Sarah Palin should Keep On Trucking

I quite like the image of Sarah Palin that has made its way through the mainstream's demonisation of her. One can never know a person unless one knows them, of course, but she seems a competent, intelligent woman with no little ability. She was at the beginning of her presidential campaign unprepared, and, unwisely (unlike, say, Bobby Jindal), she nevertheless went ahead and accepted the nomination. That was not why she was condemned, however.

I do have a certain amount of somewhat irrelevant negativity in my outlook. I recall sitting at a Free Representation Unit lecture on employment law a few weeks ago. These things aren't, obviously, lucrative, nor are they easily done. Instead, hours and days are given up to give those who have no representation and who are looking for some tiny amount of money a chance. Anyway, the regulation-issue callow youth turned up in front of me. He affected the appearance of boredom; dressed in the regulation mothercare man-child style; and spent his time defacing a picture of her face.

And, just as when I saw the effect of the Dana campaign in Ireland a few years on the professional 'Bobby O'Semtex' middle class, I knew every political view he had, and why he was there. And I knew I liked her, even though I wanted her nowhere near the Presidency.

It isn't that I am contrarian for the sake of it. I do get annoyed with those in desperate search of the righteousness that sometimes is invested in religion, and who follow the bourgeois tribes that own and operate this country whilst pretending to radicalism. You probably have an idea of the kit and caboose they drive; global warming-without-the-science, yearning for anti-apartheid, Israeli boycott, bombing people for out-of-proportion rights-based ideologies, that sort of thing. I'm afraid that I could never hitch a lift on that.

However, there were and are positives to Palin. The incomparable Camille Paglia makes the point here. Palin was clear on her views of abortion, which is a secular nightmare now in the west. She had a quality of cutting through nonsense from the other side, and she appeared to be intolerant of a McCain campaign that was eight years late, confused, and reckless--like, as Dr Paglia says, 'a ham actor on a bender'.

She also tended to expose something that is never really acknowledged in the USA, which is the reality of class, and of class attitudes. Palin's demographic was a group who generally are asked to fight America's wars and then patronised or socially regulated by people who often have lower personal morals than them but who have more money, albeit on credit.

Any whiff of association with things trailed as working class--guns, patriotism, churches, McDonalds, and so on--and those educated at the mills of conformity and licensees of acceptable radicalism that great western universities are will get snide quickly. That she was a woman in an oversexed and at the same time deeply male country also probably counted against her.

Of course, she had drawbacks. She was given to prejudice, to occasional battiness, and pandered from time to time in her own way. From time to time she was a delusional liar, though in the context of a media-political class now based on lies. The followers she attracted, or some of them, were as narcissistic in their dimestore Ayn Rand selfishness and self-righteousness as the hippy opponents they demonised. Had Obama been killed in the campaign, she would have borne a sliver of responsibility. Yet these are the stakes of running in an country whose sometime energies can be as dark as those of the USA.

Ms Palin is now being encouraged to run for the Senate. I think that she should avoid it. The Senate would be a prison. She should stay as Governor if she can, and then spend her time visiting Republican groups up and down the USA, eating the chicken dinners, turning out at other people's elections, and putting up with academics at seminars on complicated things. There will be a toll. But transport is easier now, than at any time before, and anyway, it would be good to see a woman in full who doesn't bow the knee to all the usual intellectual cages running, accumulating the favours and learning where the ropes and wires go.

No one knows the future. It may be that Obama makes a great mess of things, though I doubt that he will at the moment of writing. It may be that Palin-Jindal or some such will lose in 2012. There is, however, unfinished business for her to do, and anyway, I'm missing the picture of middle-class English heads turning puce and pulsing at the thought that those people might actually vote for her. Go for it, Sarah doll.

The picture at the top of the post is SA Schimmel Gold's turned metal leaf woman. You can see more Schimmel Gold art here

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald at Salon has been recording just how bad the American media are for some time. But this New York Times article is very strange; it suggests that the 'known and respected commentator' who had a think-tank background and who was accepted as a member of the McCain staff when trashing Ms Palin's ignorance on Africa was a hoaxer who made everything up. He's made a reputation exposing the foolery and follies of blogland, and the laziness of journalists dependent upon the virtual world I'm quite happy in. Did no-one think to check beyond the internet? Does anyone know how, and will their editors give them the time or money to do so?