Idiocies Palin Comparison

Evidently, she’s Elvis, though she cannot sing; Marilyn, though she cannot act; and Howard Taft, though she cannot play the sousaphone.

I am speaking, of course, of that Wasilly Hillbilly, The Hoostess with the Moostess, the “Pat Boone” of the Young Americans for Freedom, the man, the myth, the legend, Sarah Palin.

And that’s really all that I can actually say here, because private citizen and barnstorming New York Times Bestselling Author Sarah Palin came to town to speak to a local Republican fundraiser, and the press was specifically barred, save for one solitary “pool” reporter, who could listen to La Palin’s stump speech (in another room), but could not take notes.

You see, there is no better way to promote those Second Amendment Rights that we all love so well (stroking our beloved handguns and hunting rifles with an unseemly familiarity and intimacy), there is NO better way to promote that allegedly lost  ”freedom,” than by speaking ONLY in secret to the party faithful; behaving as if the canned tantrums of our latest TV reality star, the Paris Hilton of Politics, were, instead, nuclear secrets of the highest and most dangerous sort.

…Organizers put the final touches on the Hilton’s ballroom from settings on the VIP tables to testing out Palin’s chair. It’s nothing but the best for her. The brand-new leather chairs still had the price tags on earlier this morning. (KEZI News, whose owner is a BIG Republican donor.)

Now, if you believe that Palin came up with this careful campaign of mystery to rebrand and repackage her for future elections, then, my friend, you believe in the Easter Bunny, which, by a fortuitous happenstance, I happen to be. What color would you like your eggs?

(And, for you “free marketeers” out there, we’re fresh out of Fabergé eggs, so don’t even go there.)

Which leaves the serious commenter with virtually nothing to seriously comment on. Just fits and snatches:

Frankly, this kind of peek-a-boo game is familiar to anybody who’s been watching Apple’s various campaigns over the past few years. iPhones to iPads, iPods to iJuries, the whole hyper-secrecy with phony  ’leaks’ so that we hang on her every word.

Palin is expected to start speaking just before 8 p.m. No media cameras are allowed in the event. (KEZI news)

Here’s a funny: the Eugene Register-Guard’s reporter, David Steves had to commute down from Salem, based as he is, two hours north, in the state capitol, Salem. He might well have car-pooled with the (Portland) Oregonian’s Harry Esteve, also based in Salem. Actually, David Steves took over Harry Esteve’s beat when Esteve left the Register-Guard FOR the Portland Oregonian.

It is a bitter and weird thing to realize that to cover a political event in my metropolitan area of approximately a quarter million souls, we have to IMPORT our reporters from elsewhere? The once-proud Register-Guard is down to a skeleton crew, and can’t even cover the visit of our latest “Material Girl” to town with a local reporter.

Neither one probably know that the newspaper was merged from two separate papers in the 1920s, by Alton Baker, whose name graces the downtown park. The Register was the Republican paper, and The Guard was the Democratic paper. (This isn’t the first time we Americans have split our political coverage, twinning in the various media.)

And in other news …

But news has grown so puerile that the news came from our two former R-G capitol reporters. Harry Esteve filed this weirdly amateurish sidebar for the Oregonian:

A reporter’s chance meeting with Sarah Palin

By Harry Esteve, The Oregonian
April 23, 2010, 10:07PM

EUGENE — Security was tight tonight at Sarah Palin’s fundraiser speech to the Lane County Republicans. But it wasn’t foolproof.

Shortly after filing my story on the speech, I headed to the basement of the Eugene Hilton, where I ran into state Rep. Ron Maurer, the Republican from Southern Oregon who is running for state schools superintendent.

As we were talking, up walks Palin with her husband, Todd. Both were sweaty and in workout clothes. They’d just come from the hotel gym and were headed up to their room.

It was a bit of a shock because the organizers — under Palin’s orders — had taken great pains to make sure she never encountered any reporters. We were allowed only to watch the speech from two large video screens in an adjacent room.

After talking briefly with Maurer about his naming his sons after rifles — Remington and Winchester — Palin turned to me and shook my hand, asking who I was.

“I’m one of those media people,” I said somewhat sheepishly. A significant chunk of Palin’s speech was devoted to criticizing and outright ridiculing what she termed “the lamestream media.”

“That’s OK,” she said. Todd grinned and shook my hand, too, before they both hopped into the elevator.

– Harry Esteve

It is a strange window into what is, essentially, a rock tour. The band is kept away from media. They take care of their personal stuff, exercise, eat, get showered, dressed. They appear onstage, the crowd applauds. They perform. There is applause. Perhaps an encore. They sell photographs, memorabilia, etc. in a tightly-controlled marketing environment. The band is slipped into a waiting limo, zipped to the airport and on to the next town. (See The Moderate Voice).

rock star

I wasn’t at the show, so I can’t comment.**

[** However, Don Surber, writing for the British Guardian, magically manages to find that "Palin raises $200,000 in blue Oregon," in a highly plagiarized blog, although nobody has made any statement about earnings, other than to speculate that Palin's standard speaking fee is $75K, and some believe that she was paid $100,000 to speak. But Surber has MAGIC EYEBALLS, much as Jim Hoft, the Hateway Pundit™, has Mystical Orbs of Seeingness™, as we shall see below. NMo one will ever bother fact-checking Surber, which he undoubtedly knows (and, besides, since when have FACTS mattered to the rightie blogosmear™ in the past several years?).]

horrible awful hate speech, claims
rightie site that found this t-shirt

First, we have Harry Esteve’s report of the snippets of the speech allowed to the media:

“When the other party’s wrong, we stiffen our spines,” Palin told about 900 people who attended a fundraising dinner for the Lane County Republican Party. “Why not be the party of not just no, but hell no!” she shouted …

She said she looked up Lane County on the Internet and found an article that described the residents as a bunch of Nike-wearing, granola-eating hippies.

“I’m reading that, and I’m saying, ‘Ooh, I feel so culturally profiled.’ How intolerant,” Palin said.

“I love my Nikes. … I eat granola. I eat a lot of organic food. I have to shoot and catch a lot of my organic food before I eat it.” [...]

Palin, or her speechwriter, had clearly done her homework. [...]

“It’s like the runner Steve Prefontaine used to say,” Palin said, referring to the Eugene track legend, “It’s going to come down to a pure guts race. And if it does, we can win it.”

Palin aimed her message at the blue-collar, grass-roots level of the Republican Party. “Big government,” represented by the Democratic Party, has run roughshod over the American people, she said, but people can fight back.

“If you remember only one thing, please remember this,” she said. “America does need your voice now more than ever, especially in a place like this. Don’t get discouraged.”

Again. As I say. I wasn’t there. But this did not stop Jim “I can see for miles and miles” Hoft of “Hateway Pundit” in St. Louis from turning his magically-powered peepers from seeing and hearing the “Kill the Bill” protests in Washington, D.C. to the “Go Home Sarah!” protests in Eugene, Oregon.

He knows if you’ve been sleeping; he knows when you’re awake …

Seriously, I think that the Optometric Industry should dissect Hoft’s eyeballs and brain to understand this super duper power that he possesses. The ability to see both coasts of the North American continent without ever leaving your mother’s basement is a prodigious and wondrous thing, and would seem vitally important to our Nation’s Vital Defense Interests — not to menti0n industries — to understand H0ft’s singular gift of observation. Here is what he reports (using standard Ministry of Truth tactic #73, the “media bias” false equivalency):

Leftists Wave Vile, Violent Signs At Sarah Palin in Oregon… Media Silent

Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, April 24, 2010, 10:10 AM

note censored t-shirt

Eugene tax day tea party

Whoops! Sorry. I inadvertently put Tea Party signs up — which are OK with Hoft. So, let’s see those ‘vile, violent’ signs that has Hoft’s panties in a bunch, shall we?

Where’s the hate?…
Leftists wave “Hope She Chokes” signs in Eugene.

Protestors hold signs outside the hotel where Sarah Palin, former vice presidential candidate and Alaskan governor, is scheduled to speak to a gathering of Lane County Republicans in Eugene, Ore. on Friday, April 23, 2010. (AP)

Evidently, they need to concentrate more on spelling and less on indoctrination…
It’s “advice” not “advise.”

Spelling flames from Hoft? Seriously? Hoo boy. And note that the only “really” violent or offensive sign, the “chokes” sign, depends on the least charitable interpretation of “choke,” which is also used in sports, say, as in basketball, for someone who misses a critical shot. That’s all they got?

Protestors hold signs outside the hotel where former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak to a gathering of Lane County Republicans. (AP)

Hoft’s original title is “palin-haters1.” Which is just damned weird.  Just stop to consider how many AP photos that he ripped off for his compensated-by-a-charity blog, and how many he had to go through to find THESE two as the very WORST of the WORST. The most VIOLENT, VILE “leftist” signs. (And, of course, a single misspelling dispells all the crazy hate-filled misspellings of the Tea Partiers, right?)

Yeah, that equals “advise” versus “advice”?

But just to round out our Festival of Cluelessness™, here are the first several comments, just to give you a general feel for Hoft’s audience:

94 Comments
Newer Comments »
ar05075
April 24th, 2010 | 10:16 am | #1
What a bunch of morons, I love the ‘Hatefree Zone’ sign right in front of the ‘Hope she chokes’ sign.
Do these idiot ever see photos of themselves?

Joe College
April 24th, 2010 | 10:17 am | #2
It’s not the leftists that keep Democrats in power. There simply aren’t enough of them. It’s minorities. How many Republican big cities are there? That’s why they’re gonna ram immigration ‘reform’ down our throats.

KLI50
April 24th, 2010 | 10:19 am | #3
I love that in the second picture they want to give “advise” instead of “advice”

Ruebacca
April 24th, 2010 | 10:20 am | #4
‘Hate free zone’ next to ‘Hope she chokes’ and ‘G.T.F.O!’

epic picture.

bitterclinger
April 24th, 2010 | 10:23 am | #5
Rush is right. Liberalism IS a disease.

Male Silverback
April 24th, 2010 | 10:24 am | #6
My question is, What in the hell did she do to them? Why are they protesting her? She is not an elected leader and has zero pull on anything that affects them.

Which reminds me, here is the UNcensored version of that t-shirt, from Florida, during the last election:

note the mccain palin bumper sticker

Why are they protesting? Good question, and one that we shall not attempt to discuss here.

Maybe the fact that NO major Republican figure is in any wise accessable: they are all hidden from the public by a wall of bodyguards and money: Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Michael Savage, and, http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/23/1897101/sarah-palin-visits-liberal-oregon.html.

“Many of us are saying we’ve had enough, and it’s time to take it back and put government back on the side of the people,” she said to applause from about 800 people who paid $250 apiece to hear her speak, and others in an overflow room where the speech was on video.*

Reporters were prohibited from photographing or recording Palin, and watched her speech by video feed in a separate room.

[* For a mere $100 a plate, note.]

These are the actions of the “royal” classes, not of Americans, and, had I not been convinced that any attention given the Caribou Barbie only benefits her, I’d have been there waving a sign, too. It would have been the illustration that began this column.

But what is odd is not the astonishing hypocrisy of these pictures. What’s odd is the stunning hypocrisy of a blog and his “sponsor” that would take umbrage at the slightest disparagement to our Kewpie of the Tundra™ but wouldn’t have the slightest problem with  “Why not be the party of not just no, but hell no!” she shouted …

Because, my friends, these aren’t merely moral bastards, they’re professional political prigs.

something awful to be upset about

What is weird to me is who is currently BEHIND Hoft’s vicious blog. I had wondered about the uptick in his “gravitas” within the rightie blogosmear lately, and I guess he went from Pajamas Media (when they pulled the plug last year) to the aegis of “First Things.” I’d say it’s pretty clear that they’re PAYING him, much as “Cap’n Ed” Morrissey went from his “Captain of Voidedness” blog to Michelle Malkin’s “Hot Air” – just sold to Christian mega-media company Salem Communications for an undisclosed sum.

So, who the heck is “First Things”?

Here’s an abridged version of a fascinating story about yet another “front” foundation doing politics:

from the Institute of Policy Studies’ “Right Web” (yes, both sides DO play the “institute” game, but there is little equivalence):

The Institute on Religion and Public Life (IRPL), publisher of the journal First Things, describes itself as an “interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public policy for the ordering of society.” Both the institute and its journal function, in large part, as the institutional vehicles for the conservative religious philosophy of founder Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and neocon—or “theocon”—stalwart.*

[* Note Neuhaus died on Jan 8, 2009. ]

[...]

In the early 1970s, Neuhaus was a liberal, antiwar Lutheran minister who became associated with the neoconservative camp by the end of the decade.

[...]

Both IRPL and First Things received funding from the Bradley Foundation through the Rockford Institute. Mark Gerson recounts in his 1997 book The Neoconservative Vision how, after the Rockford Institute published articles that some neoconservatives like Weigel criticized as anti-Semitic, Neuhaus split with the institute (pp. 309-312). With funding from Bradley and other conservative foundations, Neuhaus then established the IRPL.

The institute quickly established itself as staunchly neoconservative, recruiting Decter to serve on its board at about the same time that she was invited to join the board of the Heritage Foundation. In 1991 Neuhaus became a Roman Catholic priest.

Since the late 1970s, Neuhaus has been a leading cultural warrior in the neocon camp. He once wrote: “Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion” (National Review, May 2, 1994). Along with Michael Novak, Peter Berger, and Weigel, Neuhaus has been a key figure in spearheading the neoconservative initiative to seize ideological control of the culture wars against liberalism and secularism. Neuhaus serves on the boards of directors of three prominent neoconservative-aligned institutes: the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), the EPPC, and the Foundation for Community and Faith-Centered Enterprise. He is also a director of the right-wing World Youth Alliance, which promotes a “culture of life” at the United Nations among other activities. In a survey of national leadership, Time magazine named Neuhaus one of the “25 most influential evangelicals in America” (Time, February 7, 2005).

Neuhaus is an outspoken advocate of “democratic capitalism” in which corporations are seen as having a virtuous role in public life.

One way or another, First Things is, and will be for awhile, carrying out Neuhaus’ “cultural war.” The acquisition of a “weapon” like the increasingly shrill, and, ironically, increasingly influential Hoft may signal an uptick. Still, nice to know that Mister Magic Eyeballs™ is on the payroll of a “charitable” organization.

Neuhaus on Meet the Press

And they’re sponsoring Hoft’s increasingly lunatic, increasingly hyperbolic attacks and “outings,” his paranoid and over-the-top misinterpretations and winking incitements to violence.

That’s damned peculiar.

More tomorrow.

Courage.