Posts Tagged ‘the undefeated’

“The Oft-Defeated” may be the stake Sarah drove into her own heart

No, I haven’t seen it, and now that I’m not going to use a viewing in Phoenix as the kickoff to the e-single that would have been Sarah Palin’s Arizona, I don’t intend to.

But it’s the same as reading Bristol’s “book,” or Levi’s upcoming “book”:  I don’t have to view or read to know how appalling these products are.

Many years ago, when I contacted the late William Safire to try to arrange an interview about his impressions of Teddy Kennedy, he courteously declined, saying, “I don’t kick ’em when they’re down.”

I’d feel the same way about Sarah, Bristol and Levi–The Unholy Trinity–except that they refuse to admit that they’re down yet, and mass media, as personified most recently by the revolting Jay Leno, keep them propped up, trying to squeeze the last dollar out of pretending to take them seriously, even as these unholy three try to squeeze the last dollar out of their Wasilla Hillbilly act.

See Leno disgracing himself here, and also enjoy Gryphen’s commentary. For once, the squalid Don Rickles was in his element.

Talk about marriages made in hell.

We can, however, cut the kids some slack. After all, Bristol learned only from her mother (certainly never at school,) and Levi (who still doesn’t have a high school degree) woke up one day to find he’d won the Impregnation Lottery, and why shouldn’t he try to make an easy buck, since he has no skills that would enable him to earn an honest one?

But Sarah is different.

In THE ROGUE, I write about Sarah’s close association with a Christian Dominionist leader named C. Peter Wagner, who founded an organization called Global Harvest Ministries.

Wagner’s goal–and the goal of Sarah Palin–is to end the separation of church and state in America, and to turn our country into a Christian Dominionist theocracy.

Before Global Harvest Ministries, Wagner co-founded, with Ted Haggard–later disgraced when it was learned he’d used crystal meth during homosexual trysts–an outfit called
the World Prayer Center, in Colorado Springs, CO.

As I write in THE ROGUE:

The center has been described in Charisma magazine as “a spiritual version of the Pentagon”—the command center for Wagner’s worldwide campaign against demons.

Trust me, you’ve never heard lunacy like this.

I lay it all out in THE ROGUE, but I can offer one brief excerpt here:

Members of Wagner’s Third Wave/New Apostolic Reformation are convinced that their prayers can literally destroy individuals whom they’ve identified as demonic. Among those for whose deaths they claim credit are Mother Teresa and Princess Diana.
Wagner taught his followers that a female mega-demon whom he called…“The Great Harlot of Mystery Babylon” lurked near the summit of Mount Everest…One of Wagner’s leading apostles in Mexico was a woman named Ana Mendez, a former witch in a Haitian voodoo cult…she led a team of twenty-six intercessors to Mount Everest in an assault she called, “Operation Ice Castle.” She and her elite force launched highly targeted intercessory prayers directly at the Great Harlot…Apparently, the prayers found their mark, killing the Harlot Queen.

This is the stuff Sarah believes and acts upon. But you won’t see it in the new movie about her.

Even so, the new movie is so awful as to be laughed off the screen by professional reviewers of all political persuasions.

See this from Politico (not exactly a left-wing site.)

Sarah encouraged this poor sap Bannon to spend his millions in an attempt to save her from her own banality, ugliness, and freaky Christian Dominionism.

That he fell flat on his face  has now become painfully apparent.

Not that there was any way he could have succeeded.

After all, when your subject is a sow’s ear (aka “The Great Harlot of Wasilla”), it’s tough to make a silk purse.

Sarah would have been better off keeping her distance from this farce. But by showing up in Iowa for its very first public showing, she tied her future to its credibility and its success.

As is now evident, it has neither.

Hoping for even more silk for her purse, she’s managed only to drive a stake–if not through her heart–at least through her own sow’s ear.

Yet one more defeat for “The Oft-Defeated.”

 

Doing My Part

Palin supporters (hello? are there any left?) are being urged to pack the movie theaters on July 15 for the premiere of “The Undefeated.”

I guess the theory is if Sarah sees there are still a few thousand people around the country willing to sit through a two-hour glorification of herself, she might just decide run for president after all.

Well, I might be in attendance myself at the July 15 showing in Phoenix. Summer weather just wonderful, with temps above 115 and massive dust storms (see photo above showing conditions yesterday.)

I’m thinking of writing a Kindle Single to be called “Sarah Palin’s Arizona,” which could go on sale at amazon.com in late August.
Maybe ten thousand words about the state Sarah is making her new home. I could spend a bit of time in North Scottsdale, swing by Maricopa, and head down to Tucson, where Gabrielle Giffords almost died and where Sarah’s political career, in fact, did.

“The Oft-Defeated”: Dishonesty in Palin Propaganda Film Starts with Title

The movie about herself that Sarah will travel to Iowa to watch on Tuesday–unless she cancels her trip–is called “The Undefeated.”

How could a serious person, even a serious conservative, use that title for a movie about Sarah?

She was defeated, most famously, in her run for vice president in 2008.

Prior to that, she was defeated in her run for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002.

Those are two defeats in tries for elective office.

But Sarah’s history of defeat is much more extensive.

She was defeated in the Miss Alaska pageant.

She was defeated in four different attempts to graduate from college before she finally managed it at University of Idaho.

She was defeated in her attempt to get a creationist majority elected to the Wasilla School Board in the early 1990’s.

She was defeated in her attempt to have abortion banned at the Mat-Su Valley hospital.

Before her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated when she applied for a position as dispatcher with the Palmer, Alaska, police department and was not hired.

After her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to appoint Alaska Independence Party and John Birch Society member Steve Stoll to the city council.

As mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons in 1997, a move that nearly led to her recall.

As mayor, she was also defeated in the courts when she tried to build a new sports arena on land the city did not own—a defeat for which Wasilla is still paying.

She was defeated in her first attempt to hold down an appointed job, when she had to bail from her post on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2004, due to her inability to grasp the complexities of the commission’s work.

Mike Miller, the ultra-right wing candidate she supported against Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the 2004 GOP primary for U.S. Senate, was defeated.

As governor of Alaska, she was defeated in her attempt to have her ex-brother in law Mike Wooten fired from the state police.

Also as governor, she was defeated in her attempt to require teenagers to obtain parental consent for abortions.

Also as governor she was defeated in her attempt to have the state pay the expenses involved in her bringing her children with her on political trips, and her image suffered an even greater defeat when it was disclosed that she’d been billing state taxpayers a per diem charge for the more than three hundred days she spent at her Wasilla home while serving as governor.

Her reputation as an ethical reformer suffered another defeat when a state-appointed investigator found that she’d abused the power of her office in her attempt to have Wooten fired.

In 2009, she was defeated in her attempt to install her former personal attorney, Wayne Anthony Ross, as Alaska attorney general.

Subsequent to her resignation, it’s become clear that her strongest initiative as governor–the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA)–has proven a costly failure.

And last summer Sarah was defeated in her attempt to bully me into vacating the premises I’d rented next door to her on Lake Lucille.

Not to mention how many Tea Party candidates she supported last fall were defeated. (Anybody remember Christine O’Donnell? How about Joe Miller, in her own (former) state of Alaska?)

How many defeats is that?

More than enough to make an utter mockery of the title of the hagiographic propaganda film that she hopes–and no doubt prays–will pull her national political career out of its terminal free-fall.

Increasingly Desperate, Sarah Palin Supporters Pin Hopes on New Movie

As they see even what used to be her base losing interest in Sarah as Queen Esther–and as a presidential candidate–her shrinking hard core of unblinkingly blind zealots is praying out loud that the propaganda film made by one of their own can somehow overcome all that Sarah herself has done over the past two-and-a-half years to make herself irrelevant, laughing all the way to the bank.

The serious neo-cons, such as Kristol, Barnes and Krauthammer, whom she so successfully seduced in 2008, have abandoned her.

To them, she’s become a dirty joke they wish they hadn’t told.

Most of the Tea Partiers have given up on her, too, transferring their affections to Bachmann, while dreaming of Perry.

This leaves Sarah increasingly isolated, no more a “Mama Grizzly,” but a polar bear marooned on an inexorably shrinking ice floe (but one, she will assure us, that isn’t melting because of man made global warming.)

God used to open doors for her.  Now she needs a deus ex machina just to keep herself afloat.

The dwindling few who still proudly proclaim themselves as cult members see “The Undefeated” as their last best hope.

See this frantic call to arms–or at least to the box office–at The Daily Caller.

Or listen to the last gasps of the drowning at Conservatives4Palin, such as this and this.

As if a propaganda film could save her now.

For the record, Sarah Palin is not undefeated. She was not only defeated as McCain’s running mate in 2008, but she was defeated in her race for lieutenant governor of Alaksa in 2004.

“The Twice-Defeated” would be a more accurate title.

Not that accuracy has ever mattered to Sarah.

CBS political correspondent: “Sarah Palin is either running for President or she should be” UPDATE//Chris Wallace chimes in

I see from the comments here and at my Facebook page that some people think I’m only pretending to take Sarah semi-seriously in order to hype advance sales of THE ROGUE.

Listen, folks, I’m not makin’ stuff up.

A photo of Sarah waving from the back of a Harley took up the entire top of the front page of The New York Times “News of the Week in Review” section today.

Also today, CBS political correspondent Jan Crawford posted a piece on the CBS News website under the headline:  “Palin:  Is ‘The Undefeated’ Running for President?”

Crawford’s piece is essentially a rave review of the forthcoming two-hour feature film, “The Undefeated,” produced with his own money by an independently wealthy Palin supporter.

The film, which Crawford has seen, left her with “the distinct impression [Sarah’s] presidential candidacy is not only possible, but inevitable.”

She writes, “Regardless of where you come down [about Palin], here’s one thing both sides should agree on:  it certainly looks like Palin is running for President.”

Go ahead, call Crawford a Kool-Aid drinking right-wing shill.  And remind yourselves again that Sarah is just too stupid, or too greedy, or about to be engulfed by too many scandals to mount a serious campaign for the Republican nomination next year.

But Crawford’s piece was published today by CBS, not C4P.

The bus tour?  The movie?  The move to Arizona?  Can you not hold a finger to the wind and feel the breeze?

As I said to a commenter on my Facebook page, just wishing she’d go away–or pretending she already has–won’t make it so.

UPDATE:

Chris Wallace, who interviewed Sarah on Fox today, later said this:

I’ve interviewed her a bunch of times now over the past two years, and I have never seen her as good, as impressive, I mean she’s always been an entertaining interview, but I have never seen her as good, as specific as she was, whether it was the debt or the state of the economy, or the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. I don’t think any fair minded person could look at that debate and not say that she is potentially a serious candidate for President of the United States. Now that doesn’t mean she’s gonna run, but this is the first time that I looked at her and I thought, she could be real player in a 2012 election.