Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.
And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin' Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.
And, as if to prove Taibbi's point, we have this comment on the article:
dang! with tat B-minus Hawaii prep school kid on the other side of tat fence clinchin' to names like Khalid al-Mansour, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko and Rev. Jeremiah Wright tat Palin lady from what you write fits right nicely in tat big picture. Maybe tat Matthew Franck fellow wus lookin' for a pin and not a needle in tat hay sack.
Aenold Glasow said, "It is harder to conceal igorance than to acquire knowledge." With tat neither one could be a hair on a gnats a!!. Sad tat Shawnee Chief Tecumseh ain't still around.
The quote in that quote, by the way, is Arnold Glasgow, and the word was, duh, "ignorance".
Read the whole thing here.
