Wednesday, January 12, 2011

oh, the sarah palin

I'll admit that it took me a few tries to first get into Team America: World Police. I'd psych myself up to watch the Matt Stone and Trey Parker flick, while visions of Basketballs danced in my head, but I'd wind up deflated just minutes in because I couldn't get past the wooden puppets. As absurd as the setting and characters and situations were, I took all the dialogue seriously for whatever reason and the humour was lost on me. I'd turn it off for good, just ten minutes in.

Thankfully, I got over my puppet hang-up and I have enjoyed the movie many times for what it is: an over-the-top, cliche-spoofing satire of American intervention in world affairs (with puppet porn!)

And I think the same thing is starting to happen to me with Sarah Palin.

When this broad first stepped into the national spotlight, I couldn't fathom how anyone could even entertain the notion of taking her seriously. Her stuttered and stunted speeches - and some of the electorate's rapturous reactions to them - made me turn away in disbelief and disgust and I've been doing the same ever since.

But now, after she released this video to show her disapproval with some in the news media who are arguing that vitriolic rhetoric (which does absolutely nothing good for anyone, in my opinion) may have played a part in that demented 22-year-old's killing rampage in Arizona, (not printing the dude's name because that's really all that those people want, isn't it?) I think I'm finally getting the joke. (Editor's Note: Now that's what I call a run-on sentence. Should start calling that a Gump.)

Palin is just an over-the-top, mothafuckin aw-shuckin, cliche-spouting satire of a 21st Century politician. (This isn't my original thought either. Thanks to Inflatable Elvis' twitter feed.) She survives through sound bites, she is hardly challenged on her beliefs - or her own thoughts - in public, her image has been crafted and mythologized with some very creative twisting and exaggeration of fact, and everything she says is scripted by someone else operating things behind the controls.

Man, she's actually quite a lot like one of those Team America puppets, right down to the vapid stare, terrible acting, puppet strings and blockish, chiseled face.

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