The Mudflats

Palin Throws Bus Under the Bus

In a display of almost poetic metaphorical beauty, Sarah Palin has now thrown the bus…under the bus.  That’s right, she’s now given up (at least in part) the Rogue on Wheels; the bus of the people; the Palin Express, in favor of winging around the country on a $4000/hr. Gulf Stream private jet.  But don’t fear… she and the whole fan-damily will still pop out of the bus for bookstore appearances.  Noted author Joe McGinniss who is working on a Palin book tentatively titled “Sarah Palin’s Year of Living Dangerously” is due out in 2011, had this to say:

There is, of course, nothing the least bit inappropriate about flying from place to place on a book tour. Back in the day when publishers still sent non-celebrity authors out in public, I flew on all of mine. It’s the only sensible approach. And if someone will spring for an executive jet, all the better. On the other hand, nobody tried to pretend I was riding a bus.

What’s wrong in this instance is the apparent fakery created and sustained for the sake of building pseudo-populist appeal—and selling books. Sarah Palin and HarperCollins have consciously tried to give the impression that she is doing her book tour by bus when the evidence suggests she is not. At every stop, she’s been filmed getting off Big Blue looking rested and radiant. She dazzles onlookers and interviewers with her seemingly bottomless reserves of energy. And no one suspects she may secretly be hopping on and off her main means of transport, UJT750, and resting up in hotels.

And more on the jet phenom from one of those pesky bloggers HERE. Harper Collins confirms use of the plane HERE.

Sarah Palin Throws Chief John Wooden Legs Under the Bus, also.

When I read “Going Rogue” I remember reading the quote at the beginning of Chapter 3.  Some of you, like me, may have wondered why UCLA basketball coach John Wooden was quoted with the following:

Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their lives.

Ohhhkay.

Well, here’s the answer from Geoffrey Dunn whose book “The Lies of Sarah Palin” is due out in the spring.  It wasn’t John Wooden.

It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled “Back on the War Ponies,” which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.

Doh!

Obviously this one slipped by Sister Sarah and her crack team of investigative journalists Lynn Vincent, Meg Stapleton and Ivy Frye, as well as all those dutiful fact checkers at HarperCollins. Obviously, they didn’t get the quote from anything Wooden ever wrote, but from a cute little web site called The Quote Garden. Isn’t that sweet?

One of the very few duties of Alaska’s Lt. Governor, other than overseeing the Division of Elections, and sitting around while the governor runs the state from her Blackberry while campaigning for VP,  (Oh, I guess that one doesn’t apply any more)  is to decide whether to certify state ballot initiatives.

A ballot initiative that sponsors hope will outlaw abortion in Alaska by declaring fetuses to be “legal persons” appears headed for a court fight.

It’s questionable whether the initiative could actually lead to abortion being illegal — the state attorney general issued an opinion that it wouldn’t. But opponents argue the measure is so broad it could have huge consequences regardless of whether it halts any abortions, ranging from women potentially sued following miscarriages to a legal argument that fetuses should be receiving Permanent Fund dividend checks.

“It is just insane,” said Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the Alaska Civil Liberties Union.

A lawsuit has been filed against the state this week.  The ballot initiative is part of a nationwide push to establish “personhood” of fetuses on ballots.  So look for one coming to a state near you.

One of the initiative’s sponsors Christopher Kurka said that the initiative would give a fetus, “the same rights under the 14th amendment as if the mother had a baby, decided she didn’t want it, and tried to kill it.”

(Looks at clock)

OK, I’ve been waiting for days, and nothing.  Not a peep.

We remember, of course, that when Newsweek recently published a cover with a picture that Palin posed for during a Runner’s World photo shoot, in a cheesecakey pose, leaning on the flag which is draped over a bar stool, she cried foul.  She said that the use of the photo by Newsweek was “sexist.”

During the campaign, McCain adviser (and now Senatorial candidate) Carly Fiorina said that Saturday Night Live’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton as smart, but Sarah Palin as “totally superficial” was “sexist.”

Cindy McCain on the campaign trail said that the media’s treatment of Palin was sexist.

Hillary Clinton aides talked about how the media’s questions to Palin about her family,  and said it was a sexist assumption that women should always be responsible for child-rearing.

When it comes to Palin, cries of sexism are everywhere.

Unfortunately, legitimate discussions of sexist attitudes become subverted by using sexism as a defense for having gender-unrelated incompetence called on the carpet.  And it’s a convenient cover for deflecting attention to bad decisions, like posing for the photo used by Newsweek.

But regardless of the legitimacy of these accusations over the past year, there’s no doubt that the theme of sexism, both real and perceived, has played heavily in the Palin meme.

So, last week, Sarah Palin gave passing consideration to the report by the conservative Newsmax, that a Palin-Beck 2012 ticket for the White House might be a possibility.

“I saw that, I saw that; he probably got a kick out of that,” Palin said. “It was just a hoot, too, to hear such a thing.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll see, we’ll see.”  [snip]

“Glenn Beck, I have great respect for,” she said. “He gets his message across in such a clever way.”

“We’ll see,” she said, and called him a “hoot.”

“He calls it like he sees it, and he’s very, very, very effective,” Palin added.

So what did Beck have to say?  Did he “get a kick out of that” as Palin suggested? After all, she has had nothing but nice things to say about the conservative pundit.  Was he flattered to even be passingly considered for the #2 slot?

“I was just thinking, what, I’m going to take a back seat to a chick?” Beck quipped, to laughter from the studio. “Go shoot a bear, make some stew, I’m hungry in here.”

“So while she’s considering it … I just want her to know, I’m ruling it out. A Palin-Beck ticket, I’m absolutely ruling it out,” Beck said. “I’m just saying, Beck-Palin, I’ll consider. But Palin-Beck — can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? She’d be yapping or something, I’d say, ‘I’m sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I’m not in the kitchen.’

Uh oh.  Brace yourselves.  Because no matter how hazy some of those other accusations of sexism are, THIS one is off the charts.  He ‘called it like he saw it,’ and it is knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal, in-your-face sexism, and no reasonable person could deny it.  Glenn Beck is going to have his head handed to him, and justly so.  I listened to Beck and I actually empathized with Sarah Palin.  I don’t care how much I disagree with someone’s policies, or competence, or opinions.  When someone actually says “Why am I hearing your voice?  I’m not in the kitchen?”  he needs to be smacked down and smacked down good.  And there’s nobody can do a smack down quite like Sarah Palin.

Think what she did to Letterman for that joke about Willow “getting knocked up” by baseball player Alex Rodriguez. She called him “pathetic” and a whole lot more.

“I would like to see him apologize to young women across the country for contributing to kind of that thread that is throughout our culture that makes it sound like it is OK to talk about young girls in that way…

“No wonder young girls especially have such low self-esteem in America when we think it’s funny for a so-called comedian to get away with such a remark as he did,” she said. “I don’t think that’s acceptable.”

So let’s go to Palin’s Facebook page and see what kind of lampooning; what kind of apology-demanding rant we may find.

(Opening a new window)

OK,…let’s see.

Asking the president to reassure us we’re in the war on terror to win.

Gooey Thanksgiving message.

Pelosi-Reid congress is “scary” and “unacceptable.”

More Going Rogue book tour photos….

So, what do we find about Glenn Beck?

(crickets)

Sarah Palin has so far chosen to throw all women including herself under the bus, rather than to call out a “very very very effective” conservative sexist windbag who doesn’t deserve a minute on the public airwaves.

Pro-Palin blogs were fond of whining during the campaign, “Where are the liberal blogs?  Why aren’t they calling out sexism?  I guess they think only certain kind of women are worth defending…”

So, I’d like to turn the tables and say, “Where are the conservative blogs and news sites calling out Glenn Beck?”

I’ll let you know when I find one. But meanwhile, let’s have a little thought experiment and imagine if someone else….oh, let’s say Keith Olbermann… would have said that.

And, Beck isn’t finished with Palin yet.  What did he have to say about being called “a hoot?”

“I don’t think things are hoots. I don’t. I don’t think it’s a hoot. I would never use the word hoot, and I respectfully ask that every time my name is brought up she would stop using the word ‘hoot.’”

Oh, dear.  He’s offended.  I wonder if he’ll demand an apology?

[h/t Jamie at Ink & Snow for the image!]

That’s right, none other than Carly “Ship Them Jobs Overseas” Fiorina is humbly grovelling for the endorsement of Sarah Palin.  She will be running for the U.S. Senate against the three term Democratic Senator from California, Barbara Boxer.  When asked if she thought Sarah Palin would endorse her bid for Senate or that of her opponent Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, Fiorina had this to say:

“You’ll have to ask Sarah Palin,” Fiorina said. “I share Sarah Palin’s values, so I … suspect, I hope that Sarah Palin thinks it’s important to win.”

We can see the Boxer ad already (insert ominous voice): “Carly Fiorina says she shares Sarah Palin’s values. Tell Carly Fiorina those aren’t your values.” After all, California voters last year rejected the John McCain-Palin ticket in droves, as Barack Obama carried the state by a record-smashing 24 point margin.

So the Palin “Kiss of Death” as exhibited in the NY House District 23debacle doesn’t seem to bother the former Hewlett Packard CEO.  And Heck, she’s got the Palin “through the looking glass” strategy down cold.  The Queen of killing U.S. jobs, she actually accuses the Democrats and by extension Boxer of implementing policies that jeopardize U.S. job.  I believe Fiorina’s the one who called the out-sourcing of U.S. jobs “right-sourcing.”    How quickly they want us to forget.

Meanwhile we wait anxiously for Fiorina to get the coveted Palin endorsement…