, is such a Palin hater that if anyone—in this case liberal columnist Clarence Page—says anything positive or generous about her, it throws him into a tizzy.
, Jenkins describes Palin as “delusional; paranoid; vindictive; bitter; polarizing; petty; and, more than a trifle pathological.” That’s quite a list of charges, but the column provides not the slightest basis for any of them—sure proof that Jenkins himself has an irrational bias against Palin. Doesn’t Jenkins realize that an article filled with extremely derogatory characterizations of a person, expressed in highly emotional language, without any facts or arguments backing them up, discredits the writer? No, he does not realize that. He thinks his argument against Palin is self-evidently correct. Which, again, is proof positive that he is an individual in the grip of unthinking prejudice.
Now, I would imagine that Palin has been brusque and dismissive toward people who vilely smear her—people like, say, Paul Jenkins. And undoubtedly her negative response to him and people like him has confirmed in Jenkins’s mind that she is delusional, paranoid, vindictive, etc.
Bewilderingly, Palin continues to entrance
PAUL JENKINS
December 12th, 2009
Good grief, even Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page is buying into Sarah Palin’s schtick. Clarence Page! It makes my head hurt.
In a column titled, “The Palinpalooza rolls on,” the left-of-center Page writes about the former GOP vice presidential nominee’s Gridiron Club appearance in Washington, D.C., a few days ago. He was, surprisingly, quite taken with her—coming away, he says, with new-found fondness and respect. She, after all, got laughs from a tough crowd.
Page is no dummy, but I’m left to wonder whether he has taken leave of his senses in a Palin-generated swoon. It’s the kind of thing that only adds to the mystery of what the crowds and pundits Outside see when they look at Sarah Palin; what they hear when they listen to her.
To Page, she is entertaining, funny, self-effacing, a woman in need of only a boffo speech to finally position herself on the national scene.
For many of us, she is much, much more: delusional; paranoid; vindictive; bitter; polarizing; petty; and, more than a trifle pathological.
The frightening part? She likely will have a calamitous effect on the 2012 presidential election, even if she remains sidelined. The worst outcome? She assures Barack Hussein Obama’s re-election for four more years of lunacy unfettered by re-election worries.
What Page et al. do not see is this: Sarah Palin may be nuts. From the time she ran for office in Wasilla, to her campaign for the lieutenant governor’s post in 2006, to her gubernatorial campaign—a job she won and quit in a huff—Palin has done whatever struck her. The problem is that her behavior rubs off on those around her.
Andrée McLeod, a former supporter of Palin and now a critic of her administration, in the past few days has added to the half-dozen or so ethics complaints she has filed against Palin. McLeod claims Palin’s staff helped the McCain-Palin campaign and, in doing so, broke state law.
It’s no surprise. The law never stopped them before. Palin and her staff blatantly and routinely used state facilities to vilify those who filed ethics charges against her.
McLeod unearthed about 200 pages of e-mails between Palin aides and campaign committees in a public records request. They deal with everything from mundane queries about telephone numbers to the minutiae of campaigning after Palin was picked as McCain’s vice presidential running mate.
My favorites were those desperately trying to cobble up achievements that would give her national stature. None of it appears to be state business. All of it showed Palin’s rube organization. Unprepared. Untested. Unable.
In one missive, Bill McAllister—former Channel 2 reporter, then press secretary to Palin and now working for Palin appointee Attorney General Dan Sullivan—asked the McCain campaign what Palin’s position should be on abortion.
“I need to verify what’s being said on the governor’s behalf regarding two social issues,” McAllister wrote. “On abortion, she is pro-life, but does she oppose exceptions for rape and incest? On sex education, does she favor an abstinence-only approach or does she allow for contraceptives?”
You cannot make this stuff up.
It will be interesting to see whether the state Personnel Board, which decides ethics charges against her, will do anything. (The board has, to put it kindly, decided those charges against her very narrowly, but that’s a subject for another day.)
Then, there is the truth problem. In his brief time at the dinner, Page probably never saw that, either. Palin is a master of the half-truth, if not the outright fib. Check her book.
The latest known fiction came in a recent interview with talk-show host Rusty Humphries. Palin had just opined that questions about Obama’s birthplace are “fair.” Then, inexplicably, she tumbled into the deep end of the whopper pool. “Hey, you know, that’s a great point,” Palin said. “In that weird conspiracy theory freaky thing that people talk about, that Trig isn’t my real son, a lot of people that, ‘Well, you need to produce his birth certificate, you need to prove that he’s your kid,’ which we have done … “
Of course, that is untrue. Why would she say something so easily checked? She’s done it before. She simply cannot help herself.
Page did not see any of that. He mentions that while people are fond of Palin, many are unlikely to vote for her.
He may not know much about her, but let us pray he is right.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.