Thursday, July 9, 2009

THE TRUTH ABOUT SARAH'S SUCCESS

Sarah Palin is not well informed. She’s not well educated. She’s not well spoken, extemporaneously (although she gives a terrific prepared speech!). And it would be difficult to make a case that she demonstrates either a keen intelligence or even an adequate analytical mind. So, how then do we explain her meteoric rise to national prominence as a serious political leader?

Here’s the Truth – not the Ugly Truth – far from it. Here’s the Attractive Truth.

Deal with it… There is a big, big difference between men and women. It’s all about sex – S-E-X! It is the crucial factor in most behaviors involving human beings. Age has little to do with it, except perhaps to overstate it among younger people and, more recently, the reinvigorated, sexually liberated older folks. Class, race, socio-economic status, education… you name the qualifier – the difference between the sexes overwhelms it.

This morning, in a distinctly unscientific study, I checked The New York Times, the nine major television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC plus CNBC, CNN, ESPN, FOX NEWS, HLN and MSNBC), the four network affiliate stations where I live, and for good measure I even tuned into two channels on my cable package I’ve probably never looked at before – a Canadian news channel and the BBC American feed. I saw the same thing on all sixteen media outlets. I saw both men and women – BUT – while the men represented a fairly accurate cross-section of what men really look like, ALL the women were very attractive. In fact, they were so much more attractive than any group or collection of women would be anywhere else, it was striking.

In The New York Times, I took note that 100% of the ads with women in them had only good looking, sexy women in them – that’s beautiful women in every single newspaper ad. On the nine television stations, every woman who appeared on camera – which is to say every anchor, reporter or correspondent – with the possible exception of Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, was an attractive woman, attractively presented.

Ms. Mitchell (or more accurately, Mrs. Greenspan) aside, not all women in the world are as beautiful or as well prepared as those who are on television. These TV women do not look like the women you run into everyday in real life. And yet, the men on the same TV shows do more closely reflect the average look of men everywhere.

I bring this fact to the forefront only to emphasize the difference between men and women… the big, big difference and the role this difference plays in our perception of people. Now, let me just say it – get it out in the open – the straight Truth.

Sarah Palin’s success – 100% of it – is due to this: Men want to fuck her. Women want to be her. A+B=C. That’s how she got to be Governor of Alaska and that’s the only reason she was picked to be the Republican candidate for Vice President.

Is there any need to prove the first point? If looks were not everything, why else would the Republican National Committee spend more money in two weeks dressing her up than 99% of women spend on clothes and makeup in their whole lifetime? On the second point – that women want to be like her – look around you the next time you’re in public, the next time you’re in a supermarket or in Wal-Mart or on a train or a bus or simply walking down a crowded street. Most women are not anywhere near as good-looking as Sarah Palin is. And yet we know - they want to be.

However, in public life, and certainly in public office, the range of men you will see look to be representative of the range of men everywhere else in our society. Tall, short, thin, fat, bald, hairy – you name it. If you watch the news channels with any regularity you already know that these men – Congressmen, Senators, Governors and the like – are not the best dressed or the most finely groomed men you will ever see. Why not? It’s not necessary.

Then… there’s Sarah Palin.

Forget for now, if you can, whether or not you agree with anything she says she stands for. But ask yourself this – honestly – If Sarah Palin didn’t look the way she does would anyone have ever taken her seriously? And now that we’ve heard her as well as seen her, why does anyone continue to?

Men want to fuck her. Women want to be her. A+B=C. That’s how Sarah Palin got to be the Governor of Alaska and the Republican candidate for Vice President. That’s also why 2012 is the year for her – the end of the line. By 2016, that which makes her so appealing now will probably have withered and died.

1 comment:

Alfonso said...

My political prayer of the week:

“Oh Lord, please let Sarah Palin run for president in 2012, and please let her have Tom Tancredo as her running mate.”

If you observed any of the Tea Party convention held in Nashville last weekend, you saw some of the prime examples of hypocrisy in recent times. First there was that unrepentant racist, former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who told the convention that Obama couldn’t have been elected in ’08 if there were still literacy tests (which were used in the South for over 70 years, as recently as the 1960s, to keep blacks from registering to vote). His message was clear: only ignorant blacks put Obama in the White House, and we need to reinstate those literacy tests. There was vigorous applause for his remarks from the assembled Tea Party rednecks.

Then came the keynote speaker, Sarah Palin, whose snarky speech included ridiculing Obama for speaking with Teleprompters. At that instant she had her own crib notes scrawled on the palm of her left hand, to help her answer questions from toadies onstage—questions that hadn’t yet been asked. Ms. Palin lit into Rahm Emanuel (correctly) for being out of line in calling liberal opponents “retards.” She demanded he be fired. But the mother of a retarded child wasn’t about to criticize Rush Limbaugh for using the same word to describe the same people. She justified Rush’s rant as “humor.”
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And so, I’m praying for Sarah to run in 2012, as she’s increasingly threatening to do--whether as a Republican, a third-party candidate, or whatever. If she does, I’m sure that even the inept and unfocused Democrats can beat her, and without reinstatement of those literacy tests.

Alfonso Otero