A few years ago the world was introduced to a woman it had no business knowing. A small-minded beauty pageant winner turned governor enthusiastically hopped onto the political stage. She was as unpolished as moose excrement and nearly as popular. That didn’t stop the GOP from making a shameless appeal to the worst of their base by choosing Sarah Palin as their 2008 nominee for Vice President. She lost.
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| Going Rogue |
Despite her failure, she went on to quit her job as governor. That would have been the perfect end to a lousy story of the American Dream. However, with the same level of tenacity she has when butchering English, Palin refused to let her newly lit star fade.
For me this is an unacceptable problem. I wholly despise what she stands for. I’m not referring to any political issues here, though I wouldn’t say I agree with her agenda. The real tragedy of her “rise” to “success” is in what it means for pop culture. People would surely say that pop culture has been in decline for some time now, and for me Sarah Palin represents everything so wrong with it.
Though he was before my time, I have the feeling that Elvis was kind of a big thing in his day. I also think The Beatles were a big deal. Surely Michael Jackson was too. But it seems in my lifetime what passes for celebrity has become any idiot that can help the 24-hour news networks fill time. Rarely do we care if real talent exists anywhere within them.
Even so-called talent shows produce a handful of “winners” every year that go on to see, at best, a trickle of success. It seems more people enjoy laughing at the self-delusional embarrassments that attempt American Idol than being entertained by newly discovered talent.
And this is exactly what Sarah Palin is and represents. She is a talentless fool that has somehow fallen into the eye of the American public. The only problem with this is that she won’t go away. As irrelevant as this back-to-back loser and quitter is, we’re simply not allowing ourselves to let go. She’s had her time. She failed. She didn’t and doesn’t have what it takes, but America is holding on to this low quality entertainment.
Fortunately, there is a solution for the likes of Sarah Palin, Octomom, Balloon Boy and Sanjaya. You ignore them, and they go away.
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| This post is the first time he’s existed since 2008 |
There is no doubt in my mind that Sarah Palin will run for President in 2012. Of course she’ll lose because the world isn’t actually going to end in 2012. However, the very fact that anyone thinks she would be a viable candidate upsets me. She will lose any election she is in, but will eventually have a nice job replacing Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. His level of indignation surely means a fatal heart attack is imminent. Though I wouldn’t say The O’Reilly Factor is a good thing, I do have to give O’Reilly credit for being good at whatever it is he does. Palin, though, hasn’t proven to be good at anything. So, any level of public success for her will be disheartening to me because it’s just a sign that our country refuses to hold high its standards of entertainment.
So, my resolution for the New Year is to do my part in destroying this unfortunate figurehead of our cultural destruction. Once the clock strikes midnight tonight, Sarah Palin will be forever irrelevant to me. I do not know this woman, nor care about her. If someone says to me, “So, Sarah Palin is going to be on the Today Show,” my response will be, “Oh, really. Who’s that?” Let them explain if they want, and I may add, “Oh, yeah, that woman that lost some election a while back?”
While this is my personal resolution, I hope others might follow in my footsteps. If enough people simply refuse to acknowledge her existence, then her irrelevancy will finally catch up to her.