Being Sarah Palin

What’s the most overused, tired joke you can think of? Perhaps it’s ‘so, what first attracted you to billionaire blah blah blah…?’ The joke is so overused I can’t quite bring myself to believe that it was terribly funny the first time, but as I love Caroline Aherne I at least attempt to believe otherwise. Another overwhelming candidate is ‘that’s what she said’. Perhaps it’s another stereotypical female character in a bad film: hey I’m super gorgeous and thin but I EAT PIZZA aaaaaaall the time. I FALL OVER. I luuurve COMPUTER GAMES. I’m ZANY. I’m sure people like that do exist, but they’re definitely not as common as Hollywood would have us believe.

It’s got to be hard enough being the basis of one of those jokes, but it doesn’t help when those who should support you lend their support to them. ‘Bristol Palin Thinks Her Mom Sarah Is 'Way Hotter' Than 'Game Change' Star Julianne Moore’ according to Huffington Post.

Oh, to be Sarah Palin. I’m not a defender of Palin’s views, by any means. I think there are aspects of her life that are so brilliantly ironic that I do wonder if it was all planned for effect? Bristol Palin’s pregnancy was a classic example. That aside, I actually could not care less what she looks like, the glasses she’s wearing, or how she wears her hair, and this stupid obsession with her looks and the default view of her as a backwards, gun-toting lunatic is lazy and overdone, and her daughter choosing to remark on the former aspect is similarly unhelpful.

How about pointing out, as Shana Pearlman did, that the programme, in which Moore starred as Palin, contained inaccuracies, presumably put in there to enhance said view of Sarah Palin, because it’s ‘funny’ (it’s not). Pearlman pointed out:

At one point in the campaign Julianne Moore as Palin is asked about Troopergate, a scandal in which she was investigated for abusing her power in firing a state trooper. In the film, Palin says she’s been cleared of all wrongdoing; Woody Harrelson as campaign manager takes great umbrage to this, as he says it’s a lie. Wrong-o! Palin was in fact exonerated of any wrongdoing in the scandal, and anyway they couldn’t have discussed it at that point in the campaign, as the report in question didn’t come out till 3 November 2008, on the eve of the election.

Another howler is when Palin wishes to give a concession speech after the election and Steve Schmidt thunders that “No losing Vice Presidential nominee has ever given a concession speech! It violates American tradition and history!” Try again buttercup, losing Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro gave a concession speech on 6 November 1984.

See what I mean? It’s all explained brilliantly in Shana’s The Palin Effect: Money, Sex and Class in the New American Politics. A US presidential election is, quite simply, the greatest show on Earth. In the battle to occupy the most important seat in the world, in which power can be bought and sold, forces on either side hoodwink the public and claim their political victims. Witness the age of the Palin Effect. An extraordinary exposé of the political depravities and media-proliferated inequalities of the entire electoral process, The Palin Effect sheds light on an ugly phase of American politics hell bent on slander and spurious belittling. Revealing an increasingly greedy war based on class, sex and money, former Fox News and BBC journalist Pearlman looks at what motivates the protagonists in the electoral circus – the media, the people, the money, the candidates themselves – and wonders how free this star-spangled land really is.