Hail to the Chief

If Sarah Palin and her “political machine” ever hope to see the business end of a run for POTUS, they’d all better stop thinking of this job as a nine-to-fiver.  It’s going to take world class political handlers, policy wonks and spinmeisters, on a 24/7, basis to ever render this spectacularly silly woman even remotely ready for prime time – in our lifetime, let alone by 2012.

I don’t enjoy reading (or writing) ad hominem attacks on public figures.  That said, if Sarah Palin was just another ditzy ex-beauty queen, with delusions of grandeur, making an embarrassing spectacle of herself on the national stage, it would be one thing.  But, against all odds (and conventional wisdom), the woman is gathering serious momentum on her hell-bent, careening runaway train bound for glory and thereby merits some serious observation.

Example: on Sunday, La Palin, flying solo on the Twitter Machine, managed to expose her Islamaphobic dark side, her substandard facility with her native tongue, and a troubling lack of clarity and decisiveness — all while claiming parity with William Shakespeare – in the space of a couple of tweets. 

The subject that had La Palin all-atwitter was the Right’s most recent obsession – the Mosque at Ground Zero. 

It goes without saying, of course, that the “Mosque at Ground Zero” is neither a mosque nor is it to be located at “Ground Zero.”  It is a Muslim community center (along the lines of a YMCA) that will include a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, restaurant, and bookstore as well as a prayer room that might technically be considered a “mosque” room.  The site for this community center is two (city) blocks away from Ground Zero in an unassuming fifteen story building.  No one is planning to build the world’s tallest minaret on the ruins of the World Trade Center. 

As Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs mused:

“Suppose the community center was five blocks away instead of two blocks away.”

“Would that be OK?”

“How about if it was in midtown?”

“Far enough?”

“Maybe it needs to be in Queens?”

Without further ado, here are La Palin’s ruminations and refinements on the the Mosque at Ground Zero.

First Tweet:

“Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate”

Lucky for Sarah, she appears to have a few “guardian angels” keeping watch over her Twittery to tip her off when she tweets something stupid, because yesterday’s tweeting required a couple of do-overs before it was fit for the “campaign trail.”  Lucky for the rest of us, we have a few “guardian angels” who like to save the essence and evolution of such cultural artifacts  for posterity.

Revision #1: in which the author excises the imaginary word “refudiate” replacing it with an actual, albeit improperly used, word “refute.”  And while she’s at it with the red pen, “Peaceful Muslims” morphs into “Peaceful New Yorkers,” to wit:

“Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real”

Far be it from me to plumb the depths of Palin Profundity, however these changes do raise questions like:

Could “refudiate” have resulted from an unfortunate typo on Palin’s teeny, tiny blackberry keyboard?

Probably not; it’s not like “f” and “p” are close to each other – even on a phone.  Besides, as Charles Johnson pointed out, Palin recently used “refudiate” on a Fox News program; moreover, the use of this signature coinage also serves, as Johnson points out, to prove that these tweets were almost certainly composed by an “off-leash” Palin rather than some political flunky assigned to handle Palin’s Twittery.

The thornier issue is actually Palin’s dropping of the incendiary “peaceful Muslims” tag in favor of the more inclusive “peaceful New Yorkers.”  Perhaps Palin’s new gal-pal, Pamela Geller persuaded her that “peaceful Muslim” was an oxymoron?  Geller, who can be counted on to laud Islamaphobia wherever she finds it, was quick with the kudos for Palin’s standing up for the Ban the Mosque mob.  

Geller tweeted the following:

“Sarah Palin Opposes Ground Zero Mega Mosque: Gd, I love this woman! She is not afraid of the jackals, hyenas, a..”

Also, I’m sure that it did not escape Geller’s attention, back in April, when Palin was one of the few who voiced a defense of evangelist Franklin Graham after he was uninvited to chair a major Pentagon event in May, in light of his inflammatory remarks against Islam.

On that occasion, Palin wrote on her Facebook page:

“It’s truly a sad day when such a fine patriotic man, whose son is serving on his fourth deployment in Afghanistan to protect our freedom of speech and religion, is dis-invited from speaking at the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer service.

What this “fine patriotic man” had to say about Islam was:

“We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion.”

That’s fairly straightforward . . . no quibbling over who’s a peaceful Muslim and who isn’t.

* * * 

I suspect that, whatever thinly-veiled, paranoiac, low opinion Sarah Palin might have of Muslims (peaceful or otherwise), “New Yorkers” are probably a close second.  After all, Manhattan pols and pundits have, over time, offered some of the sharpest criticisms of Palin’s most heartlandish notions.  Nevertheless, she alleges to know a lot about New Yorkers “too raw, too real pain” and what should and shouldn’t be done about it.

Predictably, New York did not take Palin’s exhortations sitting down;  in fact, a policy aide from New York Mayor Bloomberg’s office strafed Palin and Geller’s meeting of the minds, in the shallow end, with these tweets:

“@SarahPalinUSA mind your business”

Followed up with this:

“@SarahPalinUSA whose hearts? Racist hearts?”

In short order, the aide’s survival instincts kicked in and she deleted both tweets (more’s the pity).

Later, last evening, the same aide added the following tweets, as explanation:

“Deleted post bc I regretted curt response. But fact is, I believe this city belongs to everyone – and no one more than another”

“Unlike @SarahPalinUSA, I was born here grew up here. Was showing off to a visitor today – look at how beautiful and diverse my city is.”

“I felt pain of 9/11, the trauma. I got through it by believing in my city. Not through fear and hate.”

At least Sarah can’t complain about the do-over . . .

Once Palin got the high-five from Geller, she was back to the appeal to the “peaceful Muslims” with her closing gambit:

“Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing”

Aside from Palin’s breathtakingly patronizing insinuation that Muslims have to asked to be understanding of the human emotion of feeling stabbed in the heart, there is that odd UNNECESSARY provocation line.  If I venture to paraphrase, all that I can come up with is that Palin believes that a) Muslims have quite enough mosques already, thank you very much and that b) Americans find the building of mosques by American Muslims, on the American land that they purchase for that purpose, somehow provocative. 

If that’s the case, I would like to point out to Ms. Palin that individual Americans could just as easily find the building of a synagogue, an A.M.E. church, a Mormon tabernacle, a Shinto temple (or a Dominionist Megachurch, for that matter) an “UNNECESSARY provocation;” but because we are Americans, those individuals will have to learn to live with their “provoked” feelings because that’s who we are – we all agreed, a long time ago, that any American citizen can build, attend or support any church that s/he is inclined to.

Ironically, it goes without saying, of course, that the “Mosque at Ground Zero” is neither a mosque nor is it to be located at “Ground Zero.”  It is a Muslim community center (along the lines of a YMCA) that will include a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, restaurant, and bookstore as well as a prayer room that might technically be considered a “mosque” room.  The site for this community center is two (city) blocks away from Ground Zero in an unassuming fifteen story building.  No one is planning to build the world’s tallest minaret on the ruins of the World Trade Center.  As Charles Johnson mused:

“Suppose the community center was five blocks away instead of two blocks away.”

“Would that be OK?”

“How about if it was in midtown?”

“Far enough?”

“Maybe it needs to be in Queens?”

* * *

To some, this may seem to be merely a semantic tempest in a teapot but, as long as this ridiculous woman appeals to a dismayingly growing cross-section of disenchanted Americans, we have a problem that we can’t afford to ignore.  It is a symptom of just how stressed and dysfunctional American society is, right now, that the notion of Sarah Palin in the White House is anything more than a cartoon nightmare.  A Palin presidency would put the last nail in the coffin of American credibility, worldwide, and would represent a dangerous step toward a theocratic totalitarianism where yesterday’s tweets become tomorrow’s policy (among other, equally frightening possibilities). 

Surely this is not the last of Sarahbelle’s Twittermania;  she obviously finds Facebook and Twitter totally awesome because their “hit and run” format allows one that precious freedom of speech without having to get bogged down in annoying explanations and/or defenses of what is said – perfect for the attention- or fact-challenged politico.  As a commenter on Huffington Post this morning incisively pointed out: “Giving Sarah Palin a Twitter account is like giving a monkey a machine gun.”  That says it quite nicely, IMO.

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