Lady Bla Bla

It’s time to see Sarah Palin for what she is – a pop phenomenon. Hers is a niche market, hiding in nooks and crannies throughout the country, but it’s large enough to make a dent on mainstream culture; sort of like Country music. Idle talk about her having a prayer of being elected President in 2012, while not totally ridiculous on its face, is so far removed from any foreseeable reality based on modern electoral history as to be easily dismissed out of hand. Simpleton populists with no interest in national policy outside of biblical concerns don’t tend to get very far in electoral politics (Bush, dim as he was, came from the heart of the GOP establishment, and was never a populist). That’s not to say that she can’t have an impact. In fact, it looks like she may well end up determining the Republican nominee in 2012 either by outside influence or by entering the race outright. Her standing with a significant portion of the Republican base is that impressive.

 

But as buttoned up white people throughout the heartland line up to get a glimpse of her on her book tour, it’s about time we all realize that Sarah Palin is less a presidential player than a pop princess with a twist. The twist is that this is not a phenomenon driven by the media centers in New York or Los Angeles, directed at self-professed hipsters across the country. No, Palin is a rock star for the terminally unhip. These are the people the media usually ignores and sometimes sneers at. As a group they are whiter than mayonaisse, not highly educated, not burdened with gobs of disposable income and with religious convictions tending towards fundamentalism. It’s not a demographic that will typically eat up the latest pointless, meta-celebrity fad (Lady Ga Ga, for instance) just because they need somewhere to spend their allowance. They are resentful of the coasts that look down on them for being backward rubes and their resentment is justified, since I live on one of those coasts and I can tell you that we do look down at them. We gazed in awe when they complained about the government meddling in their Medicare. We shivered when they spoke about George Bush like he was a messenger of God (really Jesus, since God the Father has an ironically subordinate role in their belief system). And we wonder with more than a little justification what they really, REALLY, think about Barack Hussein Obama. 

 

So they are ridiculed and marginalized and are, like the great mass of this country, living paycheck to paycheck, wondering how Wall Street bankers, New York bankers, Eueeuuurrrooopeeeaan bankers, made off with all the loot while they were left holding the bag. So here comes Sarah, a woman who actually attended several institutions of higher education, but wisely refused to let anything corrosive to her faith sink in. She resisted the indoctrination of the elites at Matanuska-Susitna College (see? we can’t help mocking them), and stayed true to Sarah, the regular gal who only ever dreamed of doing God’s work at ESPN. She IS one of them, the only difference being she was savvy and ruthless enough to scrape her way to the Governor’s mansion in Alaska, armed only with a hunting rifle and heaping snowdrifts of chutzpah. She’s got glamour, spunk and requisite amounts of blind faith, and the folks who think evolution is a cruel hoax just eat her up like Krispy Kremes. She’s the living embodiment of everything that Steve Coogan so shrewdly parodied in Hamlet 2, with the song “Rock Me Sexy Jesus”. It’s that consummately American pairing of piety and sex appeal that the rest of the world, and frankly quite a few Americans, shake their heads at. It’s as old as the Salem Witch Trials, and now it’s packaged in a red suit jacket and librarian glasses. She’s everything a pill-popping, gluttonous, slothful Rush Limbaugh could never be. She channels their resentments while simultaneously walking the walk and winking the wink, looking smart and sassy to boot. Like Taylor Swift, she’s going to be around for a while, holy sex symbol of the Bible Belt, until her looks fade and she can enter the realm of pure spirituality; so we elites better get used to her. Now where did I leave my TARP bailout check?