I was all set to write about the wretched economic situation and Detroit's plea for a bailout. Then, out of the blue (or is it red?), up pops Sarah Palin and suddenly I'm right back in Palinmania.
Did you catch any of her "victory tour" this week? It seems to have started in her kitchen in beautiful Wasilla. There she was, being televised to the world, orating in her peculiar vernacular, while simultaneously whipping up a batch of moose stew ( do you "whip up" moose stew?). I bet you thought it would be hard for her to walk and chew gum. Not for our hockey mom. She was as smooth as a fresh sheet of ice.
Her week continued with interviews on CNN, NBC and Fox, among others. The tour culminated with a rousing speech to the gathered Republican governors in Miami, eager to learn from Palin just how the party would be reassembled into anything that might have any chance of winning a national election again in their lifetimes.
Wait a minute! Did I just say that the Republican party didn't win the last election? Oops, yes, that's what happened all right. Obama did win both the popular vote and the electoral college vote. That means McCain and, I assume, Palin, must have lost.
Well, then how do you explain Palin taking a victory tour?
You can't. Unless your logic flows like Sarah's syntax.
Just to remind you, here's an example of "Sarah Speech", as reported by Maureen Dowd last week in the New York Times:
"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."
I guess that's clear enough. Even George W. would be proud to have uttered that particular string of words.
Re-reading that little ditty, it's easy to see why she has garnered a 98% name recognition among the great unwashed masses. Yes, of course, they like the fact that she's a hard working super-mom; and her looks, ideas and logic are simply captivating. But, most of all, they can't get enough of her folksy way of speaking. Her fans say that they would feel comfortable with her in the White House because she's just like them.
As Sarah herself would say, "this should result in a loud shout-out to the country's educators that they'd better get on the ball and plow through those glass doors that may be open just a crack".
So therein lies the lesson for today: there's a new day dawning, and it's all about teaching our children to speak with a clarity that every "Real American" (not those wussy Northeastern and West Coast elitists) can understand.
Oh, and one more thing. The government would be crazy to throw any money into the coffers of the big three automakers unless it's part of a pre-packaged bankruptcy proceeding in which: the management is replaced; the labor contracts are renegotiated; critical suppliers are paid so they don't go bankrupt; the common shareholders are wiped out; outstanding bonds are converted to common equity; and the government money is injected as preferred stock or senior bonds.
