I never said he welshed on a bet. I said that someone owed me, payable election day.
What actually happened is that I have too many bookmarks and was deleting them. I found this and was reminded of all the claims about Palin who is certainly out of the running. An amusing memory 😀
Well -- the thread jumped to the top of the pile today, and gave me an opportunity to vent.
So here's an observation. You're already saying Palin is a "has-been" and that's probably true. [Or . . . somebody else in this thread said it.]
There had been an episode I remember from "South Park." The boys discover the equivlaent of a Neanderthal Man (a frozen corpse actually discovered in the Alps over the last decade or two), except that it was a man who went missing in Colorado about three years earlier. They thaw out the man, and he revives. He goes to his home -- his wife -- remarried -- doesn't recognize him. Everybody is laughing because his clothes are so "ancient," probably purchased at the Gap three years earlier just before he disappeared.
I call it a phenomenon of "mass historical myopia of news-zombies" -- of which I am first to admit I was one until about 1999. Everything is connected, many things to a more significant degree than people want to admit. The seeds for the housing and banking bubble were sown in the Clinton administration, more than 15 years ago. On average, people have a recollection of things and impart a significance to them that is negative-exponentially weighted.
I spoke to a young lady a few months ago -- very intelligent, or so it seemed -- and I mentioned "The Cold War." She replied "The Cold War? What was that? When was that?"
So -- whether or not Palin is a has-been, or the Tea-Party seems like a big joke, it is all part of a trend. For instance, we've heard about the Koch brothers -- key players in the concentrated energy extraction industry. They've been in recent news pertaining to their contributions to the Romney campaign, Super-PACs and the support for Wisconsin's Governor Walker.
But go back to the Tea-Party demonstrations of 2010. Unlike leftist anti-war demonstrations of the '60s, the Tea Party demonstrations were subsidized. Bus transportation had been paid by . . . Who? The Koch Brothers and Freedom Works.
Now what about those 2010 demonstrations? In 2008, PBS had aired a documentary (damn good one, too) entitled "Chicago 10." It was essentially about the trial that followed the mass-demonstration in 1968 Chicago at the Democratic Convention. It interspersed news coverage and interviews of Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden and the other organizers -- with the court proceedings. But they couldn't allow cameras in Judge Hoffman's courtroom, so they animated the documentary -- a sort of cartoon presentation of court transcripts.
The Tea Party demonstrations looked suspiciously like the '68 Anti-War movement and demonstration in Chicago. The documentary provided an inside look at how the demonstration had been successful -- had made a major impact in American history; about how the organizers had taken Rev. King's "Creative Non-Violence" a leap-forward step further.
Looking at the news footage of the 2010 Tea Party, I can only speculate -- hypothesize -- that the Kochs and Dick Armey's Freedom Works had seen "Chicago Ten," and aimed at creating their own counter-revolution.
So it's funny, but it's not so funny. Sarah Palin may now just be collecting royalties from the books, looking wistfully at her wardrobe as it slowly becomes obsolete. But she was still just part of a trend pandering to what one commentator has called "The Paranoid Streak in American Politics."
And now we have "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision about money in politics. What we're missing is the unfunded, unsubsidized activism of ordinary people with both eyes open. That's why Palin and the Tea Party are not as funny as would make me comfortable.
