Super Bowl Update

WUSF-TV video: Sarah Palin Stripper Talks Politics, RNC. Uploaded August 26, 2012.

http://youtu.be/DVe2bZTm9ZY



Coals to Newcastle, Mainstream Media to Tampa's strip clubs! 

But when it's damn cute 36DD porn actress and Sarah Palin lookalike Lisa Ann, they can't help themselves. It's a perfect MSM narrative for the Dems. 

But what will be its counterpoint in Charlotte next week?; @

Newt Gingrich campaign video: Newt Gingrich discusses "the Facts and Florida" on his campaign bus with Greta Van Sustern of Fox News. January 28, 2012. http://youtu.be/mpOg027vWp4

National and Florida Mainstream Media reach unanimity: Undecided voters, Early voters, Hispanic voters, Anglo voters, I-4 voters and Older voters "may hold key" to 2012 Florida GOP Presidential Primary."

Gee, thanks

The wheel turns, times passes, things change, people get famous and then they get less famous.

I've been "hailing" the Washington Redskins since I was a kid, sitting in our living room in Greensboro, North Carolina,  watching football with my Dad. Back then, the 'Skins were the only remotely Southern team, so I, along with a whole generation of southerners, got stuck with being Redskins fans for life.

Yesterday brought the news that the arguably perennially dysfunctional Washington Redskins front office had released running back Clinton Portis. This action may, possibly, make football sense, but I, for one, will miss him.

Why?

Not only was Clinton Portis the second leading rusher in franchise history, he was one of the few mega-good professional football players who consistently dared to appear seriously goofy. If you follow the NFL at all, I'm sure you remember the get-ups Mr. Portis wore to his mid-decade press conferences, back when he was still The Man among NFL running backs.

For example . . .

Clinton Portis a.k.a Choo Choo, the dance instructor.

Here's Mr. Portis'  alter-ego, Choo-choo the Dance Instructor, whom he introduced at a 2007 press conference. Choo Choo, according to dcist.com, a website about Washington, had . . .

. . . come to town to teach the Redskins how to relax, have fun, and of course — perfect their endzone dances. Previous students include Santana Moss and Antwaan Randel El. Choo Choo's next student: Clinton Portis. Said Choo Choo, "It took 196 yards to give me hope that I can teach the boy how to dance. I'm going to teach that boy. Choo Choo. Choo Choo, right here. I hope he gets in the end zone. I'm going to teach him. I'm going to teach him, man, I'm going to teach." He also gave updates on beloved characters from the past (they're still around; Southeast Jerome is up in heaven), and refused for most of the presser to break character or speak on Clinton's behalf.

Mr. Portis was cut for financial reasons -- the Redskins would owe him $8.3 million if he took to the field for them next season. And, the reality is, at 29 and having been injured a lot, Portis may be at the beginning of the end of his career. There's also talk that Portis is relieved to be leaving.

Whatever is really behind the Clinton Portis/Washington Redskins divorce, Portis has, as always, played it pretty cool. Reports the Washington Posts' Cindy Boren:

Portis was philosophical about the transitory nature of NFL jobs. "No one is irreplaceable...Enjoy as much as you can and when it's time for you to move on, be ready." Whether it's Keiland Williams or Ryan Torain, "another back is gonna come along and steal the hearts of fans."

Wow, is that a great curtain speech or what. Especially for an NFL player who shares a body with Choo Choo the dance instructor.

Yesterday also saw this news posted as well on CNN's website:

Palin's intensity in Iowa fading, says poll

By: CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

(CNN) – As Sarah Palin mulls a presidential bid, the former Alaska governor is getting mixed news from Iowa, the state that traditionally kicks off the presidential primary season.
A newly released poll from the Des Moines Register suggests Palin is still liked by many GOP voters in the state, but perhaps not to the degree she once was. 

The former Republican vice presidential nominee's favorability rating has slipped 6 points in the last year and a half among likely GOP caucus-goers in the state, a number that, while within the poll's sampling error, may suggest the excitement around Palin is beginning to dissipate as other likely presidential candidates have spent significantly more time there over the last 15 months. . . . And in another sign the intensity around Palin is fading in the Hawkeye State, support among GOP voters who say they view Palin "very favorably" has dropped 9 points, from 27 to 18 percent.

young Sarah Palin

It's long been hard to figure out which Ms. Palin wants to be more: President of the United States or a rich celebrity. A lot of her energy expenditure over the past couple of years points toward rich celebrity:

• her attempt to trademark her name; 
• her reality TV show; 
• her sprawling, mega-publicized book tours to promote herself and her two books, Going Rogue and America by Heart.

drawing by Dori Hartley

Sally Quinn's blog  in yesterday's Washington Post was called, "To Sarah Palin: It's not all about you."  Ms. Quinn's point is that Ms. Palin perhaps has a tendency . . .how shall I put this? . . .to see herself as a central character in whatever happens, including the Arizona shootings. To look at all national events as opportunities for self-promotion.

One commenter did challenge Ms.Quinn to stop writing about the erstwhile candidate for vice-president if she found her so reprehensible. Which might possibly be good for the national discourse, but is still, in my opinion, completely impractical. I mean, if I, as a blogger, stopped mentioning Sarah Palin, I'd be seriously blog-fodder challenged, right? So it makes perfect sense for me to keep writing about the former governor, right????

Oh dear. . .

Does this mean that maybe, in reality, I think it's all about me? Could I possibly be Sarah Palin's soul sister disguised as a public radio blogger?

This muddle brings me back to something Ms. Quinn wrote half-way through her post:

I believe that what brings out so many hostile feelings toward Sarah Palin is that many people look at her and see the dark side of themselves. The psychiatrist will tell you that often what you hate in others is the thing you are most afraid of in yourself.

For whatever reason, I've been thinking quite a bit about Sarah Palin over the last week -- all the while  wondering why I bother to think about her at all. Is there really some "there, there" behind those trademark glasses? Certainly, the former governor of Alaska appears to be a person of great sass, who breaks through the staid conventions of political rhetoric. She bodaciously disrespects anyone who attempts to call her  to task.  She disparages unapologetically, apparantly has a great time snapping out instructions on her Facebook page to “never retreat, instead RELOAD!” And she so unabashedly grabs for the spotlight, even after last  week's horrendous Arizona massacre. I find her chutzpah fascinating; and am also, I must admit, a bit in awe of it.

We Americans, whether we love her or hate her, do find her fascinating.. The CNN Political Ticker, for example, cannot leave her be. Ms. Palin doesn't have to utter a word to make the column; it's considered worth reporting when someone talks about her.

Today, however, we celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., the man with the great, enduring dream of what this country could become. Sometime this week, Congress will most likely begin re-debating health care reform. We've promised each other to be more civil and respectful of each other's views in this debate; pledged that both our personal and political rhetoric in discussing health care (and everything else) will be more like Martin Luther King's, less like Sarah Palin's.

Will we do it? Can we do it? Or is Sally Quinn right to suspect that we have met the enemy of civility and it is, at least partially, us. Has Sarah Palin helped loose a rhetorical beast in you, in me, in American society, that cannot be re-caged?

What do you think?

If you like to root around in exhaustive coverage of national and Virginia politics, there's no richer grazing ground than washingtonpost.com. And yesterday afternoon, while cruising the site, I came across three separate blog items that started me thinking about what it means to be a conservative Republican in 2010.

Blog item #1)  According to a new Gallup Poll, 73% of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans also identify themselves as  "conservative" or "very conservative."

Does that mean, I wondered, that all those "conservative" and "very conservative" people see themselves as pretty much in agreement about where this country needs to go and how to get there?

Blog item #2)  Virginia's attorney general Ken Cuccinelli has been invited to Alabama and Iowa next week to campaign for those states' Republican candidates for attorney general.

If Virginia has a politician who approaches rock star status (with fans as opposed to soberly simpatico supporters), it has to be our attorney general. Has any other Virginia attorney general ever generated so many in-state headlines or so much out-of-state name recognition?

As Rosalind Helderman puts it in her blog about Virginia politics,

The outspoken Virginia conservative, who is suing the Obama administration over the federal health-care law and EPA greenhouse gas regulations, has been in increasing demand nationally from Republican candidates and organizations.

Love him or hate him, Mr. Cuccinelli's certainly a very visible and vocal conservative Republican. But, surely, just because he attracts a lot of press doesn't mean that the 73% of Republicans who describe themselves as "conservative" and "very conservative" are in line with Ken Cuccinelli's way of thinking. Or does it?

Virginia's attorney general's national political clout pales beside that of the flamboyantly conservative Sarah Palin. I, personally, am not sure exactly what she's for, but I am sure that, whatever it is, she's for it adamantly every chance she gets.


Which leads me to blog item #3)  Ms. Palin's name always comes up when people speculate about who might be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. However, a new Politico poll hints that the "Sarah for President" chatter is more about her celebrity than her political substance. Take a look at this question from the politico poll. . . .

As you may already know, Sarah Palin has been the Governor of Alaska and was the Republican nominee for Vice President in 2008. She resigned from her position as Governor in 2009 and currently runs a political action committee and works as a news commentator for Fox News.

Based on what you know, would you say that Sarah Palin's efforts since resigning as Governor in 2009 have made you more likely or less likely to support her if she runs for President?

More likely/strongly 17%
More likely/somewhat 14%
UNSURE 5%
NO DIFFERENCE 7%
Less likely/somewhat 13%
Less likely/strongly 45%

Greg Sargent interpreted this data yesterday on his blog Plum Line (also at washingtonpost.com.)

There's no quibbling with Palin's soaring popularity among Republicans or her rising influence in GOP primaries. But it seems a sizable majority, 58 percent, see Palin's decision to quit as governor of Alaska after a half term and her strategy of elevating her media profile on Fox and via an endless stream of attacks on Obama on Twitter and Facebook as a reason not to back her for president.

This seems to support the idea that her current strategy is working brilliantly to enhance her brand, but only in her current role of celebrity/quasi-candidate. It's rendering her completely toxic for the broader electorate as an actual presidential candidate.

"Her brand?" Is that how Ms. Palin, herself, views conservationism?

I do not, however, believe for one second that the 73% of Republicans who view themselves as "conservative" and "very conservative" see conservatism as a "brand."  And I, for one, am very interested in understanding how they do understand conservatism. Not their ideology's talking points or knee-jerk oppositions, but what conservatism is, what practical ideas it supports, how these will make the country work better.

So I'd love to hear from conservative Republicans who march to a quieter, more thoughtful, less self-promotional drummer than Mr. Cuccinelli and Ms Palin. What does it mean to be a  "conservative" or "very conservative" Republican?

Can anyone help me out?

Long, long, ago, when I was young and easy, William F. Buckley ran for mayor of New York City. I got to hear a few of his witty, erudite speeches when they were broadcast by some NYC station big enough to reach my Massachusetts boarding school, and I have been a fan of  the late Mr. Buckley and his National Review ever since.

It's one of the sources I turn to when I need to understand the conservative's point of view.

This Saturday, close to 100,000 folks answered Glenn Beck's call to rally in Washington to hear Sarah Palin, Mr. Beck and others tell them what God wants for America. This, to me, means that Mr. Beck's message, whatever it is, resonates deeply with a lot of people in this country. And so yesterday I turned to the National Review to try to understand why this is so and came across an excellent article by Victor Davis Hanson on "The Sources of American Anger."

Mr. Hanson lists 6 issues he sees as underlying the anger of those who find inspiration in the messages of Mr. Beck, Ms. Palin, and others of similar political and religious persuasion..

Here they are, much abridged. . .

1. Two sets of rules. The public senses there are two standards in America — one for elite overseers, quite another for the supposedly not-to-be-trusted public. The anger over this hypocrisy surfaces over matters from the trivial to the profound. . .

2. The bigot card. In reductionist terms, the public now accepts that when particular groups fail to win a 51 percent majority on a particular issue, they resort to invoking racism and prejudice. . .
3. The law? What law? Americans accept that they cannot pass legislation in violation of the Constitution. But they do not believe that a single judge can nullify the electoral will of millions without good cause. Thus in Arizona and California, there is a sense that judges who favor open borders or gay marriage are willing to use the pretense of constitutional issues to enact such agendas despite their current unpopularity . . .

4. The futility of taxes. We talk of returning to the Clinton income-tax schedules. Yet in the late 1990s, those hikes ended up, along with the Republican cuts in mandates, balancing the budget — without new health-care surcharges, or talk of a VAT, or caps lifted off income subject to Social Security taxes. Not now. The public recognizes that the advocates of higher taxes are not willing to make the sort of across-the-board spending cuts that once succeeded in balancing the budget. In other words, those who will start paying much more of their income to the government in the form of taxes fret that, unlike the 1990s, this time the additional federal revenue won’t balance the budget, and will be all for naught. . .

5. Disingenuousness. There is also a growing belief that the Obama administration is advancing an agenda that it cannot be fully candid about, because that agenda does not command broad support. As a result, we are habitually asked to believe that what administration appointees or supporters say is not what they really mean, or at least was taken out of context. . . . All this dissimulation started with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose mistake was not saying the outrageous things he said — Mr. Obama and the compliant media had contextualized his corpus of hate well enough — but finally insulting the media at the National Press Club. The former was seen as a misdemeanor; the latter proved a felony. . . .Do Obama supporters, then, reveal their true beliefs only in gaffes and unguarded moments, while filling their official statements and communiqués with pretense?

6. A culpable America? Finally, the public has added up the apology tours, the bowing, and the constant emphasis on race, class, and gender crimes, and concluded that this administration sees America, past and present, as the story of a culpable majority denying noble minorities their rights — period. . . .Surely someone in the past — perhaps even white males — must have been doing something right for America to evolve into a place that our present-day critics apparently enjoy.

Do read Mr. Hanson's entire article if you have time. But, more importantly, think about what he's saying. And, if you're not a believer in all things Glenn Beck-ian, try walking around in a believer's shoes for just a moment or two and viewing this country from that angle.

Brad Jenkins, General Manager of The Breeze (JMU's fine student newspaper) tagged me this morning in a Facebook photo. There I am, participating in Breeze Camp, talking to the paper's editorial staff about interviewing and story telling.

My reaction to being confronted with an unexpected, early-morning picture of myself was two-fold: 1) Wow! Have I aged; and 2) Wow! Am I having a blast.

Both are true. And both are equally acceptable. To me, anyway. But, perhaps, not to society at large. At least, the aging part.

Sixty, I am constantly told, is the new thirty.

That statement—meant, I suppose, to cheer me and the vast herd of my fellow 50-60-ish hipsters—frankly bamboozles me: What is it supposed to mean? Which part of thirty is going to return? The smoking-like-a-chimney, dance-all-night part? The idiot part? The unstable-personal-life part?

Here’s the deal: I've been 30, and I prefer adventure to repetition.

I do still dance uncontrollably sometimes in grocery store aisles, but for the most part I've moved way beyond the person I was at 30. And I have no desire for anyone to take me as anything other than what I am: A 63-year-old woman who enjoys being a 63-year-old woman.

The inescapable, unavoidable truth is life passes and things change; I've changed, the world has changed. The only thing that seems unchanged is the relentless nature of change, itself.  We humans either periodically update our take on reality, or we are left cowering in the corner, pointlessly trying to recreate a world, a life, a philosophy that has passed into the past along with Mick Jagger's and my youth. A long-gone reality that had its own anxiety-producing problems that we avoided by dreaming of another past, further back.

It seems to me that failing to accept change as a fundamental aspect of reality is one of the things that is behind all this Founding Fathers talk in politics. It's all so angry and so vague. And, for the life of me, I can't find much point to it other than fueling people's natural fears during uncertain times.

For example, if you go to the Tea Party Patriot website, you'll find an invitation to sign the following petition:

We the undersigned have understood the true meaning of the below document. Again we find ourselves suffering at the hands of TYRANTS. This petition is to recommit ourselves to the founding values, primary of all that LIBERTIES come from our CREATOR and not men. That being so, they only govern with the consent of THE PEOPLE. We are declaring independence from tyrants, the elite and those that wish harm to our REPUBLIC. Even coming out of silence the tyrants continue to plot our demise. WE THE PEOPLE declare to be free men and women and we will be lied no more. 
GOD BLESS THE USA

What, I ask you, does this mean? What plot? What founding values? How will signing this document help confront today's confusing, complex, anxiety-producing reality?

I rooted around in the site for something akin to a political platform and instead found such offerings as Who Am I, which compares President Obama's background to Adolf Hitler's.

Oh dearie me. . .


Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally is set for this Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial. I went to his website to try to find some kind of statement relevant to today's problems and instead read:

Throughout history America has seen many great leaders and noteworthy citizens change her course. It is through their personal virtues and by their example that we can live as a free country. On August 28th, come celebrate America by honoring our heroes, our heritage and our future.

Join the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and many more for this non-political event that pays tribute to America’s service personnel and other upstanding citizens who embody our nation’s founding principles of integrity, truth and honor.

Our freedom is possible only if we remain virtuous. Help us restore the values that founded this great nation. 

Again, to which particular values is Mr. Beck referring? Whose definition of virtuous is he using? Is virtue something Glenn Beck wants to legislate?

The Founding Fathers certainly were not a particularly virtuous bunch. But then I suspect there will be some terrific pruning of history going on next Saturday on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party flexed their clout in yesterday's Republican primary in Florida and Alaska. Mostly, it seems, through helping people focus their vague fears at two specific targets: our first black President and our first woman Speaker of the House.

It all just makes me want to challenge Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to a reality smack-down. The truth is I am irrevocably 63, and this is irrevocably 2010. None of us can go back. Go back to what, exactly? Whose idea of "back" are we talking about?

It's natural to long for times to be simpler. But our times are what they are now. And the solutions to our problems will only be found by facing them in the here and now.

If  "refudiate" wasn't considered a word yesterday, it probably is today. After all, it most likely saw more print and Twitter space over the last couple of days than any word over five letters. As Peter Grief put it yesterday in the Christian Science Monitor, "Never 'misunderestimate' the beauty and adaptability of the English language."

Unless you've been living in total seclusion, you already know that the redoubtable Sarah Palin (love her, hate her, she does give us something to tweet about) stated Sunday that Muslims should "refudiate" the current plan to build a mosque close to the World Trade Center site. (Photograph by: Brian Snyder, Reuters).
And then, when the Tweet-o-sphere (new term possibly?) went wild, she calmly shot back that, "Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Get over it!"

The blogosphere (is this still considered a non-word?) has gone wild over Sarah P. comparing herself to Shakespeare. Ken Rudin, NPR's Political Junkie, weighed in. As did ABC news, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Vancouver Sun, etc, etc, etc.

I ask you, could Sarah P. have come up with a better way to get herself out there, yet again? I, personally, don't think so.

Carolyn Kellogg, writing in the LA Times did some serious (?) research on Ms. Palin's comparison of her writing (tweeting?) with the Bard's:

So is Sarah Palin like Shakespeare?

According to the I Write Like tool, Palin's 2008 speech to the Republication National Convention, in which she said, "I was just your average hockey mom," is like Dan Brown. Her keynote speech at the inaugural Tea Party Convention in February 2010 reads like -- wait for it -- Cory Doctorow.

But those are speeches, which of course read a little differently than what appears on the page. Could Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" be written like Shakespeare?

Alas, alack: no. The first several hundred words of Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" read like H.P. Lovecraft. . .

So much copy, all generated by one little word and one reactive comparison. Wow, Sarah P's got the People Magazine crowd beaten by a mile in the race for self-promotion.

As to "refudiate," the non-word generating such scrutiny, I rather like it. It suggests repudiation done with an extra stamp of the foot. I plan on using it in the future (along with most of America?).  I hope I will have the guts not to disrespect (a real word - dating back to early 17th C.) Sarah Palin's attempt to communicate her thoughts by delivering "refudiate" in verbal quotation marks. I must confess that we Woodroofs have a non-word of our own, "repozzled," that is firmly entrenched in Woodroofian speak.  It was generated by a mistake Charlie made in a crossword puzzle, and we use it to describe a state of puzzled wonderment.

Back to Sarah P, though, because that's where my focus belongs, right?

Many of us do tend to take Ms. Palin soooooooo seriously. What I can never tell is whether Sarah P. takes herself seriously. Or if she just winks to herself about how she's somehow gotten herself this really good, fun gig that can make her enough money to keep her and her amorphous brood in guns and hockey sticks and jet skis for a long, long, looooooong time.

Sarah Palin's book arrives today, an event in either political or pop culture history (depending upon your  assessment of Ms. Palin ). Scanning my morning's worth of newspapers, it appears Op-Ed columnist Eugene Robinson is correct when he says in today's Washington Post: "It's futile to try to ignore Palin . . ."

It looks to me as though Ms. Palin's book tour is what has really gotten the media's attention. The tour began yesterday on Oprah's couch. It was such a big deal that, The Washington Post blogged about it live. . . 

What I really want to know is how the legendary New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani, who reviewed Going Rogue in Saturday's paper, got hold of a copy before today's release date. When I talked to NPR yesterday, digital arts editor Joe Matazzoni asked if I'd be willing to read the book today and write a paragraph for NPR.org. I, of course, said "you betcha!" But then so did Andrea Seabrook, so naturally she got the assignment. In NPR-speak, it's called being Bigfooted and it's an accepted fact of a freelancer's life. I'll post what she says tomorrow.

If I'd gotten the assignment, it would have meant going out this morning and buying my own copy of Going Rogue, closing the door to my office, immersing myself in Sarah Palin. There were no advance copies floating around anywhere, Joe said, and NPR is usually flooded with advance copies of books. Heck, I'm usually flooded with advance copies.

But the rules that apply to ordinary mortals, even network NPR mortals, evidently don't apply to Ms. Kakutani. After all, her clout in the publishing world is so hefty that NPR actually did a piece on how authors refer to having been Kakutanied if she gives them a bad review. Probably all Ms.Kakutani needed to do to get an advance copy of Going Rogue was to ask for one. Or maybe she didn't even have to ask--one simply arrived by messenger. Gift-wrapped.

I'm curious if any of you who are not on assignment plan to buy and read the book. If it is as big a cultural event as all the coverage indicates, don't we ignore the indications of that bigness at our own peril?

NOTE: Speaking of NPR.org, I blogged about a month ago about being assigned a profile of novelist A.S. Byatt. It went up yesterday. In case you're interested, here's a link.