"Sir Arthur C.B.E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A." 
<science@zzz.com> wrote in message 
news:988885ea-d7df-4052-bf06-742f17ba502b@j19g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
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.
............................................................
It seems that you will stoop to nothing to advance your 
agenda.  You useless piece of crap.  You are a 
degenerate human being.  I hope you are the next 
criminal to be hung.