Interesting, as in Telling Piece About Succubus Sarah.

Now nothing totally earth shaking is to be found in the Conde Nast Portfolio article about Sarah Palin and how she let (allegedly) her own political ambition queer that natural gas pipeline deal. And when I say not earth shaking, I am saying that as one who has used up a lot of keystrokes criticizing her for being no smarter than a bucket full of hair, and who's single notable skill is her ability to promote her own self interest.

Palin's Pipe Dreams.

There is this one great quote in it. Now I have described her as a typical bullshit Republican who just makes shit up, but this is a kinder way of saying that:

“Facts to her are like Silly Putty,” said Larry Persily, former deputy commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Revenue, who later worked for Palin in the state’s office in Washington. “She shapes them into whatever people want to hear.”


That sounds like the politician I instantly disliked on first listen, if not sight. However, that merely shows her to be a typical Republican Politician. The next chunk confirms, and shows her to be as shallow a thinker as I have suspect from day one:

“She just doesn’t think it’s important to know things,” said Andrew Halcro, the conservative who ran against her for governor in 2006. “Issues register on her brain only in terms of populist appeal. She never thinks through the policy implications.” From the other end of the political spectrum, state representative Les Gara of Anchorage, a liberal, said, “She doesn’t spend time studying problems. She’d much rather deliver a sound bite than do the hard work of governing.”

Now that is a perfect way of describing the blithering, babbling, outclassed, not-ready-for-prime time Caribou Barbie we saw in both the Katie Couric and the Charlie Gibson interviews. And as well, it describes the conscious, yet barely thinking, talking point delivering mannequin that so many of the extreme right wingers fell in love with on the campaign trail, who at the same time, horrified the brainier wing of the GOP.

Even more importantly, consider the following observation:

She may not be “a fucking psychopath,” as one very prominent Alaskan told me she was, but Palin does seem prone to what psychologists call magical thinking. At its most basic level, this is a tendency to believe that you exert more control over events than you actually do. It is the irrational belief that thinking is the same as doing, that you can actually cause a circumstance or an event to occur simply by wishing for it.

Now this supports not only my intellectual objections to her, but also to my dislike of her at the gut level. It is not that I despise her personally (I likely really don't hate her), but I despise the very idea of her, or anyone like her, ever having any say over any aspect of my life. She is not sufficiently grounded in earth level reality for me. I have tangled and argued with people about her extremist religion, and why I do not trust anyone who's religion, sect or cult is so out there that even the Assembly of God considers it heretic. Granted, there must be something about her own personality, her own sense of self, that makes her prone to magical thinking. But her choice in religions is at least evidence of that underlying cognitive dysfunction, I'd say. The why of it, in a chicken/egg style question really doesn't matter. In the end, it makes her clinically delusional. That is why I think there really is not that much difference between her and Rod Blagojevich. The main difference between her and him is the fact that the only salient thing Blagojevich was delusional about was his ability to continue the scam that was the public life of Blagojevich. And to state the obvious, Blagojevich has self destructed, whereas Palin has not. Yet.

Lastly, consider this:

I came back from Alaska with the sense that the further Palin goes, the more she resembles not Joan of Arc but Eva Perón. In their book Evita, Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro wrote of Perón that “the only people with whom she felt totally at ease were those who accepted what she was doing unconditionally” and that eventually “there was no one left around her capable of criticizing anything she did.”

That seems to be the way Palin wants it. It’s almost as if, long ago, she adopted as a personal motto Mark Twain’s sardonic observation “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”

Now I have to commend the writer, Joe McGinnis. His observation, comparing Palin to Perón, is spot on. If I ever tire of calling her Sociopathic Succubus Sarah, I think my next choice will be American Evita. No. Make that Alaskan Evita, instead.

Don't cry for me, Mat Su Valley . . . .