Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
I don’t know what disturbs me more: the Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Sarah Palin appearance I’ve now watched over half a dozen times, or the collective cognitive dissonance that overtook the national media — and, apparently, almost everyone in America — with respect to that appearance.
No, I did not find it — or, needless to say, Sarah Palin — charming. Certainly not “hilarious.” Yes, she does, demonstrably, have “rhythm.” No, the fact that she was able to be a “good sport” and appear on a television program that has been skewering her for weeks does not raise her in my esteem one single iota. And no, that sketch did not make me smile. It in fact made me want to vomit.
Where is my sense of humour, you ask? Am I, in fact, a dour liberal determined to glower through November 4th? What exactly is my fucking problem? Glad you asked — if, in fact, you asked. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of problems…
FIRST PROBLEM:
If a Democratic VP sat there smiling and dancing in her chair (Or even WORSE, a BLACK MALE Democratic VP) while a heavily weighted, menacing RAP song was performed wherein a GUN went off not once but TWICE — and the second time it wasn’t a MOOSE that got shot, but some unseen SOMEONE in the distance…
Would there be no faux outrage the next day on the news shows from Republican surrogates? A RAP SONG, glorifying GUN VIOLENCE?
SECOND PROBLEM:
It WAS funny, by itself. But Sarah Palin was sitting there. Sarah Palin sat there, tacitly endorsing a menacing-sounding song that included TWO SHOCKING, PAINFUL sounds of REPEATED gunshots.
The SECOND, as I said, was aimed at an UNSEEN someone in the distance. And Sarah Palin sat there, smiling and approving.
And I cannot help but think that there were people watching that, psychotic people, who looked at her sitting there — people with TRAVIS BICKLE TENDENCIES, who were wearing their tinfoil antennae and received her message louder and clearer than they have at her rallies: GO SHOOT HIM.
I think the sketch would have been very funny without her sitting there. But WITH her sitting there, smiling and dancing in her chair? Grotesquely ugly. And Amy Poehler’s face as she aimed her last shots and stalked off the stage was ugly, too.
“When I say ‘Obama,’ you say ‘AYERS.’
‘Obama’ — ‘Ayers’
‘Obama’ — ‘Ayers’
McCain-Palin, gonna put the nail in the coffin”
That last line in particular; did Palin have approval of the song lyrics? Was she allowed to SEE the lyrics? Did she know about the gunshots? Did they rehearse? Did she hear the gunshots? These are all things I’m curious to know.
Of course, since she won’t answer REAL policy questions, I’m sure I’ll not know the answers to THESE questions before the election, if ever.
I’ve got this on DVR. I’ve watched it over and over. It makes me more sick to my stomach every time I watch it.
And it truly is curious — what is truly horrific would actually BE hilarious were she NOT sitting there, virtually placing a seal of approval on it. It is her very PRESENCE that renders it toxic. It is her APPROVAL that renders it NOT comedy but just another negative campaign speech — but this time with visual aids.
I’m sure many will say I am being overly sensitive. Perhaps it is the effect of recent events — a reporter assaulted at a Palin rally, or the oft-reported, twice shouted “KILL HIM” at the mention of Obama’s name at McCain-Palin events… But then, it doesn’t really matter why I am sensitive to this stuff, now, does it? After weeks of goading their supporters and needling, poking and prodding them, after weeks of hate speech and negative ads full of lies, weeks of encouraging their surrogates to lie blatantly on every conceivable platform, McCain and Palin are reaping what they have sown.
Last night, after attending an Obama rally, residents of Fayetteville, North Carolina came outside to discover that THIRTY OF THEIR CARS HAD THEIR TIRES SLASHED
But I’m sure that Sarah Palin and John McCain — who’s so very, very “proud of the people who attend [his] rallies” — will immediately repudiate and disavow this heinous act and, of course, dismiss it as the act of one bad apple. Nothing to do, of course, with the poisonous speech and the lies his campaign has been spreading for weeks about Barack Obama. Nothing at all, at all, at all.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
