Sarah Superstar

In all the breathless coverage of Sarah Palin's memoirs, I've been debating what to say. Like many I share a concern about her prospects, even the vague fascination with Palin's popularity on the right... but mostly, I find her a somewhat interesting, but irrelevant diversion. And little of the coverage of her seems to get at this.

It wasn't until I saw a clip of her with Sean Hannity that something crystallized for me: Palin is not seen, I don't think, for what she is. In reality, Palin is riding the wave of celebrity culture to her 15 minutes of major fame, and she's doing it by turning politics - perhaps the last bastion of "seriousness" - into the same kind of celebrity name driven gossip currently given to Hollywood and the music industry.

Seeing Palin as a serious politician, it seems to me, is the mistake. What she is, really, is famous for being famous. And by not seeing her book tour for what it is - a chance to consolidate her attention getting - conservatives are deluding themselves into making her vague political ambitions into a huge mess up, while liberals may wind up doing damage control from the needless energy of trying to stop her.

Two things seemed obvious to me in watching and reading about Palin this week - first, she seems to have little good idea of who she is or what she wants, and second, her real skill lies not in her ability to articulate a conservative politics of meaning (a level of thinking she seems to fully not possess), but in her ability to sound confident and authoritative while repeating cliches and bromides in an incoherent mush.

This came to me while Palin announced to Hannity that no matter how the left wing media would excoriate her, she would call Nidal Hasan a muslim terrorist and advocate "profiling" because it was the right thing to do. I was struck not by the extremism - which, really, is conservative boilerplate rhetoric just now - but by the false sense of bravery and bravado. And indeed, the comment went by pretty much unnoticed and without attracting much response at all.

Palin's interviews and excerpts have been full of this kind of contradictory "look at me" language - she talks about bringing the sensibilitiues of ordinary, Main Street America to DC as if it wasn't there to begin with, something Maureen Dowd, a lifelong DC resident, rightly pounced on as bullshit... and something that, really, should have offended more Republicans already working in DC. This "we're the real Americans" tripe from the rightg has always struck me as the most offensive, least productive element of their current populism, a strain of superiority and class tension that serves no one well. That Palin would try and sell a life in Alaska, including the careless parenting that would result in your high school age daighter becoming a mother at 17, as the American ideal, is simply mind boggling.

The "politics" Sarah Palin espouses are vague, jingo-y slogans with little thought or actual policy to back them up, or basically the same empty vessel that the Republicans are stuck with all around. Palin's been defining her views mainly as opposition to Obama policies, policies she can barely articulate or define with any specificty. This definition by negative space - you will know what I am by what I say I am not - amounts to little, and signals, yet again, Palin's spectacular unseriousness, which follows, simply and directly, from the kind of Vice Presidential candidate she was (a VP line on the losing ticket, by the way... is about the least likely path to future political success imaginable). Palin's essentially shown no growth as a thinker, a speaker, or a political force... yet there she is, using up the glare of the right wing spotlight.

So far, aside from right wing talk shows and radio programs, Palin's main interviews have been with Oprah Winfrey and Barabara Walters... which is hardly the path to serious political cred. Both Walters and Winfrey, for all their background and skills, serve a similar purpose in their "major" interviews: providing a window into celebrity culture and helping to cement the contrours of a celebrity persona. Palin's simply taken the idea of celebrity in our culture and applied it in a novel way, recognizing that the attention conferred upon politics these days is not so far from the attention given to stars of The Hills (and that the nexus of the two may well be... Carrie Prejean).

Palin, all handsome angles and minimal depth, is simply more of the same celebrity stew, and while the political press may not know it, the celebrity press got her pretty much from the beginning. Which is one reason why Palin's "feud" with Levi Johnston seems more about column inches than personal animus - curiously vague on criticizing him directly, Palin mostly seems annoyed that Johnston is exploiting, well, the same personal family story elements she would exploit to achieve fame... and showing more skin than is seemly. Going after Levi for his attention seeking behavior in a more severe way would simply expose Palin for her own craven interest in the spotlight.

The idea that the left "fears" Palin or her popularity makes a handy rallying cry for the right, but the reality is... why bother? Apolitical process that sets Palin up as the woman to beat for 2012 is a recipe for disaster on the right, an enshring of just the kind of celebrity culture values conservatives claim to decry, where style overwhelms substance, and image is everything.  Liberals who try, even now, to seriously respond to Palin's attention seeking statements are wandering into a fool's errand - seriously evaluating that which isn't serious makes you part of the joke.

It's easy to imagine Palin turning her next "run" at the Presidency into the world's first poltical reality show; doesn't she seem a natural to introduce the format on Fox News? Cameras following her every move, every episode edited to hightlight the manufactured drama? Isn't that what she's doing anyway? Sarah Palin is, I think, what she intends to be, whether she realizes it or not. It's fun to be famous... and humiliating. The real question is... why are we looking?

Comments

[BDBlue]

I agree with much that you write, particularly that Palin doesn't have much of a political future (unless the rampant misogyny among the media and "progressives" causes some sort of backlash). However, I would point out three things:

1) While I'm no Palin fan, any parent can have a child get pregnant at 17, no matter how attentive. It's as if teenagers are people with the ability to act separately from how their parents might want them to act or raise them to act. Not to mention the luck factor. Most of the women I know who got pregnant in high school didn't have worse parents or behave worse than their peers, they were just less lucky. It's one of those things that we blame parents (particularly mothers) for because it gives the appearance of control over teenagers and bad choices that we don't actually have.

2) Don't underestimate Oprah. While I don't think much of 2008 foray into politics, she played a small but significant role in humanizing George W. Bush before the 2000 election.

3) Don't underestimate the roles sexism and classism play in driving the Palin-palooza. A lot of the media and "progressive" blogger obsession is driven by pointing out how stupid and awful Sarah Palin is with a fervor that somehow never quite matched with people like Huckabee or McCain (who aren't any smarter or any more right, IMO).

[weboy]

Thanks, BDBlue... just to respond to your points:

1) I don't think Bristol Palin's situation makes Sarah Palin a "bad parent"... but at the same time, the suggestions (which Levi has made) that Palin was distant and somewhat unconcerned, I think, ought to matter. It's surely true that sexual experimentation by teens can lead to pregnancy (that's the argument for sex education, and birth control, among other things)... but as a kid raised by a single mom who couldn't always be around, I know there's a way to be in your kids lives that affects that behavior to other, safer choices. Mainly, though, my point is that there's a sort of convenient acceptance, on the right, of Palin's flaws as strengths; she's not a bad parent... but she's no poster child for the kind of family values agenda that the right pushes, either, and a more honest examination on the right would face up to that, and deal with it.

2) I don't underestimate Oprah, as I've written before: http://nycweboy.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/01/lets-see-if-you-believe-in-me.html

3) I think notions of sexism and classism abound - on the left, as you note... but also that Palin plays into a growing working class white resentment on the right, the anti-intellectual, anti "elite" lines of the populist radio hosts and Fox news... which is what's killing the Republicans, because they have an elite class too, and they need its ideas and leadership, especially now. What Palin represents most - the easy rhetoric of appealing to those resentments with no real deep thought or positive agenda to sell - is the center of the GOP meltdown. As much as some lefties should examine sexist, classist assumptions, not every criticism of her fits that bill, and without a similar examination of class and gender issues on the right... we're not necessarily doing enough to really change the thinking... or the conversation.

[jinb]

I'm going to have to disagree with your response on #3 here.

Though they certainly have as many, if not more, "elites" in their ranks than Democrats, Republicans often seem more able to portray themselves as non-elite, Bill Clinton vs George Bush I being the last example I can remember when the roles were reversed.

This "trailer trash" criticism abounding from folks like, oh, anyone on MSNBC, will not help the Democratic Party, nor liberals.

[weboy]

I'm happy to restate, as emphatically as anyone would like, that I agree: comments about "trailer trash" and other negative aspersions about Palin as lower class and therefore not worth respecting, are a big problem among some of the progressive elite. I've seen it, I've heard it, and I am appalled too. But both elements of the "class war" are problematic - the slurs about "trailer trash and rednecks", but also the "liberal elite" and such that are perpetuated on Fox news. Both are meant to label, classify, and dismiss others as "not like us", bad, and worthy of contempt. I, too, worry about a Democratic party that has in many ways lost sight of the needs of the working class; but it's just as fallacious to suggest that, merely by mouthing anti-elite, anti-intellectual sentiments about liberals who live on the coasts that the right has any better connection to, or understanding of, the needs of working class people. That's my point: class issues and gender expectations abound in our problematic discussions these days, and we need to unpack, and deconstruct, all of them if we plan to make progress. That's my notion of "progressive." And I'm sticking to it.

(Also, I do love getting a lively dialogue going.) :)

[jinb]

I can agree with you that the classist labels from either side of the aisle do little to actually solve anything.

My point is that there isn't a balance here, that the appearance of being anti-elite gains more traction with voters than does being anti-redneck or whatever you'd like to call it.

When you say we need to "unpack and deconstruct" them, what does that mean? How is that done in concrete terms. What's the plan for fighting such narratives?

[BDBlue]

Thanks for responding. I agree that the GOP have an elite and that their classist attacks on her (hello Peggy Noonan) are a problem for them as well. In fact, I'd say that Palin represents a direct threat to that elite and that the basis for a lot of her popularity is the anger and frustration the GOP base has with the GOP elite, mainly because while they're good at cultural posturing, their policies are hostile to working class interests. Now, I think Palin is a corporatist, too, but like Obama she hits enough cultural touchstones with the base that they don't see that.

I keep waiting, btw, for the left version of Palin. Someone who is interested in challenging the Democratic elite, hopefully on policy rather than "cultural" grounds (not that the "progressives" and "creative class" couldn't stand a little bit of a cultural challenge from the working class left).