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GOP Might as well let Sarah have the nomination

Obama invulnerable after tonight’s announcement.

“Isn’t She Pretty, Isn’t She Nice?”

There’s really nothing to say about this Washington Post story about Sarah’s Saturday in DC, except:

a) it makes me want to throw up

and

b) Sarah’s comeback from Tucson is on track, exactly as she wants it to be, with mainstream media rolling over and begging her to scratch their jelly bellies once again.

Visitors to this blog, and even people who will buy The Rogue in September, constitute only a tiny minority of the American voting public. A much larger minority–encouraged by mainstream media such as Vanity Fair and the Washington Post–still find Sarah fascinating, even dazzling.

We might wish she was yesterday’s breakfast, but as long as mainstream editors, publishers and reporters beg for the chance to pose for a photo with her, she remains likely to be a main course at the 2012 election banquet. She might even wind up looking for a White House chef.

There is no morality in mainstream media. There is only venal self-interest. There are (with a certain few exceptions) only weary whores who would trade what’s left of their souls for the chance to pose for a snapshot with a celebrity.

This is your Washington “press corps,” ladies and gentlemen. Better described as the Washington “press corpse.”

Its theme song is “Celebrity Über Alles.”

Scientologist Van Susteren a-Twitter over Sarah’s Media Buzz//UPDATE


Greta is having her own after-glow, because her guest, Sarah Palin, stole the show before and after the annual White House Correspondents drunken one night stand with the people they cover.

She writes today:

“What is fascinating to watch is how the media (all of them!) just can’t get enough of Governor Sarah Palin. They were all taking pictures of her with themselves for souvenirs and writing about her. She was prominent in the Washington Post coverage, Politico and I think the New York Times. Her name and picture was everywhere!
With all the movie stars at the dinner, and big media and government names (Cabinet Secretaries and Senators etc.), whose picture does Vanity Fair show? You guessed it …(and she was only at their after party and not the dinner!)


After her vicious attacks on me last summer–she called me “The Wasilla Stalker”–I’m not eager to give Van Susteren credit, but she nailed it with the observation above.

The very same mainstream media that writes Sarah off from Monday to Friday gets into a tizzy of excitement if they get to meet her in person on Saturday night.

Is it hypocritical and revolting? Of course it is. But media outlets like Vanity Fair are the cash cows come to worship at Sarah’s altar, and we can hardly blame her for milking them for all they’re worth. And they love every tug on the teat she gives them.

UPDATE:

Even our friend Andrew Sullivan got caught up in the festive atmosphere.

Unfortunately, he missed the chance to ask Sarah face-to-face if she’d actually given birth to Trig.

Make-a-Buck Cynicism Knows No Bounds

Of course, that’s not news in regard to book publishing today. With fewer people reading, thus fewer people buying books, print publishers are fighting for their lives. The visual image is replacing the written word as the primary unit of communication. No sense bemoaning that: it’s an evolutionary fact. Gutenberg started a revolution in 1450 with the invention of the printing press, and the written word will have had a 700-year run by the time it’s done and dusted a couple of generations from now.

As it sinks, it’s no wonder that its purveyors will do anything to try to keep afloat. As a psychiatrist once told me, “a drowning man has no morals.”

Thus, the imminent appearance of the ghostwritten “Bristol Palin memoir.”

The only thing that surprises me is that it will be published by William Morrow.
Granted, William Morrow is now just one more imprint of Harper Collins, the Rupert Murdoch-owned octopus that has published two ghostwritten “memoirs” by Bristol’s mom.

But here’s a short “inside publishing” story: in spring of 2009, when I was first considering writing a book about Sarah Palin, I met with William Morrow’s editor-in-chief. He told me he thought Sarah was an idiot, and disdainfully said he could never edit a book written about her, because she was simply not worth writing about.

I hope he has a capable assistant with a broader view assigned to edit Bristol’s ghostwriter, Nancy French, who previously wrote a book of her own called Red State of Mind: How a Catfish Queen Reject Became a Liberty Belle.

Just when you think you’ve seen the bottom of the cesspool you find that you’re still on the surface.

Sarah’s Dilemma: Stuck between Rock & Hard Place

Sarah has palinated herself into a very sticky corner. After her egotistical, ignominious, insensitive response to the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon forced her into a phase of unaccustomed silence, she watched helplessly as first Michelle Bachmann and then the even bigger blowhard Donald Trump scooped up the Republican detritus that had comprised her base.

Even Conservatives4Palin had to admit today that “Trump Appears to Have Taken Over 50% of Governor Palin’s Support.”

As she jabbers away to Scientologist Greta Van Susteren and picks up the easy money on the junior college lecture circuit, Sarah has to sense that the freefall of her star is gaining velocity.

One can imagine a sense of panic overtaking her.

The only way she can turn things around is by declaring her candidacy for the Republican nomination for president.

But as soon as she does, the free pass she’s been getting on so many issues–including, but not only the circumstances surrounding the birth of Trig–will be revoked.

On the other hand, every day that passes sees her taken less seriously by the serious.

And if she doesn’t run, she will fade into total irrelevance as soon as the 2012 primaries begin.

I believe she’s going to run, but will try to hold off until fall before making an announcement (that is, if Roger Ailes lets her keep her Fox gig that long.) I don’t think her egomania, aka her “competitive instinct,” will allow her to simply continue her slide toward oblivion as Trump, Huckabee and Bachmann pick up her marbles and start to play.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what I think. If God opens the door, she’ll plow through it.

Something I never understood: if the door has already been opened, why does she have to “plow through it?”

The Morlocks and the Palins//UPDATE

The horrific photo above shows Wasilla’s Jeremy Morlock gleefully posing as he lifts the head of an Afghan civilian he’s just murdered.

The New York Times Magazine has just posted an extensive story by Luke Mogelson about Morlock and his psychopathic platoon buddies called “A Beast in the Heart of Every Fighting Man.”

I urge you all to read it, and to bear it in mind the next time you hear Sarah Palin say she’s “the proud mother of a combat vet.”

Sarah’s reference is to her son, Track, who was never actually in combat.
But one of Track’s best friends from high school, Jeremy Morlock, was.
Jeremy’s sister, April, is Bristol Palin’s best friend, often seen with her in LA during Bristol’s days on “Dancing with the Stars.”

And the ties between the Palin and Morlock families are much deeper and more longstanding than that. They go back to Todd Palin’s hometown of Dillingham, and Todd’s relationship with Jeremy’s mother’s twin sister, and extend through the vandalism of Jeremy’s mother’s house by Willow Palin and her friends in December, 2009.

Not to be a tease, but I write about all this in The Rogue and can’t say any more before the book is published on September 20.

Morlock’s lawyer was able to cut him a deal that could see him paroled in only seven years, in return for ratting out his buddies. Shushannah Walshe at The Daily Beast wrote more about Morlock here.

Obviously, I don’t believe in guilt by association. But I wonder whether Sarah, as she praises our troops and tries to identify with them as a Military Mom–the way she used to claim she was a Hockey Mom (or should that be Hokey Mom?)–gives even a passing thought to Track’s old buddy, Jeremy.

Among the many character witnesses to testify at Jeremy’s court martial, the Palins were notable by their absence.

Millions of Americans have fought in wars on foreign soil. Almost all with honor and courage.
I met many when I was in Vietnam in 1967 and again in 1971. They did their best for a doomed and losing cause.

I never met one who would have grinned with pride, as you can see Jeremy Morlock doing, while posing with the body of a defenseless civilian he’d just killed.

Look at that photo again. Does it remind you of another?

 

 

UPDATE:

 

Bristol Palin and April Morlock with Bristol’s son, Tripp


And thanks to a commenter for reminding me that Sarah can’t possibly think it’s unfair of me to call attention to the multi-generational Palin/Morlock relationships.

As she has said:

“I do not think that it is off-base nor mean-spirited…to call someone out on their associations.”

Ball’s in your Court, Sarah//UPDATE:

“Some curious Americans are actually asking the questions. And [the media] are trying to make those curious Americans sound kind of crazy.”

So said Sarah to Van Susteren last night. Clearly, she was talking about Justin Elliott, Jason Linkins, David Weigel and others who are trying to fit Andrew Sullivan for a tinfoil hat. Wasn’t she?

Ready to hold your breath now, waiting for Sarah to produce the birth certificate and medical records that could put an end to the Trig rumors once and for all?

President Obama has put the birth certificate ball squarely in Sarah’s court.

But why is it making that funny ticking sound?

UPDATE:

See Sarah Jones in PoliticsUSA, “The Toe-Sucking Media and the Many Myths of Sarah Palin.”

Ms. Jones tells it like it is, no words minced, no punches pulled.

Take a bow, American Press. You have aided and abetted Sarah Palin’s bullying since the day she took that national stage.

“More Power to the C Student”

That could be Sarah’s 2012 campaign slogan, previewed last night in her interview with Greta Van Susteren, FOX News’ resident Scientologist.

“What the heck is wrong with asking the President of the United States to disclose what his college thesis was, what some of the Harvard Law Review papers were that he wrote? I don’t care about his grades. I don’t care if he was a C student. You know, more power to the C student. What I care about is what goes into his thinking today?…A lot of that could be reflected in the writings that he produced as a college and a grad student.”

That got me wondering about college theses.  Has anyone ever asked Sarah for hers?  Do you suppose the University of Idaho required her to write one before awarding her a degree?  Wouldn’t it be fun to read that?

Do you suppose Sarah’s college writings offer clues into the roots of what passes for her “thinking” today?

Forget Trig’s birth certificate:  Trump should demand to see Sarah’s college thesis.  He could send his investigators straight from Hawaii to Idaho.

William Shatner could give it a live reading, with bongo drum and bass accompaniment.

Sullivan Stays Skeptical

THE ILLUSTRATION ABOVE IS NOT MEANT TO SUGGEST

THAT ANDREW SULLIVAN IS AN ATHEIST.  HE IS NOT.

HE DOES NOT QUESTION THE BIRTH OF JESUS.  ONLY TRIG.

 

Andrew doesn’t need me linking to his new Palin posts. He does quite well on his own.

But what he says today is so pertinent to what he and I and others said yesterday, I’d be remiss not to urge you to read it.

He’s rightly merciless about the self-serving mainstream political media in this country. Someone remarked to me just yesterday that they chase around after each other like hamsters in a wheel, not recognizing that the wheel is not the universe. They write as much to impress one another as to communicate insight and truth. And they talk mostly to each other, thus finding reinforcement among like minds for their pre-existing opinions. This is hall of mirrors journalism, in which every image they see is in some way a reflection of themselves. Hall of mirrors journalism is practiced with particular avidity in Washington, D.C. and among those political journalists living outside the Beltway only because they can’t find a way in.

Sullivan asks,

“are we skeptics supposed to just sit back and be mocked by a pathological liar putting her own credibility against ours?…It seems to me that when some simple, readily available medical records could end this excruciating debate in one easy swoop…it is professional negligence that MSM won’t even ask for such proof, and devote far more energy to defending their own past than the facts at hand.”

Here’s one simple question for Sarah Palin, which does not involve the release of medical records: Why did you say last September that Trig was born in Anchorage, not Wasilla?

In regard to medical records and actual eyewitness testimony–as opposed to the recovered memories of Quinn and Loy–I had a brief and typically futile Twitter exchange earlier today, as follows:

@FeistyShelia

I’m friends with a nurse who was there when Trig was born, watched Sarah push him out. You’re an idiot.

@joemcginniss

I’d like to talk to her, on the record. Can you please have her get in touch with me?

@FeistyShelia

she would lose her job because of HIPPA. Sarah would have to sign a release. She would LOVE to go on record!

@joemcginniss

Why wouldn’t Sarah sign a release? She could get rid of this story once and for all?

@FeistySheliah

no it wouldn’t. Why would anyone ask? It’s ridiculous. People would doubt validity, make excuses. Better to ignore crazy.

@joemcginniss

Too bad. A true eyewitness to the birth could make the whole issue go away overnight.

@FeistyShelia

People wouldn’t believe she was telling the truth. Can’t argue with lunatics…then you become the crazy one.

 

There you have it:  a delivery room nurse who actually witnessed Sarah give birth to Trig.

But will she talk?  Nope.  Far better to insult those sincerely interested in learning the truth with words like “crazy,” “lunatics” and “stupid.”

It would be different if Sarah had a reputation for truthfulness. But how can people be asked to take her at her word on this issue when her lies about so many others are documented.

Billy’s Boy Puts Sarah on Spot

Sarah Palin’s most favorite evangelist for getting publicity with, Franklin Graham, was on ABC on Easter Sunday, saying that President Obama wasn’t a true “Christian” and pouring fuel onto the Birther fire by saying he didn’t know why Obama “can’t produce” medical records to prove he was born in the United States.

Uh-oh. Sarah has traipsed around half the world with Franklin Graham–from Native villages in western Alaska, to Haiti, to the bedside of Franklin’s ailing father, Billy–to buttress her evangelical/dominionist base.

But now he’s come home to roost in her chicken coop. (The chicken coop, incidentally, is just beyond her “garden” and next to her “private swimming hole” that I spent last summer peering into from my perch next door.)

What is Sarah to do with Graham’s denunciation of the president for not providing medical records extensive enough to satisfy him?

She has a certain problem of her own with failing to produce medical records (although she claims she did) that document the parentage of her son Trig.

She can hardly join Graham in his quest for Obama birth records. Yet she can hardly denounce him for the inanity of his comments on ABC.

Between a rock and a hard place is where Graham has put Sarah with his remarks. And maybe not unintentionally, given that only a couple of days earlier he opined that Sarah would not run for president next year and that he was leaning toward supporting that paragon of Christian charity, Donald Trump.

Like father, like son. I write in The Selling of the President about going with Roger Ailes to Richard Nixon’s suite in the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York the morning after election day in 1968, when it had just become apparent that Nixon had won. Roger and I were sipping coffee in the living room of the suite when, as I wrote:

Billy Graham…came breezing past, an overcoat slung over his arm.

‘We did it,’ he said, grinning, his blond hair neatly waved. He went directly to Nixon’s room, without explaining whether ‘we’ meant Billy Graham and Richard Nixon or Billy Graham and God or perhaps all three together.

And now Billy’s son is raising the issue of medical records in regard to birth?

With friends like that, Sarah doesn’t need the rest of us.