There’s Something About Sarah
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It has been nearly a year and a half since Sarah Palin became a
household name in America and the world over. Despite the fact
she was on the bottom half of a losing ticket and hasn’t held
public office in more than half a year three cable networks
provided live coverage of her address to the Tea Party Convention
last Saturday night in Nashville. Is there any other private
American citizen who could command that sort of undivided
attention?
The answer is nobody else could and liberals know it all to
well. How else can one explain their sudden obsession with
Palin’s left hand? The best liberals could do was to say that she
had cheated by writing a few words on her hand. So let’s see if I
get this straight. Sarah Palin has all of six words on her palm
and liberals
conclude “she needs a cheat-sheet.” (1) Yet
liberals don’t seem to mind that President Obama needs a
teleprompter to read a nearly 2,000 word speech during the
National Prayer Breakfast last week and still
mispronounced the word “corpsman” not once but twice. (2)
Talk about hand wringing.
But Palin is well aware life is unfair and that this is par
for the course. She responded as perhaps only she could. During a
rally for Texas Governor Rick Perry the following day, she wrote
on her palm for all to see, “Hi Mom!” Now that’s telling liberals
to talk to the hand.
Yet for all their disdain for the former Alaska governor,
liberals still can’t quite put their finger on her. Much in the
same way they couldn’t understand Ronald Reagan. I don’t know if
the Tea Party Convention organizers did this by design, but
Palin’s speech fell on what would have been President Reagan’s
99th birthday. Indeed, she paid homage to the Gipper when she
began her speech. Palin, like Reagan, has an uncanny ability to
read the public pulse and tend to it with a common touch.
During Reagan’s lifetime he was at various times called an
“amiable dunce,” derided for describing ketchup as a vegetable
(even though he never actually did), and chided for reading from
cue cards. Yet it is worth remembering what former CNN anchor
Bernard Shaw said in
conversation with Wolf Blitzer and others following Reagan’s
funeral:
SHAW: Can I say something that touches on a very sensitive
issue?BLITZER: Of course.
SHAW: The news media and how we failed to thoroughly cover and
communicate the very essences we’re talking about possessed by
Ronald Reagan. What I’ve been reading and what I’ve been
hearing I did not get during his two terms in office, or did I
miss something?BLITZER: I think you’re on to something, Bernie.
SHAW: I think we failed our viewers, listeners, and readers to
an appreciable extent. I can’t quantify it, but I’ll put it
there. Because I certainly missed a lot.
Now there are those amongst conservatives who scoff
at the notion that Palin is a Reagan in the making. Yet when
reading Shaw’s poignant observations one cannot help but think
that the liberal media are failing their viewers, listeners, and
readers to a considerable extent with Palin as they did with
Reagan more than a generation ago. Should Palin run for and be
elected to the White House, there is every reason to believe the
liberal media will do much the same with her and miss a lot.
These sentiments would be especially pronounced should she
dethrone Obama. One would hate to think it would take Palin’s
passing for the liberal media to utter a kind word about her, but
that is probably what it would take.
Yet then again I am sure Palin would just as soon not to
live long enough to see the day when MSNBC sings her praises.
During her address before the 2008 Republican National Convention
she
said, “Now here’s a little news flash for those reporters and
commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good
opinion. I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this
great country.” (5)
Of course, there are those who will always believe that
Palin will need someone to hold her hand. But she does not stand
alone. To paraphrase that great gospel song penned by the late
Gene MacLellan, she has “put her hand in the hand of the man who
stilled the water/put her hand in the hand of the man who calmed
the sea.” Just so we are clear the man with that hand is not the
“charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” Yet so long as Sarah Palin
keeps a firm grip on that hand she will be able to reach out and
be received. Meanwhile, liberals will be left to grasp at
straws.
