Is This the End of Sarah Palin As We Know Her?
Subject: Is This the End of Sarah Palin As We Know Her?
From: "Sir Arthur C.B.E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A." <science@zzz.com>
Date: 24/01/2011, 07:03
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,alt.alien.research,alt.paranet.ufo,sci.skeptic,alt.conspiracy

Is This the End of Sarah Palin As We Know Her? - Has Palin finally
tarnished her luster with her thoughtless remarks about the Giffords
shooting, or will she turn this into yet another opportunity to play
the victim?

Has Sarah Palin gone too far this time? Or is she immune, able to
cross any line no matter how sacred? With every headline-making gaffe
or nasty comment Sarah Palin has made over the past few years, pundits
and citizens alike have pondered this question, and the answer, until
now, is that like the Energizer Bunny, she just keeps going.

Still, it’s worth asking again, in the wake of last weekend's
senseless tragedy which puts a new light on her public persona.
Palin's cavalier use of violent imagery may not have directly caused
the Tucson shooting that left six dead and a dozen wounded--but it
seems uglier now. Her endless gambits to rule the news cycle may be
grudgingly admired at other times--but when it takes precious time
away from mourning those whose lives are lost forever, it has a
pathetic, out-of-touch-feel.

The heat on Palin began almost immediately after the horrific Giffords
shooting, when social media users, bloggers and journalists by the
hundreds made the immediate connection between Giffords’ Arizona
district and Palin’s infamous “reload” crosshairs map, which put a
target over that district. This map from Palin's camp had bothered
onlookers at the time: Giffords herself had warned about it having
consequences. So it was natural that the map came back to mind.
More information surfaced about the alleged shooter, Jared Lee
Loughner, showing that he was not a Tea Party acolyte but a disturbed
individual with complex, confused personal and political motives.
Nevertheless, a Palin aide made the mistake of declaring that no, the
targets on the map were surveyor’s marks, not gun crosshairs. This
backtrack came despite the Twitter command to “reload” that initially
led Palin’s followers to the map. Such a ridiculous denial, of course,
made Palin's staff look all the more culpable, as absurd defensiveness
so often does. It was an amateur move, to say the least.
At that point, pundits like Joe Scarborough urged Palin to pledge to
tone down her rhetoric--not to apologize, but to demonstrate
reflectiveness. On Politico, Jonathan Martin wrote a feature depicting
Palin as being at a turning point and needing to choose a decisive
path: would she take to politics by presenting vision and authority
and centrist appeal, or would she keep stoking the fires and become a
talking head?

On the morning of the memorial for the victims of the shooting, the
previously silent Palin released an eight-minute video declaring her
hatred for war and violence, and then accusing critics of perpetrating
a “blood libel” against her -- a phrase that explicitly refers to the
cruel anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews taking the blood of Christian
children. Mainstream Jewish groups and even right-wing pundits like
Jonah Goldberg denounced Palin’s highly inappropriate use of the term
“blood libel” to apply to herself and other pundits being chastised
for their inflammatory rhetoric. It was a particular faux pas given
that several of the victims, including Giffords, are Jewish.
Gravitas, this video did not demonstrate.

The video clip's disturbing qualities encompassed more than the
offensive anti-Semitic connotations that Palin probably didn’t even
understand. Beyond the awful word choice, the tone of her eight-minute
message on a day meant to be devoted to the victims of the attack was
jarring and bizarre. Even in the pundit class that has revered Palin
for being a spokesperson for a subset of America, there was some
serious head-scratching. Palin’s words exposed her strategy for all to
see: seize the spotlight and hold on, no matter what the
circumstances. Most of the media-savvy population was aware of that
strategy. But on a day of grief, it appeared nakedly venal and self-
serving rather than full of gumption and can-do. And it raises the
inevitable question of what Palin would be without that strategy,
whether she stands for anything at all beyond her successful pose as
media provocateur.

Moreover, there's something pathetic there, too. Even with mainstream
media figures like Howard Kurtz defending her from blame over the
shooting, she still chose to make such a tragic day and a traumatic
incident about herself. Especially when contrasted with Obama’s
speech, which was so magnanimous, gentle and rousing, the queen of
folksiness looked remarkably out-of-touch, even narcissistic. Kurtz
himself expressed dismay over her reaction just days after taking her
critics to task, saying she'd "gone nuclear" with her speech.
Others were less measured in their reactions to her behavior.
Representative James Clyburn dismissed her as not having the intellect
to comprehend the tragedy. Mark Green in the Huffington Post declared
her candidacy, and even perhaps her future as a pundit dead.

He wrote: Because she has not shown any of the experience, intellect,
character or temperament to be a serious presidential contender -- and
because Republican leaders are not politically stupid -- she has now
officially been destroyed as a serious candidate not by the
"lamestream" media but by herself. She's her own worst enemy.
Palin is backed into a corner. But it is a corner that can be
effective for rallying an increasingly vocal, if marginal base. As
William Rivers-Pitt wrote at TruthOut this week, “Before you start
spluttering and staggering in an attempt to comprehend the sheer
galactic magnitude of this new round of idiocy...stop a second and
remember that this is how people like Sarah Palin operate. This is how
they get others to follow them. They make themselves out to be
victims, and convince their followers that they, too, are victims.”

It’s been effective thus far. Melissa Harris-Perry made a similar
point in the Nation weeks ago about Palin’s ability to turn apparent
political adversity into a payday. “There is something remarkable and
frightening about the depth of her belief in her narrative. Every
criticism, every defeat, every attack is just evidence of the virtue
of her chosen path,” she wrote of Palin’s persona, so compelling even
to those who disagree with her.

It’s doubtful that Sarah Palin’s loyal base will turn on her any time
soon. And perhaps she’ll continue to seek office with some success, or
the media will keep her around for her point of view as they have with
known bigot and anti-Semite Pat Buchanan. (Buchanan has softened his
tone to that of an avuncular grump, and even he thought Palin should
make a statement that she would tamp down her rhetoric for the sake of
her career if nothing else.)

And yet, something feels different now. We wish tragedies like this
weekend's never occurred, and no result of them can ever be seen as a
positive. But it's a time-honored truth that adversity brings out a
person’s true character, for better or worse. For Sarah Palin, it’s
definitely been for worse. She won't disappear, but she may have lost
some unearned stature that should have been sloughed off long, long
ago.
http://www.alternet.org/story/149522/is_this_the_end_of_sarah_palin_as_we_know_her?page=entire