The reaction to Sarah Palin was astonishing. When the Republicans unleashed a possible Obama competitor the Left went in for the kill.

It was now OK to demean a woman publicly. Feminists abandoned the cause as they are prone to do with those not on the Left of politics, comedy show hosts called her slutty (Letterman nearly lost his job over this) and her daughters private life was hung out for the public to poke fun (imagine doing that with Obama's daughters,the horror!).

People recoiled at her hometown fresh faced look as if it was a horrible threat. It has been shown now that many of the claims against her were fabricated and false. We now know that the African story was made up by a blogger. Yet people still believe it. Obama didn't even know how long he'd been married but no-one seemed to care.

I would bet the average Australian knows as much as the average American regarding world and political events. Very little. Most Australians for example, can't remember the last Premier of their state. Palin was naive,green and unrehearsed but Couric went in for the kill simply to make her look bad. How you look depends on what side of the microphone you are on. Just ask Maxine McKew.

Of course Sarah Palin was championed by such stalwarts of well reasoned argument, and deeply considered discriminative intelligence as Russ Limbaugh, and the other toxic pundits, or rather hooligans and yahoos, at Fox "news"---psychopaths one and all.

She was also championed by the "religious" right, and probably chosen to please them and appeal to their support base, which as far as I know she did.

Which is fine if you dig the "religious" right.

I find the book titled Between Jesus & the Market: The EMOTIONS That Matter in Right Wing America, published by Duke University Press, to be an excellent examination of the cultural, or more accurately EMOTIONAL, mind-set that Palin appeals to.

And how the demagogues of the right-wing noise machine exploit these essentially primitive emotions.

Of course such plain folks traditionally supported the Klu Kluk Klan until it became obvious as to how truly awful the Klan was.

They would have also, at the time, been the type who opposed the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's and 70's and who would have been mightily offended at the actions of the uppity Rosa Parks.

They would have also liked Hitler at the time because he was prepared to do something to restore "order" and deal with the "problem" of the Jews and the bolsheviks, and all the other non-conformists and riff-raff.

And restore the "pride" of the German people by finding copious scapegoats to blame for the decline in German culture. And thus to systematically eliminate all of these scapegoats and unter-mensch.

If only we can rid of the left-liberal relativists, the postmodern artists and academics etc etc who are under-mining American culture.

Then the never-ending sunny afternoons and balmy days of Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post America will be restored and everything will be hunky-dory again.

Meanwhile of course, Obama is the biggest ever threat that the US has faced. Has anyone checked out the vitriol against him in the right-wing blogo-sphere--truly astonishing.

Hence as far as I know the sale of guns has sky-rocketed through the roof in dreadfully sane plain-folks America.

I'm afraid Ho Hum your post is a classic example of why she was mercilessly attacked.

One mention of Sarah Palin and you see Nazis, Jewish persecution, Psychopaths and the Ku Klux Klan all falling out of the sky and regaining control of the world. Conspiratorial fantasies are very real to some and that in itself is quite disturbing.

*One mention of Sarah Palin and you see Nazis, Jewish persecution, Psychopaths and the Ku Klux Klan*

No, I see a woman as thick as a brick, on a similar level to
George Bush. The fear is that a smart operator like Karl
Rove, could flog her to a gullible US public, as he did
with George. It worked and the US and global population
have paid a heavy price, the GFC being just one of them.

Have the Americans learnt from that? We'll see. That
is democracy for you, full of flaws, but its the best
that we have.

Sarah Palin as prez is a scary thought for any thinking
individual.

what yabby said.

Palin trained as a journalist but when asked in an interview couldn't name even one newspaper she actually read.

THIS is your next Presidential candidate?

Puh-leeeze!