Betty Winston Bayé : Is Sarah Palin's Goal More About Money Than Power? I Say: Well, YES!
Is Sarah Palin's goal more about money than power?
By Betty Winston Bayé
Run Sarah Run. That's what some people want, though for different reasons. Some because they actually believe that Palin is qualified to be president, and others because they imagine that she'll get creamed because Americans can't be that stupid.
I'm betting Palin won't run, although I believe she will persist in dangling that possibility because doing so pays so well. If Palin really wanted political duties, she wouldn't have abruptly skipped out on her job as the elected governor of Alaska in order to pursue more lucrative ventures with no responsibility and little need for transparency. You see, what Palin figured out soon after John McCain plucked her from virtual obscurity is that biting the hand that feeds you pays big dividends if you're a good-looking woman who is astute at playing victim while simultaneously bragging of being one mean mama grizzly bear.
The Cult of Palin allows nothing — not ignorance, meanness, banality or Grand Canyon-sized contradictions — to get in the way of what they're feeling. And what they are feeling is love. It must be love that would get elderly folks in wheelchairs, on canes and walkers lining up in freezing cold just to shake Palin's hand and to get her to scribble just “Sarah” in their copies of her new book. Two sisters, both of them nurses who lined up at a Sam's Club book signing, gushed that what they love about Palin are her “values and what she stands for and what she has done for this country.”
It's debatable what Palin has done for the country, but there's no debating what she's done for herself. Her first year out after abruptly resigning her post in Alaska in July 2009, Palin raked in an estimated $12 million, much of that money pouring in from personal appearances. And so far this year, Palin's political action committee has raised more than $3 million, mostly from online contributions and direct appeals. A reported $244,000 of the $3 million-plus went to support Palin's 81 picks in the mid-term elections.
Palin fever is so strong that a Courier-Journal letter-writer opined that Palin and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are “equally capable” candidates for president — though, unlike Palin, Rice assuredly does know the difference between North and South Korea, and which of the two governments is U.S.-backed. It's breathtaking to think that a black woman who grew up in segregation, and spent years educating herself, earning a doctoral degree, traveling the world and becoming proficient in several languages and diplomacy, can be thought of by some as merely as qualified as Palin, who can't even answer a simple question about her reading habits. (It was a “trick question,” complained Palin enthusiasts who slammed the reporter for asking.)
The real trick to me is how Palin keeps duping so many Americans.
For example, here we are a country in the throes of an educational and a childhood obesity crisis and so what does Palin do? She shows up at a Christian school bearing cookies for the kids in response to a news report, subsequently retracted because it wasn't true, that Pennsylvania's state board of education was debating “whether public schools were going to ban sweets.”
It's the “nanny state run amok,” Palin intoned to an adoring crowd, and she said that the purpose of her cookie stunt was intended “to shake things up.” The kids got the cookies, and Palin got the applause and the brownie points. Her stunt was also a thinly veiled dig at one of her frequent targets, first lady Michelle Obama, who has adopted America's fitness and childhood obesity problems as among her special causes.
Looking back at the mid-term elections and seeing who won and who almost won and on what kinds of platforms, it is not impossible that enough Americans would be foolish enough to elect Sarah Palin president. In fact, Palin told Barbara Walters that she believes that she can beat President Obama in 2012. For his part, Obama told Walters, “I don't think about Sarah Palin.”
That's apparently a luxury that the President has, but which, unfortunately, the rest of us don't.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
Editor's comment: Sweetie: it's the money, and she is scooping it all up as fast as she can. Nothing wrong with that, except she needs to be reminded that the Good Book is right about falling in love with stuff Bob Marley would like to remind us all, is machine made! ;-)
By Betty Winston Bayé
Run Sarah Run. That's what some people want, though for different reasons. Some because they actually believe that Palin is qualified to be president, and others because they imagine that she'll get creamed because Americans can't be that stupid.
I'm betting Palin won't run, although I believe she will persist in dangling that possibility because doing so pays so well. If Palin really wanted political duties, she wouldn't have abruptly skipped out on her job as the elected governor of Alaska in order to pursue more lucrative ventures with no responsibility and little need for transparency. You see, what Palin figured out soon after John McCain plucked her from virtual obscurity is that biting the hand that feeds you pays big dividends if you're a good-looking woman who is astute at playing victim while simultaneously bragging of being one mean mama grizzly bear.
The Cult of Palin allows nothing — not ignorance, meanness, banality or Grand Canyon-sized contradictions — to get in the way of what they're feeling. And what they are feeling is love. It must be love that would get elderly folks in wheelchairs, on canes and walkers lining up in freezing cold just to shake Palin's hand and to get her to scribble just “Sarah” in their copies of her new book. Two sisters, both of them nurses who lined up at a Sam's Club book signing, gushed that what they love about Palin are her “values and what she stands for and what she has done for this country.”
It's debatable what Palin has done for the country, but there's no debating what she's done for herself. Her first year out after abruptly resigning her post in Alaska in July 2009, Palin raked in an estimated $12 million, much of that money pouring in from personal appearances. And so far this year, Palin's political action committee has raised more than $3 million, mostly from online contributions and direct appeals. A reported $244,000 of the $3 million-plus went to support Palin's 81 picks in the mid-term elections.
Palin fever is so strong that a Courier-Journal letter-writer opined that Palin and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are “equally capable” candidates for president — though, unlike Palin, Rice assuredly does know the difference between North and South Korea, and which of the two governments is U.S.-backed. It's breathtaking to think that a black woman who grew up in segregation, and spent years educating herself, earning a doctoral degree, traveling the world and becoming proficient in several languages and diplomacy, can be thought of by some as merely as qualified as Palin, who can't even answer a simple question about her reading habits. (It was a “trick question,” complained Palin enthusiasts who slammed the reporter for asking.)
The real trick to me is how Palin keeps duping so many Americans.
For example, here we are a country in the throes of an educational and a childhood obesity crisis and so what does Palin do? She shows up at a Christian school bearing cookies for the kids in response to a news report, subsequently retracted because it wasn't true, that Pennsylvania's state board of education was debating “whether public schools were going to ban sweets.”
It's the “nanny state run amok,” Palin intoned to an adoring crowd, and she said that the purpose of her cookie stunt was intended “to shake things up.” The kids got the cookies, and Palin got the applause and the brownie points. Her stunt was also a thinly veiled dig at one of her frequent targets, first lady Michelle Obama, who has adopted America's fitness and childhood obesity problems as among her special causes.
Looking back at the mid-term elections and seeing who won and who almost won and on what kinds of platforms, it is not impossible that enough Americans would be foolish enough to elect Sarah Palin president. In fact, Palin told Barbara Walters that she believes that she can beat President Obama in 2012. For his part, Obama told Walters, “I don't think about Sarah Palin.”
That's apparently a luxury that the President has, but which, unfortunately, the rest of us don't.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
Editor's comment: Sweetie: it's the money, and she is scooping it all up as fast as she can. Nothing wrong with that, except she needs to be reminded that the Good Book is right about falling in love with stuff Bob Marley would like to remind us all, is machine made! ;-)
Labels: Sarah Palin
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