times. Its recent eight page examination of Sarah Palin is extremely informative.

Michael Gross delves into the inner workings of government in Wasilla, Alaska:

I end up in the living room of Colleen Cottle, who is the matriarch of one of Wasilla’s oldest families, and who served on the city council when Palin was mayor. She says she and her husband, Rodney, will pay a price for speaking candidly about Palin. Their son is one of Todd Palin’s best friends. “But it is time for people to start telling the truth,” Colleen says. She describes the frustrations of trying to do city business with a mayor who “had no attention span—with Sarah it was always ‘What’s the flavor of the day?’ ”; who was unable to take part meaningfully in conversations about budgets because she “does not understand math or accounting—she only knows buzzwords, like ‘balanced budget’ ”; and who clocked out after four hours on most days, delegating her duties to an aide—“but he’ll never talk to you, because he has a state job and doesn’t want to lose it.” This type of conversation is repeated so often that Wasilla starts to feel like something from The Twilight Zone or a Shirley Jackson short story—a place populated entirely by abuse survivors. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/10/sarah-palin-201010?currentPage=6

When you really think about it, who does this remind you of?

Even with a Yale/Harvard education; this description of the daily life of the chief executive of Wasilla is exactly how I envisioned George W. Bush in the Oval Office.

Buzzwords; working half days when he was not on vacation; flavor of the day; unable to engage in meaningful conversations…and all the time surrounded either by sycophants or extremely power people who knew how to steer the bastard in the ‘proper’ direction.

At least w was forced to listen to some lectures and cram for tests. He also had to shape up for a least a couple of the six years during his stint with the Guard and he had some grasp of how our military worked.

Palin never was forced into any kind of intellectual or military discipline.

If Sarah actually reaches that Oval Office—and do not discount this possibility—the commercial interests behind the power and the representatives of our military industrial complex will prevail in a manner never really witnessed before in this country.

Hopefully, like beck and rush and the rest of the feces slingers, Palin will just stick to her current plan of filling her bank accounts and stock portfolios.

8 comments:

trkingmomoe said...

That kind of person is just what the plutocracy likes and supports with their piles of money.

ARTHUR OF THE ROUNDISH TABLE said...

Hi Momoe!!!

You bet that people like Palin are the power brokers' best friends.

Amike said...

It's funny how people always talk up local government. The more local the better. So counties are less virtuous than states, but states are more virtuous than the federal government is. Wasilla proves that goofballs exist at all governmental levels, and goofballs elect goofballs at all levels. Plenty of Uncle Louies at the local level, too...just the rewards of having a nephew on the town council (or vice versa) are a little less rewarding.

ARTHUR OF THE ROUNDISH TABLE said...

I took a short cut approach to all this attempting to get at the 'real' Sarah.

But your take is more interesting. I did not exactly see it from this perspective.

Local politics is usually controlled by the largest industry in the area. And family names may still rule as some anachronistic tool for the powers that be.

I am going to ponder this further.

Thank you.

Oh and I just figured out how to reply to a comment over here.

By accident of course. hahahahah

CVilleDem said...

hi DD! So glag to see you here. Question: How do I follow you, or did that transfer from TPM?

CVilleDem said...

I mean GLAD to see you, of course!

CVilleDem said...

Do I have to do that "word verification" for every comment?

Bluesplashy said...

I will be soo glad when Palin ages out and appears on dancing w/ the stars.