Sarah, pigs, lipstick and overhead wires

Memo to Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt huddled in the McCain Campaign War Room/pig sty looking for targets and churning up muck:

At recent neighborhood meetings I, an ardent Obama supporter, have said that you can do everything you like to spruce up stuck-in-the-Fifties storefronts in Hillsdale, but until you underground the utilities on SW Capitol Highway, you will be just...

putting lipstick on a pig!

I was not, repeat, NOT, commenting on Sarah Palin, tabloid celebrity candidate for the second highest office in the land.

If you want a comment on Sarah (and John), try this:

John McCain’s motto is “Country First.” So what’s the most significant decision of his “Country First” campaign? Choosing as his running mate — and, alas, it seems our next vice president — someone who two years ago was mayor of an Alaskan community with a population the size of our neighborhood's.

You can call that “experience” if you like, Karl, Steve and John, but it sounds a lot like putting our country last and, from the looks of the polls, John’s candidacy first.

In politics, "It's the media and us, stupid"

Note: In order to return life to normal here at The Red Electric, I am no longer adding to "Sarah Palin" the tags "glasses" or "sex" just to see what might happen. If you are interested in Palin's relationship to those topics, you will not find comment about them here.

I know that the hundreds of you who have visited because of those tags in the last few days will find satisfaction elsewhere on the Web.

So Sara Palin made it through last week without excusing herself to deal with her “personal problems.”

It remains to be seen whether the other shoe will drop in the next eight weeks. Drug use? Alcoholism (there seems to have been a touch of that)? Black sheep (remember the former brother-in-law? Phony college transcripts? Christian values hypocrisy (where to begin?)?

Or maybe “The Base” is so enamored with Sarah and her “just-like us” family values that nothing would matter. Whatever is under the carpet, once exposed, would just add to her “just-like-us” credentials. “Let him who is without sin etc.”

So far the tabloid readers and the God, Guts and Guns groups are loving the minutiae of Sarah’s “just a hockey mom” story.

And, of course, the Christian Right, whom we can thank for two Rovian elections of George W. Bush, are back in the hunt. “Energized” as they say.

McCain’s strategists are clever (some prominent of their colleagues have called them “cynical”) to join Palin and McCain at the hip. They are appearing in tandem on the hustings and attracting throngs.

McCain basks in the media stardom of his tundra “Cinderella.” Walled off from probing questions (does she know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites? Does she know where Iran is?), Palin projects personality and a contrived maverick image.

The ticket conflates opposites in ways that only the influential visual media can accentuate. Old/Young, Male/Female, Doughy/Attractive. Mix in the non-visual but very much proclaimed heroic vet/Military mom-to-be. Unspoken but palpable are insider/outsider, wishy-washy religious/red-meat fundamentalist, obscenely rich/just-folks working class.

Never mind what they believe or would do about the environment (whatever happened to global warming?), the economy (meltdown anyone?), Iraq (it’s still about oil).

Never mind that The Old One may not be around for four years.

For now, it is all about story and its telling — the plot, the setting, the arch of the story, pacing, the characters.

McCain, Palin and the True Believers are right: It’s the media, stupid — but not in the ways they would have us believe.

It’s the media AND the voting public’s relationship with it. The media have so dumbed down political discourse in this country and we have so bought into it that we are in mortal danger.

As noted before, politics is all about entertainment. We, the People, have complacently embraced the fun. It consumes our time and our lives. It’s so easy to be entertained. Attractive candidates. Compelling story lines. Stage sets. Neck-and-neck horse races.

Republican media manipulators have chosen a candidate/actor to fit the desired plot line. Palin has been cast not to be vice president, but to fill the role of a running mate who can offset the stiff persona of old what’s-his-name.

Media moguls know that successful casting creates “para-social” relationships between members of the audience and the character. This is the staple of soap operas. Viewers often identify more with the travails of media-concocted characters than they do with members of their own families. When candidates forge the same relationships with voters, the voters end up caring more about the candidates than they do about the state of their nation or the world.

We will never see real change in this country until this media manipulation and a complacent public’s surrender to it end.

Another Palin prediction mit conspiracy theory

This from Lizi Zach in Berlin:

My friend Jim, former campaign strategist turned criminal defense lawyer (not much of a career change, but there you have it), just sent the following. It doesn't sound all that far-fetched:

I have been musing over why in the world McCain would have picked Palin knowing her baggage in advance (and then letting it trickle out).

I will make a prediction: She will tearfully decline to serve in the next couple of days, probably in her acceptance speech- blaming the terrible liberal media and bloggers who have attacked her family. She can admit she was a novice, could have done a great job and doesn’t want the campaign to get distracted over. She will urge her supporters to actively support McCain—this was all her idea—McCain urged her to stay the course—and to support his choice of VP—he picks his personal favorite, Lieberman with the blessing of the Right’s new darling.

The religious right is appeased, knowing he took a chance—and that it was all the fault of the usual bad people—not McCain.

I’m already seeing signs of this from conservative columnists and what I hear Pravda, er, Fox News is saying.

All scripted in advance- all facts known. The “liberal media” is at fault—and I’m sure somehow, the Obama campaign.

Thank you Karl Rove.

Sure hope I am wrong, but we have seen it before.

2008 Campaign's House of Mirrors

Karl Rove, who has masterminded the worst presidency in the nation’s history, is now telling anyone who will listen that Hillary Clinton (and here I quote today’s New York Times) “lacked the vision to be president” and is “… ‘weak’ on national security and support for the armed forces.”

Huh?

Quick now, what as been the Rovian “vision” of the presidency? Dismantling and privatizing the federal government (think Katrina). Driving the country deep into debt (think tax cuts for the rich and billion for war). Spying illegally on the citizenry. Making us the most despised nation on the face of the planet.

So much for vision.

As for making the nation secure and supporting the armed forces, wasn’t it the same Rove who served as “brain” to a president who went to war where there was no threat? Who fielded an army so ill-prepared that the parents of soldiers had to pass hats to protect them with body armor? Who ignored dozens of pre-9/11 warnings of a major terrorist attack?

So what’s the deal with Rove roasting Hillary?

Two things about Rove: He is smart and dishonest. Some, including those in the Obama campaign, suspect that from the Republican perspective, Clinton would the most vulnerable Democratic presidential candidate (I happen to agree). By Rove’s trashing Clinton so blatantly (and ironically), he can perversely attract support to her — and set the Democrats up for defeat in November 2008.

Got that?

Welcome to the 2008 House of Mirrors.