Sarah’s shiny and new and a polebrity if ever there was one. She’s a different breed. She’s not even trying to be a respectable, smart, take-me-seriously politician. She’s being herself. She’s making people laugh, being popular, reveling in her infamy and her inborn confidence that’s she’s the one to whom all eyes should turn. All moose-massacring, enemy-firing, earmark-grabbing, college-hopping, plane-selling, lying, thieving, cheating, mother-from-helling, bible-thumping, gun-waving manic redneck lunacy ala Paris Hilton in The Simple Life or Denise Richards but on steroids. Trying to manage her in the ways that one might manage a real political opponent is not going to work, and I hope that Obama gets that message soon.
And this is where Obama really is a lightweight and where his inexperience may be his downfall. It’s not in his message, or his fabulous education, his time in office, his genuine desire to serve, or his ability to lead and inspire. It’s his inability to manage a polebrity (a political celebrity, to coin a term) because he’s treating her as a political opponent rather than a celebrity. It’s a textbook case of "Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in High School," and he was too busy studying other stuff and preparing for a serious life to get it. He may have been popular in high school, but there's a world of difference between being the study body president, top-tier college-bound boy and the leader of the "in-crowd" mean girl brigade.
Sarah Palin may be running for Vice President of the United States; but the campaign she’s running is for Vice President of Hometown High School. Or Vice President of the Screen Actor’s Guild. Like Paris Hilton before her, who did nothing to become a celebrity but show up in the right places, look cute and say and do outrageous things that got people talking, Sarah Palin’s star is rising.
I’m a professional. I went to a seven sisters college, and I have graduate degrees from two of the Ivies. I could easily discuss Sarah Palin in the context of the World Economic Forum at Davos last year, where the United States dropped from 23rd to 31st in its assessment of gender equality in 128 countries representing 93% of the world’s population, and the embarrassment and outrage I feel that we are now behind countries like South Africa, Bolivia, Cuba, Columbia, Moldova and Nambia. I could talk about the impact of feminist perspectives on the medical-industrial complex and the implications of that on postmodern society and the relative importance of this election through that lens.
But I sit, chatting with my girlfriends (who are similarly credentialed and with whom I do have the occasional meaningful conversation) and wonder how a mother of 5 with a newborn and a pregnant teenager and a full time job manages that hair. I wear mine short, reluctantly, because managing it longer, along with my work and my 2 year-old, was too much to do in the morning. I know what it takes to deal with hair like that, and I’m a little in awe. How does she do it? We obsessed about those great glasses til we found the article in a pop rag about how she selected them and where we could buy them (Kawasaki, Kazuo, 740 line). We comment on what she’s wearing and why she favors shantung and three-quarter sleeves whether her shoes are Prada or Laboutin. And whether the baby was hers. We list the mothers we can think of who were worse at the job than she, like Bette Davis. We talk about people we’d like to have had fired but wouldn’t have dared. We speculate about whether she’s starred in Christian porn as a sexy bible school teacher with a heathen pupil who needs to be spanked. We see her erratic, often reckless choices of behavior as Borderline Personality Disorder with Narcissistic features; they call her "mavericky." We comment on how disconnected and cool she seems toward her family and look in horror at a mother who threw her vulnerable, pregnant teenager under a media bus and stepped on her bleeding carcass for a few more votes. We love to hate her wacky policies and the plethora of antics that had previously only been shown on bad television and in B movies.
Feminist, sociological and political debates about her are academic and irrelevant and almost impossible. Of course, she’s setting the women’s movement back 50 years. Well, duh. We know that. She’s fluff; she’s cotton candy; she’s Cosmo. She’s the National Enquirer’s political poster-girl, and say what you will, that litterbox liner has been around forever and it’s highly profitable because, like chocolates in our bedside tables, it’s a guilty pleasure. Anything of substance we start to think about her is fleeting and slides through the colander of fact and truth til there’s only a gooey, greasy, tasty mess left. And then, heaven help us, we want more.
People are talking about her with the same enthusiasm that they discussed the last episode of Lost and Grey’s Anatomy and what’s going to happen next with Sonny, Carly and Kate on General Hospital. Hollywood knows how to manage that excitement and enthusiasm and spectacle; they create it, they foster it, they feed it. So, apparently, do the Republicans (I’d be willing to venture that somewhere on McCain’s payroll is a loyal LA-starmaker consulted soon after the Oprahfication of Obama became big news last year). It’s Wag the Dog gone amok. Unfortunately, I don’t think that Obama (or his advisers) do know what to do with it or her, and I suspect it’s part inexperience, part ego, part single-minded focus and drive and half gender. He doesn’t get girls. I don’t blame him. I don’t think he can get it, and I’d bet the Republican handlers are counting on that. It’s not so much sexism as it is gender studies in a cultural context.
Sarah Palin is fun. In our deepest, darkest hearts, we love the disaster that is her life. Those with real-life drama can compare and relate; those without can live vicariously through her misadventures. If we could have created a fictional caricature of a governor to hate, we wouldn’t have come up with anything nearly so salacious as the reality of her day-to-day existence. There is SOMETHING about her that EVERYONE feels like they can comment on. She’s the Burberry-wearing mayor of Northwest Bumblefrick who actually said, out loud and in public, "Sambo beat the bitch," and kept her job. None of her popularity has to do with any political agenda at all, and few women are into her business because they take her seriously as a leader or candidate, despite what they say. It’s all about the juice and admiration that she’s so far out there and yet, somehow, inexplicably, still up there. She’s gone where only highly fictive females have tread before.
Americans are tired, and we’re bored with the dreary news of the economy, and the 100 years war in the Middle East, and the cost of filling our tanks and grocery carts, and the inadequate health care system. Summer is over. Winter is coming. The days aren’t lasting long enough and neither are our paychecks. More people in this country take antidepressants than in any other country for a reason. Political ads have run on our televisions for so flipping long that we barely notice them anymore, let alone listen to the messages. It is ALL more of the same; that’s not something one party owns. We are a nation in a rut, and distractions from the day-to-day are few.
Palin makes us feel like we’re doing just fine with our lives. She’s relatable, but not in the ways that the media or the Republicans want her to be. She’s relatable because, in comparison, we’re all good, thanks. Our careers aren’t fraught with fraud investigations, kickbacks and vicious turns on our former colleagues that result in criminal investigations. Our kids are not running amok in the wilds of the hinterland while we go out and hunt our food. Our family members aren’t suing us. We don’t lie, cheat, steal, burn books and get messages and directives directly from God himself. The people we know who speak in tongues take medication for it and stop; they don’t discuss it with glee on CNN like it’s normal. No one has ever accused most of us of faking a freaking pregnancy through to term. None of us would wait 22 hours and fly 3000 miles to go to a hospital when our labor started. At least not all on the same day, like Sarah. She’s so awful, she’s great. She’s the Evanovich novel that you know is going to have a car blow up and some sex and some crime and some criminals with wacky names and a lot of laughs along the way. It’s like licorice. You hate it, but if it’s in the kitchen, you can’t help but eat it.
She’s the girl who stole our boyfriends in high school, who made us feel fat, who brought attention to our pimples. She borrowed our homework to turn in as her own, and we gave it to her so she might favor us with a seat at her table all the while feeling like crap about it. We didn’t like her, or it, but we did it. We loved to talk about her and her shenanigans, and even though we hated her, we wanted her to be our friend. We wanted to hang out with her, and we wanted to be invited to her parties. We shopped where she shopped and wore what she wore. We watched with glee as she got caught breaking the rules and got in trouble, and we watched with even more glee as we saw how she wiggled out of it. We wanted to be liked by her, even if we didn’t like or want to be like her. We wanted her to fail, but we didn’t want to bring about her downfall. We wanted her to succeed, but we didn’t want to help. We watched in fascination as she manipulated our little worlds, gossiping about her all the while, with a bit of pride and a lot of envy. We told ourselves we could be that girl if we wanted to be, but we were better, smarter, more serious, more whatever. It’s a complicated girl thing.
I would bet the bank that Hillary Clinton knows just how to de-throne the new queen of the late-night punch lines and the heiress-apparent to Schafly’s fiefdom. But I doubt very much that she will. Despite her rousing speech and inspiring words, Hillary wanted to be the candidate, and deep down, she feels cheated. And Sarah Palin’s rise to infamy pretty much guarantees a Hillary presidency in 2012 if Obama blows this as badly as I am starting to fear that he will. It’s another one of those girl things.
In all seriousness, it’s time to for Obama to get over himself and his message and his "clean campaign" tactics and talk to some people who know how to manage rising celebrity rather than political strategy. It’s time for his advisers to study the cultural phenomenon of the media spotlight on Hollywood’s tabloid bad girls and what gets them off the covers and relegated to oblivion and insignificance. Where the hell is Oprah when you need her?
This fight is not going to be won by staying on message, or buying airtime for attack ads, or spending hours figuring out how to debate her or responding to the wacko things she says. It’s not going to be won by ignoring her, or engaging her directly, or having the mainstream media point out every questionable thing she’s ever done, or even by revealing Trig is the byproduct of an illicit Bristol and Track tryst. We know she’s a roiling mess of the worst aspects of all of us (and then some of our neighbors) with a potty mouth and a limited intellect. We love to hate her mess. We love to hate her. We can’t wait for the next episode of The Wasilla Wench. And I don’t think Obama knows what to do with that because it’s fast reaching point where everyone is salivating for more Sarah, and with 56 days til the election, the chances are unlikely that grist for the mill will be gone before it given what we’ve already seen.
He’s book smart and focused, dedicated and serious. He’s earnest. And she’s pop culture mind candy for the masses. It’s his soft spot, and they found it. Obama’s the organic health food who could go very wrong underestimating the appetite that Americans have for junk food like Palin.
Obama needs to rent Mean Girls and Jawbreaker; he needs to watch some old episodes of 90210; he needs to read about Queen Bees and Borderline Queens, and he needs to get together with some former prom queens and cheerleaders. Have a town hall meeting with the popular girls. The girls who probably wouldn’t date him in high school because he was a brilliant dork are now probably the only ones who can help him to knock this polebrity out of the spotlight. He need to talk to some of the guys who knew how to neutralize them in high school. He needs to do it fast. We can’t afford another 4 years of the past 8.
Sarah Palin’s gift is in her ability to provoke visceral reactions from our inner high school students even while our adult selves react with shock, fear and awe. She connects with who we were on a deep level, which explains why reactions to her are so unbelievably strong.
Biden needs to bear in mind that you can’t win a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, especially one who’s cute and has great comedic timing. His debate strategy needs to take into account who she is so he doesn’t become her straight man.
And Obama needs to cast her as the polebrity that she is and to help us see her in that light. Nobody really wants the captain of the pep squad to be a 72 year-old heartbeat away from one of the most powerful positions in the world. He’s not going to do that by attacking her or responding to her attacks. I was happy to see the humor coming through yesterday. I think that’s a good start. But he’s got to define her as the political catnip that we all like to play with but that will make us sick if we have too much, and he has to do it soon.