What the refrigerator magnet said
Well Sarah Palin is fer sher comedy gold, right? (Provided nobody ever lets her get anywhere near real power ever ever again.) I’m sure I speak for many Americans when I say I couldn’t believe what I was hearing yesterday – Tina Fey and all the writers at SNL coked to the gills couldn’t have done it better. ‘I’m doing what’s best for Alaska’ by by stopping being its governor. Well that’s always been my view, certainly! And then all the dynamic thrusting energetic plucky metaphors and stories to say why she was dumping an elected office a year and a half before her term expires. Yes indeedy you betcha, you can’t get much more plucky and determined than that! That’s the grit that made this country great. When you get restless any time – when setting up the first Ford factory, when fiddling around with this here telephone thing, when tooling up to build bombers and tanks for Dubya Dubya Two – the iron-jawed two-fisted spirit-of-Paul-Bunyan thing to do is just drop it and go wander off elsewhere for a space of time and regroup, or change the way you do your hair, or something.
Life is too short to compromise time and resources and though it may be tempting and more comfortable to just kind of keep your head down and plod along and appease those who are demanding, hey, just sit down and shut up. But that’s a worthless, easy path out. That’s a quitter’s way out. And I think a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just kind of hunker down and go with the flow. We’re fishermen and we know that only dead fish go with the flow.
Yeah…so what you do, to be not apathetic and not like a dead fish and not go with the flow, is you stop being governor of Alaska.
And so as I thought about this announcement, that I wouldn’t run for re-election and what that means for Alaska, I thought about, well, how much fun some governors have as lame ducks…I promised efficiencies and effectiveness. That’s not how I’m wired. I’m not wired to operate under the same old politics as usual. I promised that four years ago and I meant it. That’s not what is best for Alaska at this time. I’m determined to take the right path for Alaska, even though it is unconventional and it’s not so comfortable.
So it’s the same old politics as usual to stay in the office you were elected to until the end of your term – the getting all mavericky up in there thing to do is to stop dead, right there in the middle, and get out a year and a half early. That’ll show that old politics as usual! That’ll be unconventional and uncomfortable. Good strategy for running for president, too.
Comedy gold, I tell ya. Happy 4th of July.
I have heard it cynically suggested that she is bailing before a scandal hits or, perhaps more cynically, she is clearing the decks for a run at the nomination as an ‘outsider’ and she chose her moment because Daily Show and Colbert report are on re-runs next week. If you were Sarah Palin about to make a big announcement, Tina Fey being on holiday might be a factor.
Not even so much cynically – those are among the only explanations available, really. None of the available explanations fit very well – they all include glaring drawbacks. The one about running for pres especially – hey vote for me, I’ll quit in the middle of my term!
And Tina Fey being on holiday is such a weak reed, because of course…she’ll be back.
Announcing major news on a Friday afternoon is always a deliberate attempt to minimize press attention – so much so that it’s a journalistic cliché. Making a major announcement on the Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend – a Friday most Americans have off work, mind you – indicates a real desperation to have the story buried by other events. Unfortunately for Palin, Michael Jackson can only die once, so she’ll still be news on Monday – especially because her “prepared” remarks are so full of comedy gold.
If I had any money to wager, I’d bet on there being another ethics scandal she’s attempting to avoid. Someone in the Alaska state Attorney General’s office, or perhaps another state official with investigative power, might have even offered her a deal – step down now and we won’t convene a grand jury to indict you on federal charges. My guess is that any scandal serious enough to leverage her early retirement will be too serious to bury entirely, so we’ll hear all about it in the months to come.
Her speech reminded me of really bad postmodern writing. Lots and lots of words, but really nothing said at all.
Heh. I don’t know who this “reclusiveleftist” is, but I must commend her on her rich fantasy world – that is, the fantasy world where “reclusiveleftist” is a leftist and a feminist, and where Palin is not an embarrassment. I mean, there’s the ordinary fairy tales people believe about God and what-not – but God is invisible and ineffable and all that rot. Palin’s right here in plain sight, writing her own hilariously confused mis-mash of an exit speech, proving once again beyond any shadow of a doubt her complete vapidity – but still, “reclusiveleftist” keeps the faith. There’s something impressive about that. Not admirable. Oh no, not admirable at all. But impressive nonetheless.