He said it

Ever since the Sarah Palin convention speech, I had an idea percolating in my brain about the problem with the American electorate's positive response to presidential candidates they can personally identify with. I've tried to write this blog post a half a dozen times, and every time I end up scrapping it. Part of it was that I couldn't really put the fear I was feeling into the right words. And part of it was my fear that the thing I wanted to say was something that I maybe shouldn't say because it would come out all condescending, offensive, and dangerously.

Last night I tried to talk about this with my Republican father, expressing that I was troubled we have a Vice Presidential candidate who has the same amount of constitutional knowledge as your average person you'd meet on the street. I said I want my candidates to be better than the average person, and my father called that a liberal talking point. This just reiterated all of my discomfort about the whole thing, but it also reiterated why I can't say the things I've been thinking about the dangers of averageness being a selling point for a candidate for the nation's highest two offices.

As luck would have it, I don't have to find the right way to walk that verbal tightrope, because Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has said it all for me. This is a dangerous, breathtaking, brilliant, offensive, risky, honest, ugly, revelatory article about what Sarah Palin's success tells us about America. Even if you disagree with it, even if you think it's horrible for the same reasons that I never got around to writing that blog post, you must read it. It's everything I wanted to say, but didn't dare to.

Just a sample:

In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. 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.

It gets worse, not better, from there. But still...read it. There is some truth there, hurtful though it may be.