Taibbi: Scariest thing about Palin isn't how unqualified… it's what candidacy says about America.


Snip from a blog post by Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi on the media phenomenon surrounding Republical vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.

Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV -and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

(…) The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters.

The scariest thing about Sarah Palin isn't how unqualified she is – it's what her candidacy says about America (Smirking Chimp — thanks, friends list)

Above, the infamous 2005 blessing of Palin by Thomas Muthee, a witch-hunting evangelical minister from Kenya. In this ceremony, he and others lay hands on Palin, while Muthee prays she will succeed in government, calling on believers to seek positions of influence in government, education and business, because…

If we have that in our schools we will not have kids being taught how to worship Buddha, how to worship (Prophet) Mohammed. We will not have in the curriculum, witchcraft and sorcery," Muthee said.

(thanks, Emeka Okafor)