The Palin Myth Machine

From The Christian Science Monitor:

"Speaking Up: The Sarah Palin Story," expected in bookstores this fall, is part of the ZonderKidz biography series.

"Speaking Up," by Kim Washburn, is also cast as the story of a strong figure who struggles against the odds to reach success. The tagline on the book's jacket reads, "The story of a girl from Alaska who grew up to run for the White House."

"Speaking Up" also draws heavily on Palin's religious background, occasionally quoting from the Bible and focusing on Palin as a strongly committed Christian who refused to compromise her beliefs to suit either fellow politicians or the American public. Her insistence on speaking out about her belief in creationism, for instance, shows her standing up to Republican Party "handlers" who worried that she would alienate some voters.

Republican Party members are not necessarily heroes in this book. Palin is shown clashing more than once with members of the McCain campaign and at one point, Washburn explains, "it took a Democrat-turned-Independent politician [Joe Lieberman] to lift her spirits and restore her perspective."

And the publisher's description:

Speaking Up: The Sarah Palin Story is the latest addition to the best-selling Zonderkidz Biographies series. Noted author Kim Washburn tells the story of the woman who has captured the American attention, sparking debate and igniting imaginations around the country. From her humble beginnings in Wasilla, Alaska, to the historic 2008 election and beyond, Palin’s inspiring story of courage in the face of adversity and faith that overcame difficulties is told with honesty and insight. Kids ages 9-12 will learn why this engaging figure has become one of the most recognized faces in American politics today.

Palin Porn

From The Huffington Post:

As part of the "Porn in the U.S.A." exhibition at the London-based Lazarides Gallery's L.A. pop-up space, British artist Jonathan Yeo -- who rose to international attention after making a collage of George W. Bush out of clippings of pornography in 2007 -- will unveil another series of provocative collages next Friday. Among them you'll find Tiger Woods, Sigmund Freud, a wizened image of Sean Connery as James Bond, and the piece de resistance, Sarah Palin, wrapped in a moose head frame, no less. Instead of oil, the former Alaskan governor's face is rendered with images of pubic hair, lace panties, and engorged reproductive organs of both sexes. "They're not insults, per se," Yeo told ARTINFO. "They're just comments on people who trade off their morality and sexuality.

The Palin Family Circus

The Week discusses Andrew Sullivan's persistence on the questions surrounding the birth of Trig Palin, Sarah Palin's Down's Syndrome son with an excerpt from Sullivan's recent blog posting:

"The way in which Palin... has relentlessly exploited her story and child makes this an even more salient political issue - and one which deserves appropriate press scrutiny, as with any other core campaign platform.

"...I have never claimed I know the truth. I don't. I only know that none of us does. We all have to rely on the word of Sarah Palin — something about as reliable as a credit default swap. I want to know the truth. Because if I am loony, I deserve the pushback and criticism for suspecting a story that turned out to be true. And because if Palin has lied about this, it's the most staggering, appalling deception in the history of American politics."

I have to confess in the first 48 hours after John McCain selected Palin to be his running mate in 2008, I spent that Labor Day weekend obsessively poring over the speculation that flooded the internet and blogosphere concerning the story Palin told of Trig's birth, and the doubts raised about whether the child was even hers. I agree completely with Sullivan's point that Palin has used her youngest child as a prop and as a political lever when it comes to the far Right. My own interest, however, had to do with what Palin's version of the story told me about her as a mother.

I have never met a woman who has not wanted to talk about her pregnancy and the experience of giving birth. People's childbirth stories are like people's dreams - they are rarely interesting to anyone else, but for women, childbirth is a profound experience and since we typically lack the words to accurately describe that life-changing experience, we settle on the exhaustive, and often boring, details of the experience. What I find so striking about Palin's story was how devoid it was of those details, and the details she did provide painted her as rather cavalier about a pregnancy involving a baby that she knew would be born with Down's Syndrome. I've never met a woman that didn't paint herself in the most heroic light when recounting her childbirth tale. Palin's story is striking because it sounds like it was no big deal. It was no big deal she traveled to Texas late into her high-risk pregnancy, it was no big deal she concealed her pregnancy until the seventh month, it was no big deal she flew back to Alaska while she was in labor, and it was no big deal that once in Alaska, she drove all the way to Wasilla to give birth.

Most of the speculation and conspiracy theories that abound on the internet question whether or not Palin is actually the baby's mother. My own conclusion after reading Palin's versions of the story is that Sarah Palin's audience for her birth story isn't other women. It's men. Palin talks about childbirth as I imagine a man would. It's all business, cut and dried. No big deal. She's back at work the next day. It's her fifth child - she's a pro at this and can handle it. Palin is also very aware that her looks and her sex appeal account for much of her popularity and success as a politician. And so while having a large family is a political asset for a Republican woman candidate, reminding men that she has actually gone through pregnancy and childbirth five times diminishes her "babe-ness" considerably.

What is disturbing about the story of Trig's birth is that Palin's ambition and quest for power supercedes the wrenching maternal drives that motivate the majority of women. While it would be shocking to learn that the baby is not really hers, what is more horrifying is that her ambition led her to make a series of decisions that put her child in serious danger. While some find the story to be not credible, I find it to be in keeping with a personality that is deeply narcissitic.

Bad Dinner Theater

RNC Chair Michael Steel at a fundraiser in Connecticut, rewriting the history of the war in Afghanistan in front of a bunch of white people eating chips, white people who seem way overdressed for a picnic. It's hard to hear what he's saying what with the sound of people eating chips, but Talking Points Memo has a transcription:

"The McChrystal incident, to me, was very comical. And I think it's a reflection of the frustration that a lot of our military leaders have with this Administration and their prosecution of the war in Afghanistan," said Steele. "Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."

UPDATE: The Huffington Post reports that Liz Cheney has joined Bill Kristol's call for Michael Steel's resignation. From Kristol:

"RNC Chairman Michael Steele's comments about the war in Afghanistan were deeply disappointing and wrong," Cheney's statement read. "The chairman of the Republican party must be unwavering in his support for American victory in the war on terror -- a victory that cannot be accomplished if we do not prevail in Afghanistan. I endorse fully Bill Kristol's letter to Chairman Steele. It is time for Chairman Steele to step down."

Iron Ladies

From the guardian.co.uk:

Meryl Streep is in talks to play Margaret Thatcher in a Film4 biopic.

Streep is being lined up to star in the film alongside Jim Broadbent as Thatcher's husband, Denis.

The Auteur President

From The Onion:

Hailed as a sign of renewed government transparency when they began airing last year, President Barack Obama's weekly video addresses have grown increasingly experimental in recent weeks, raising eyebrows nationwide.

Videos like the one that aired Tuesday morning, which begins with Obama outlining his new plan to provide healthier school lunches to the nation's children, but soon devolves into frantic editing, unsettling imagery, and dissonant audio effects, have left many wondering about the president's ultimate message.

Weekly Address: Jobs Creation from White House Weekly Address on Vimeo.

Arts Funding, an Oily Business

From the guardian.co.uk: In the wake of the BP and their Tate sponsorship, Britain's leading cultural figures talk about corporate sponsorship of the arts.

And from the Telegraph.co.uk:

Great art has always been involved with great fortunes: it was only a temporary distortion of history, a hangover from the Romantic idea that artists need be poor and tormented, that insisted art must be uncontaminated by trade. Patronage may well be a non-negotiable part of artistic activity. For a while, this principle was blurred when the interventionist
economist J M Keynes helped found the Arts Council after the Second World War. Keynes simply made the state a patron. Do the oily protesters advocate refusal of the Arts Council's "government" money supporting the Tate because the same government money funded an illegal war in Iraq and a tragic war in Afghanistan? Of course they don't.