Gutting fish and political hegemony

On “The O’Reilly Factor” tonight, Dennis Miller offered a two-part theory regarding his thoughts on the motive and/or reasoning for the potential content of Gov. Palin’s memoir “Going Rogue,” a book he nor anyone else – save for Palin and a few others – has actually read:

1. Play it “close to the vest” and run for President;
2. Tell all, and become another “Jackie [sic] Susann.”

In other words, tell the truth and become a media sideshow, or distort the truth and welcome to the Rubber Chicken Derby. And George Lucas would have us think only Siths deal in absolutes!

Miller is one of the better-known conservative celebrities out there, and he is cashing paychecks on “The Factor” by sending back-handed compliments directed at Gov. Palin, which is no doubt exactly what Bill “Gov. Palin is Welcome to Come On The Factor Anytime” O’Reilly wants. I gave Miller the benefit of the doubt the first time around when he joined the annoying chorus questioning Gov. Palin’s intelligence, but geez, Dennis, whose side are you on? I know Bill likes to “play it close to the vest” by wandering about the political stratosphere under cover of “looking out for you,” but Dennis, you have a greener meadow in which to graze.

I don’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence, so I’ll degrade my own. In 1993 I graduated from high school and moved to Freeman’s Guest Ranch, located 18 miles outside of The Open Air Insane Asylum that is Creede, Colo. I worked as a dishwasher in town and lived in a ranch bunkhouse for free. While there, I stumbled upon a copy of the Jacqueline Susann novel “Valley of the Dolls” and freely admit that I read it in one sitting (that summer, to get off the point, I also read John Madden’s “Hey Wait A Minute, I Wrote A Book,” which is the “Absalom, Absalom!” of sporting literature).

“Valley of the Dolls” [consulting my book review cliché generator] “the sordid tale of three young women trying to make it in Hollywood.” Oh yeah, and “dolls” are barbiturates, and the bombshell actress gives in to, shall we say, back-of-the-Volkswagen coitus near the, um, end. Anyway – take a very deep breath - it was a publishing sensation and was turned into a movie and in a pique of brilliance was used by a young Roger Ebert as the inspiration for the script “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” (itself feeling Polanski-ish while featuring a Phil Spector clone) which was turned into a motion picture by The Stanley Kubrick of B-Movies Himself Russ Meyer and if one wanted to jam any more Hollywood Babylon into one sentence one would find the space too small to fit the Higgs boson.

In other words, Miller – who’s not read Gov. Palin’s book and is not privy to her next move – just reduced the potential of Gov. Palin’s unpublished, best-selling work to either a cynical move meant to thrust her political career forward, or a cynical attempt to enrich herself and her family; or, more salaciously, he just compared it to the work of a woman best-known for hyper-stylizing Hollywood hedonism and shamelessness. Ergo, it’s outside the realm of possibility that Gov. Palin might actually have something substantive to say beyond the politically-unrelated details the media happily dug up the moment she mentioned those Styrofoam columns. Yeah, it’s not like the public’s not acquainted with her writing by now.

Like you, gentle reader, I’ve not read “Going Rogue” either, but unlike Dennis Miller (a guy who I liked long before he became a conservative) I don’t think Gov. Palin clocks her moves based on Rasmussen polls and talking heads. Of the cancerous fallouts of the Clinton “War Room” mentality is that right-thinking people assume that everyone interested in public office is a slave to polls, focus groups, Beta-boy pontification and really radical rules. I’m naïve, sure, but I think some people – not just Gov. Palin – actually seek higher office to curb the action of government rather than propagate it. As an Oklahoman, I’m not naïve when I cite the career of Sen. Tom Coburn.

For supporters of Gov. Palin, the post 7/3 attitude came into view when, shortly after announcing her resignation as Governor, she fielded media questions wearing coveralls while gutting fish. Say what you will about Gov. Palin, but an Obama-like obsession with media- and pundit-perception doesn’t seem to be at the top of her list of pathos. While Pres. Obama seems to think those candids of him showing poor position while wearing sweatpants and “playing basketball” project an image of … something … the rest of us are quite aware that Gov. Palin leaves little to the imagination when giving the media a look into her life. She is who she is without apology, and 13 months later, many still don’t get it: her frankness, her ability to be who she is without apology, pomp or circumstance is part of her charm, usurped only by her unabashed conservatism.

The world has been taken over by Caufieldian phonies. It’s no longer grounded in political philosophy, as the GOP has as many phonies as the beer-nuts currently running the show. Our lines used to break on simple concepts of Donkey-GOPer, Lib-Con, Right-Left. To a small degree, those still matter, but the tidal swell of outrage is not any of those, it’s Common and Elite. Elites track polls and studiously reword position papers, while Commons go to Tea Party protests while telling their Rep they're mad as hell and will take it only for another year or so. Our misguided hero Newt tells us to homogenize and support a pro-choice, pro-card-check, pro-taxemtilltheybleed candidate in the Empire State’s 23rd, and we say bugger off, we’ll elect a conservative.

Note to Newt and aspiring political philosophers everywhere: political hegemony isn’t attained through philosophical homogeny.

As the mood spreads, more people will take Gov. Palin in those coveralls as she sends out those Facebook messages. Since she has been in the national spotlight, Gov. Palin has not let down the Commons among us, she’s never betrayed who she is or from where she came. I’ll take Sarah Palin gutting fish in front of a camera rather than Newt Gingrich gutting conservatives behind the scenes any day of the week.

As for Dennis Miller, maybe he’ll change his tune once he bothers to read the book.