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Like W., I squint when I'm puzzlin' -- and so have whole new frown lines from trying to make sense of the McCain-Palin game plan. Last night, though, while watching Saturday Night Live, the light finally dawned: They have either a) totally given up; b) lack the common sense God gave a moose (a creature that will forget you are there if you duck behind a tree for three seconds); or c) have a vice-presidential nominee more interested in her close-up than in closing the deal with voters.
Only that last one would explain how much Palin was enjoying grooving on TV while Amy Poehler did the "Sarah Palin rap,'' to lyrics like "I'm Jeremiah Wright cuz tonight I'm the preacha, I got a bookish look and you all hot for teacha.'' For me, this shined a whole new (softer, but also dimmer) light on all her mugging and smiling while whipping crowds up with hateful distortions about Barack Obama. Because there she was, mugging and smiling while Poehler stopped just short of grabbing her crotch, Eminem style, and rapped that McCain's "smile be creepy.'' So...maybe girlfriend just likes the camera? Like you, Emily, I was squirming through the whole first skit, too -- only I was thinking oh, how demeaning for Alec Baldwin.
Remember when Al and Tipper Gore did that hot tub skit on SNL - and how clear that made it that he really wasn't going to run in ‘04? I had that same feeling watching Palin - that no one who thought they had a serious shot would be so comfy so far over the line.
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Kathleen Parker says her fellow conservative Sarah Palin has exhausted her cringe reflex, and I hear her on that. Mine has been overtaxed for years. Remember the presidential debate for which some malevolent (or high, maybe?) makeup artist painted Al Gore orange? In the privacy of my living room, I listened to most of that one with my sweatshirt pulled up over my eyes because it was too painful to watch. At the first presidential debate in '04, in Miami, I even had to look away from George W., about whom I am not aware of ever having had an admiring thought, because watching him flounder around babbling that being president, well, "it's hard work ... it's hard work ... it's hard work'' just felt cruel. So am I hoping that both Palin and Joe Biden do well enough tonight that I won't have to avert my eyes? No, because my comfort level isn't the point; their competence is. No, because even the most lopsided debate can help the perceived loser more than the supposed winner; there are no straight lines between cause and effect in politics, which I have to admit is part of the attraction, warped as that may be. No, because women have the same right to be underprepared that men have always had. And no, because voters make me even more nervous than candidates do, so whatever happens tonight is still just the prelims.
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