The Raw Nerve: Palin and the Politics of the Visceral...

I love those moments when we see a collective societal nerve whacked dead on...the ramifications, however ugly, are also quite revealing and even educational. Indeed, individuals with complex sociopolitical identities are wont to do this (Reed Smoot...the first legitimate Mormon politician; Jack Johnson, the great black boxer who defeated Jim Jeffries; Andrew Sullivan, the self-proclaimed Reagan Conservative-Irish-Catholic-Gay). When you cross societal boundaries and refuse to be categorized, the results will not be pretty or pleasant...though there might be a touch of fun in them just to keep the viewing public from getting burned out from all of the societal experimentation. Sarah Palin, like other great transformers of American politics, is challenging the status quo for better or for worse and has received her due attention for doing so. As a cultural symbol, she should fascinate the turtlenecks and latte sippers...even if their fascination is of a bemused, condescending kind...such as a 19th-century British anthropologist might have engendered towards colonial India.

The actual response has been much darker. We learn precisely how knee-jerk the intellectual structure of power can be when its values are mocked. And Palin indeed does mock them and takes delight in doing so. When she should be worried about the mental strain of child-rearing and overpopulation, she has five. When she should be waxing eloquent about gender identity and how her run is realigning women's place in the world, instead, she talks about "her hunk." When she should be telling her kids to use birth control, she's telling her kids to make families. How obscene.

The response? As Dana Nelson has pointed out, the intellectual elite are far better at self-analysis and "woe is us" than organization; here, they seem to have transcended their immobilization so that they can unleash the full fury of their discipline upon her. Deconstructionism--"she's not really a woman." Theology--"she's Pontius Pilate." Feminism--"No, you don't understand...she's REALLY not a woman." Absurdly, she is depicted as out-of touch with the problems of American women...you know, that giving birth business is so out-of-vogue. And blue-collar work? Religion? All esoteric abstractions...now gender constructs...*sigh of longing* now that's practical. Whoopi Goldberg opined that Palin's speech reminded her of the Nazis. That's not to mention that Whoopi is apparently afraid that McCain would enslave African-Americans

Oh...and let's just stop the nonsense about experience in foreign policy. Henry Kissinger was nothing nigh of brilliant of matters of foreign policy...could navigate the bureaucracy masterfully...and in so doing disenfranchise various populations in the process (whether we speak of East Timor, Taiwan, the Bangladeshis, or the Allende regime). And Kissinger is loathed by the Left (and justifiably so). So when we talk of experience, we mean the correct

Silly season indeed.

No, when you control the means of production (hat tip to Marx), you determine the dissemination of the products sold. Alas, the cultural left have decided to mobilize their tremendous opinion-making power against this affront to their values, this moose in the Left's china closet.