As Woody Allen said, the heart wants what it wants. So, why are you here?

Palin Fatigue

I'm sorry, I've just got to say it... I'm exhausted by all this Sarah Palin coverage. I just don't want to see anything else about her. I'm done.

She's become a national obsession, and everything new that comes out is just more nonsense. Endless articles about Sarah Palin's moustache. Her latest minor gaffe while speaking. Bristol's ultrasound results. Pundits explaining the odds of McCain dying and her taking office. Various celebrities explaining in interviews how much they hate her. The constant anti-Palin blogging. Conservatives racing each other to jump off the bandwagon first. The Palin-themed porno that's about to be released (really! It's gone this far!). It's gotten unbelievable.

I can deal with the nonsense that might have some connection to whether I want to vote for a candidate or not (Jeremiah Wright), or the things that probably don't but could be considered telling anyway (John McCain's house count). That's all fair game. Let's sort the Bill Ayers from the overhead projectors from the "let's bomb bomb bomb Irans" from whatever else we've got lying around. I can deal with that.

But why did the election have to become a feeding frenzy over Palin? AVI would probably say that it's a tribal difference - the Arts and Humanities crowd recognizing one of what Christian Lander at Stuff White People Like would call "the wrong sort of white person." She hunts and participated in beauty pageants and likes being a mom and has questions about evolution and has probably ironically said "neat-o" several times in her life. She is the sort of person that the A&H tribe pretends not to despise. Unsuccessfully. Or rather, the sort of person that the A&H tribe pretends to hate individually rather than hating everyone similar to her. Unsuccessfully.

The selection of Palin was obviously going to be a controversial one anyway, but not for the reasons it ended up being. The question was supposed to be having a candidate so inexperienced after McCain attacked Obama so consistently about not being ready to be President. Instead, the debate became how McCain could select someone like her to be Vice President.

But naturally, the experience difference between Obama and Palin is embarrassingly small. And people's strong reaction to Palin's nomination should have, but did not, spark a great debate. Why is Obama so strongly considered an acceptable nomination for President but Palin is so strongly not considered one? What qualities does Obama have that Palin lacks? What qualities are we looking for that we're so certain one has and the other does not?

I wish the press debate had been about that. I wish we could have debated what it was about Palin that so divided America. But that was never the discussion. Instead, we talked endlessly about her difficulty with interviews and whether Tina Fey's impression of her would shape the campaign and the shape of her glasses.

And I'm just done with it.

Labels: experience, mccain, Obama, palin

posted by Ben Wyman @ 2:35 AM