Stupid is as stupid does

Can we stop it with the “Gov. Palin’s not the sharpest tack in the drawer” meme, one forever stated and implied by liberals, and increasingly agreed with by conservative writers and pundits? After seeing the fiscal, domestic and foreign policy fruits produced by the last nine months of the so-called Smartest Guys in the Room, I think most Americans, regardless of education, are ready for an Ivy-free Oval Office.

On “The O’Reilly Factor” last week, Dennis Miller was the latest to repeat this falsity with a reaction that is nothing short of reflexive, the idea that whenever one says something good about Gov. Palin in public, one must also point out that she needs to hit the books if she wants to be taken seriously. Before continuing, I would say not being taken seriously by house “conservatives” at The New York Times, The Washington Post, Meet the Press, Face the Nation et al should be worn as a badge of honor by any conservative considering a run for high office, especially Gov. Palin. The worst thing that could happen to Gov. Palin would be hagiographic columns from David Brooks, Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan. God forbid George Will take a moment from his campaign against blue jeans and Palin-bashing and start supporting Gov. Palin, for then we will know that the end is near.

In her keynote address to the RNC last year, Palin said she’s not going to Washington to seek out the good graces of establishment political players. Of all the great things she said in that speech, this was among the most important because frankly, conservatives are tired of being sold down the river by Republicans who invoke the conservatism of Reagan on the campaign trail only to govern like the nihilistic offspring of Nero once they begin warming their seat on The Hill.

There is no shame in supporting Gov. Palin and whatever her future plans may be without apology, qualification or caveat, and if one thinks her mental faculties need to be apologized for, one shouldn’t be supporting her and her endeavors. Wish her well, and begin writing in support of whichever interchangeable white, male centrist Republican will lose to Pres. Obama or Hillary Clinton in 2012.

This is nothing against Miller or other conservative pundits who’ve qualified their admiration of Palin with a knock against her smarts. Like various urban legends, you hear enough conservatives you respect say “..but she needs to do her homework…” and suddenly you being to believe it and repeat it. Even though technically true of any person wanting to pursue the Presidency, it has no bearing on why or why not people support Gov. Palin and whatever future ambitions she has. Not only would I take Gov. Palin in a game of H-O-R-S-E with Pres. Obama, I’d also put money on her in a game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit matched up against the Ivy-educated, worldly President who thought “Austrian” was a language while adding 7 stars to the American flag.

Pres. Obama’s tendency to bumble, stutter and obfuscate when going off-script is lovingly painted as the common trait of the high-IQ intellectual speaking in the deeply-thought manner of an academic, when in fact it’s basically like listening to Porky Pig if he’d graduated from Harvard Law. Strangely, I never hear the President’s fellow liberals saying things like, “Pres. Obama has a lot of appeal, but he really needs to buck up on American Geography, Western Germanic languages, and the grocery shopping habits of small-town Iowans.”

If listening to Pres. Obama or the thousands of other fussy liberal “deep thinkers” for more than 120 seconds can cause grand mal seizure’s in healthy human adults, one need only to read their “writing” to get a real taste of the depth of their “thinking.” Keep in mind, the same crowd that felt it imperative to award Albert Gore with a Nobel didn’t catch the unintended humor of the title The Assault on Reason, whereby the former Vice President and current globalista Chicken Little proceeds to launch the Omaha Beach of assaults on reason in each of the almost unreadable treatise’s 320 pages. I sent an email to an editor at Penguin recommending that if they wanted to avoid a frivolous “truth in labeling” lawsuit, they might have wanted to consider replacing the “The” in the title with the more appropriate “An.” I received no response, but if one needs evidence of the popularity of such liberal thinking, one need only go to your local bookstore’s bargain bin, which is usually stuffed with books written by Gore and other liberal intellects we’re constantly told Gov. Palin should be emulating.

Yet, as was, is and always will be, conservatives in general and Gov. Palin specifically will be held to a standard so high it would make Icarus acrophobic. If liberals wish to hold Gov. Palin and other conservatives to such a standard, that’s fine. But fellow conservatives, enough with the nodding in agreement when yet another tired, stale and inaccurate assessment of Gov. Palin’s intellect is downgraded by what are supposed to be fellow travelers. Most point to her interview with Katie Couric as the codec by which the sum of her knowledge can be gleaned, as though refusing to lie and say that she reads The New York Times was akin to her insisting that the sun revolves around the Earth. Anyway, it is a well-known fact that the only people who read The New York Times are liberals, ABC/NBC/CBS news producers, and Ann Coulter whenever she’s researching a book.

Like many of you, I too bought a copy of Going Rogue as soon as its release date was announced. When I purchased it, it was ranked at 32 at Amazon, and now it is ranked first at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I remarked last week that columnists and pundits who don’t like Palin have surely already written their reviews of a book they have not (and presumably will not) read. Particularly odd is the duality of such hypocrisy, that on one hand they call her a dullard yet, on the other hand, will conclude that if she hasn’t produced a memoir as influential and penetrating as The Education of Henry Adams, then she will have failed and once again proved her unworthiness in their eyes.

Remarkably, though, long after Palin’s book is done smashing various nonfiction/autobiographical sales records, it will probably be one of the most actually-read political memoirs ever produced. While more Americans have probably read Finnegan’s Wake than were able to make it through Bill Clinton’s 1,008-page catalogue of every human being he’s ever met in My Life, Palin is the type of person, politician and writer that people actually want to read. Those advanced sales aren’t coming from bulk buys down at the Republican National Committee, they’re coming from people who are ready for a dramatic change in contemporary American political culture.

Yet, liberals and limousine conservatives should beware before publishing their scathing reviews of Going Rogue if they don’t actually bother to read the book. I can’t wait for the fun to start when what I call the Chambers Shrugged Effect begins to multiply itself across the Internet. In the pages of National Review, Whittaker Chambers famously wrote a scathing review of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that is best-known for the fact that it’s obvious Chambers hadn’t actually bothered to read the book (in one paragraph alone, he mangles the names of two characters while erroneously stating the position held by the novel’s heroine). Just as Atlas Shrugged is probably the most widely read novel of more than 1,000 pages to ever publish, Palin’s memoir will likely be the most widely read political memoir of all time.

“Stupid is as stupid does,” Momma Gump repeatedly told her son. I’ve seen no evidence of anything nearing stupidity on the part of Gov. Palin. Now, a White House that sends the President to hard sell for an Olympics without knowing the outcome in advance?

Well, stupid is as stupid does.