Would America Put A Desperate Housewife in the Oval Office? Yes!

Sarah Palin’s reported pettiness in her newly published book reduces her to the ranks of reality television stars and sitcom “divas.” You know, those “desperate” and “real” housewives we see in the fictional ABC series and the “reality” shows on Bravo featuring the ghetto-fabulous from New Jersey and Atlanta.

I admit, I was rooting for Palin when she first appeared on the national political scene. After my candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost her bid to become the first woman President of these United States, I was despondent and somewhat resentful. The young African-American who cried at the Democratic Convention in Denver because women had been left out again could have been me.

I actually left the Democratic party after all the talk that week about women’s issues and no action to put a woman on the Democratic ticket and I LMAO when the Republicans were audacious enough to put Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on theirs. My glee was short-lived as the media pounced on a candidate who was not ready for “prime time,” as it were.

I sympathized with VP nominee Palin having had two disastrous television appearances of my own when I was on both “Oprah” and “Sally.” I was totally mesmerized and enthralled by Oprah, once my idol, and nearly unable to speak, and certainly unable to debate size issues with her – my reason for being on the show.

And, despite Sally’s genuine warmth and support (which I did not get from Oprah, who is supposed to have a patent on both), I was cranky due to having to travel to New Haven, Connecticut (where her show was originally broadcast), from Columbus, Ohio, in the middle of a snowstorm, arriving in New York late and missing my limo, then having to take a luxury bus called the “Connecticut Limo” to New Haven.

I didn’t get to my hotel until one in the morning and the next day when some thin woman from the audience brought up health issues during a discussion on size discrimination, I let her have it, reminding that as a thin, white female she is just as likely to get osteoporosis as I am to get hypertension. I was so incensed, I couldn’t think of the word “osteoporosis” and had to ask one of my fellow panelist who supplied me with the ammo I needed to mow her down.

She got her revenge though. She told me that I was young then (I was thirty-seven at the time), but as I got older, I would have trouble with my joints due to my weight. Well, she was prophetic. However, the joint problems started even earlier than expected due to my deciding to be a behavior specialist at thirty-nine and actually becoming physically involved with “take downs” and other manual restraints during aggressive outbursts by individuals with behavioral issues from the age of forty to forty-eight.

Unlike, Palin, however, if I write a book about my television appearances, I won’t blame Oprah or Sally’s prophetic guest. I just wasn’t ready for the “sound byte” world of live television where your unedited words taken out of context can make you sound either stupid or ridiculous or both.  I sounded like a racist telling someone that statistically her race made her susceptible to disease; as well as siz(e)ist – the very thing I was speaking against - telling her that her size was a factor also.

Likewise, Palin was not prepared to be interviewed by the likes of Katie Couric, who asked seemingly innocuous questions that Palin didn’t seem to be able to answer. In her book, she allegedly accuses Couric of badgering her – I don’t know if this is true or not because I haven’t read the book and have no intention of reading it. Palin supposedly goes after everyone who gave her a hard time during the campaign.

So, considering her sinking to the level of a high school senior writing nasty things in her classmates’ yearbooks to retaliate for imagined wrongs, would Sarah Palin make a good candidate for President? And if she was a candidate, would she win? I say “YES!” Why? Because our elections are decided by the people and the people in this country are more influenced by celebrity, popularity, and controversy than they are by character, intelligence, and integrity.

Why else would Jessie Ventura and Arnold Schwazenegger be elected governors? Why else would talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck influence political opinion for a small but vocal segment of the American public?  And how else does Dick Cheney still get press after a disastrous eight years of influencing policy probably more than any Vice-President in history because he wants to make sure history remembers him fondly?

Let’s face it. Sarah Palin is the perfect President for people who think “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” “The Bachelor,” and those “Real Housewives” are good television and hang on every word written about and every YouTube showing clips of Brittney, Lindsay, and Kanye behaving badly. Sarah Palin is the perfect leader for the “gossip girls” and guys who think all a woman has to do to be relevant is “look hot.” She IS America! 

She embodies all of the silliness, banality, and idiocy we’ve allowed to flourish in a country that has given birth to some of the greatest intellects in the world and which has shown the world the best form of democratic government in existence. Because we are a democratic republic, she is much more likely to win a popular vote than, say, John McCain.

Like Toledo’s three-time mayor, Carlton Finkbeiner, she keeps tongues wagging and has enough popular appeal to get those who think critical thinking is choosing between Burger King and MacDonald’s to vote for her. But what about the rest of us? When George Bush “won” in 2000, my brother, John, actually left the country and moved to a British isle for a couple of years before returning to California.

He could not and would not recognize “W” as his President, but eventually realized being an American is more important than whoever occupies the White House at any given time. America has survived bad decisions in the past, as well as a few Presidents that should never have been elected – Hoover comes to mind given our present financial crisis.

However, if Palin does get elected – and God forbid she does – it will be a new day in American and the conservative right will finally get what they want: the end of reproductive rights, the outlawing of not only gay marriage but gay coupling, the elimination of entitlement programs, the mass deportation or illegal aliens, and no minimum wage increases for the duration of her term which will likely be a full eight years with a Bloomberg-like bid for a third and maybe even fourth term for President.

The election of Sarah Palin as President would be the end of the American we know and the beginning of a nightmare.

But is it likely to happen? I sincerely hope not, but every time I visit my neighbors and find them watching “idiot TV,” I realize in a country where the lowest common denominator determines the types of movies produced, music recorded,  television programming aired, and books published, that same majority of “the people” could elect the least qualified and most ill-equipped person to lead this country right into a dark age that will rival the first one and set us back two hundred years when people were forced to wear scarlet letters.

So, before we write the least likeliest of candidates off as a “slim to none” possibility  for the nation’s highest office and smugly assume she doesn’t have a chance in hell to even get nominated, just remember that “pretend” cowboy with the swagger and the dumb look on his face that not only got nominated, but was given the Presidency despite not having won the popular vote a few short years ago.

An America that would allow George Bush to run the country eight years is an America that could very well allow Sarah Palin to do the very same thing.

I’m not taking anything for granted. Realizing I’m powerless to stop her, however, I’m not looking for a worthy opponent. Instead, I’m thinking of those people with whom I can network to maintain some sanity and free-thought during any pending age of “no” reason that may overtake this country.

If Palin wins, I will be in touch with many of you, I hope, long after they ban sites like OS and all information is censored and controlled by the thought police. I’ve already successfully published one underground paper when I was editor-in-chief of my censored college paper and to this day no one there knows who was behind that “rogue” publication.

I’ve got plans to start another in the event of a journalistic holocaust. Let’s all keep in touch. We’ll need to when the country goes mad and folks like US will be considered enemy combatants. I try not to be a conspiracy theorist but like they say about paranoia, it’s hard not to think there aren’t people conspiring against you when they really are.

Just listen to the far right and their agenda to “take back the country” and bring about an age of fascism that will rival the Third Reich and you’ll realize a conspiracy is definitely being plotted while we scoff. Of course we should continue to try to stop the unthinkable from happening, but if Palin gets elected, it’s a done deal. She's the perfect figurehead for a fascist regime.

Are you ready for the disUnited States of America?