Starving for Yin and Rockin' like Dokken

I want to give emphasis to the line William Shatner recited from Going Rogue regarding Kid Rock’s policy ideas.

Quick story: It was a decade ago, and I was watching the up-to-that-point dull Woodstock ’99. I’m a Gen-Xer, and Xers remember the ’99 affair for the Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers sets that ultimately led to full-blown boys-gone-bad incidents, including mass vandalism, pyromania, theft and – apologies for the phrase that follows – boob-grabbing.

Most of the festival had been rather dull, at least before Kid Rock showed up. As I recall, he was proceeded by enjoyable the but Valium-esque acoustic stylings of Jewel and Alanis Morissette (two artists I like), and then Kid Rock came out, in the middle of the afternoon, and decided it was time to wake everyone up, the stage erupting with fireworks as he launched into “Bawitdaba,” his first hit. The crowd didn’t know they were read for a full-blown rap-metal assault in the middle of a boring, gyno-rock afternoon, but they were.

While Pres. Obama appears daily on television (absent only the acoustic guitar) to simultaneously bore and enrage a growing segment of the American vox populi, Gov. Palin, first with her resignation, then with her Facebook Notes and op-eds, then when her book tour, then with her appearances at The Gridiron Club and Conan O’Brian, has plugged in to the amp and has proceed to shred, enlivening an audience that knew it wanted something to happen while having no certain idea what they wanted. While Pres. Obama is playing an off-key version of “Scarborough Fair” to a crowd ready to rock, Gov. Palin, seeing her chance, has plugged the Fender into the Marshall stack and is going Yngwie Malmsteen on a crowd that is begging for it.

In short, she's rockin' like Dokken.

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Sarah Palin’s book tour has ended, and its cessation coincides with the end of the media’s vile attempt to de-legitimize her. That doesn’t mean the smears will come to a halt or the condescension will lessen, it means that this character assassination will no longer be taken seriously by serious political observers or by the portion of the American public at large who can be described as anything other than “Palin-hater.” What Gov. Palin did at the Gridiron and on Conan put an end to such foolishness.

It’s one thing for libertarian feminist Liberals like the great Camille Paglia to have defended Gov. Palin from the start, it’s quite another when smart, down-the-line Liberals like Clarence Page being speaking well of her. If we can get Charles Krauthammer to cease from lobbing disappointing bombs her way, then the world can begin righting itself.

Yes, that was a pun, and yes, it was intentional.

What her plans are looking forward, no one knows, but know this: she is now taken with grave seriousness. Reading the comments below the one-sentence statement Ben Smith at Politico made regarding Gov. Palin’s appearance on Conan is to understand how her foes openly understand the danger she poses to the wholesale domination of national politics by Donkeys: “Palin was, various Democrats emailed me, scary good on Tonight.” One wonders if the GOP establishment and its eastern political wonks will begin to notice this and take it – and her – seriously, or if they will continue to work against her, wishing she would just go away.

It was the aforementioned confluence of events in the last few days solidified this legitimacy that the heaving, hulking media machine did not want to happen and with its every available power attempted to prevent, namely the concept of Sarah Palin as a Serious Figure. Certain media figures will continue to click their heels thrice, hoping she’ll go away, but the smart ones are beginning to understand that this woman has power, it is real, and it’s time to begin paying attention. They don’t call it a bandwagon because it’s a quiet, lonely place. They may want Gov. Palin's book, her Facebook Notes, her op-eds and her book tour to be nothing more than trivial, effluvial remnants easy to ignore and deny, but Gov. Palin has hit a gusher of liquid gold.

In spite of a public relations campaign foisted upon the American public by The Obama Administration and his perverse, suicidal admirers in the American media, Pres. Obama’s numbers are falling to Middle Earth with a political gravity even Albert Gore would be ashamed to deny. Inversely, that same fall passed Gov. Palin as she climbs in the various polls – in spite of the media’s best efforts, the more the public learns about Sarah Palin, the more they love her; also, to continue the analogy, the more the public learns about Pres. Obama, the more they dislike the man and the policies he’s trying to force down our collective throats.

Most of us who stood in freezing cold weather just to get a few seconds to say “hi” and “thank you” and shake her hand could’ve told you this. No book tour has, in my lifetime, ever seen the attention Gov. Palin’s received, and I would venture to say that J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer are the only two writers who could equal or surpass a tour like Gov. Palin’s – keep in mind, both women write fantasy novels aimed at teenagers (please, Potter and Twilight fans, I know they’re not Just Fantasy Novels – it wasn’t meant as an insult). No politician on the planet could come close to what Gov. Palin has pulled off.

It is akin to Beatlemania, except instead of shrieking and fainting, today’s teenage girls have their noses buried in a book written by a woman who is a wonderful role model for them to look up to – it was surreal how many teenage girls (and boys, to be fair) I saw reading the Governor’s book and waiting in line in the freezing cold at the Norman, Okla. Hasting’s just for a chance to meet the woman. Each of you who went to a signing know exactly what I’m talking about.

The age of ‘Cuda as Whipping-Girl has ceased, and the age of Sarah as Kingmaker has begun – I look forward to Gov. Palin’s future moves, and to helping prove to millions of Americans she is no flash in the pan, no SNL caricature and, most importantly, no Barack Obama. She is the yin to his yang, and in three years, the country will be starving for the yin.

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Also, C4Pers, Palin supporters owe a huge debt to Camille Paglia - I've never met the woman and many of her politics aren't mine, but I have read most of her writing, and for a long time she was the only prominent, respected Liberal woman who not only defended Gov. Palin (even as a supporter of first Hillary Clinton, and later Barack Obama) but professed admiration as well.