First it was Nancy Reagan, all '80s lacquered hair and makeup and that Wilma Flintstone, lop-sided, off-the-shoulder gown held in place by a boulder-sized choker. Sort of a Pasadena-meets-Bedrock version of Dynasty for the dowager empress set.
Then, after many, many years in the cosmetics-and-conditioner wilderness--Barbara Bush, Marilyn Quayle, Laura Bush, to name but three--it was Ann Coulter of all people, the Jenna Jameson of the Punditocracy, that caught the discerning, right-wing, horndog's attention. All bleached-blond hair, anorexic-ravaged body, perma-tanned countenance, and overly pneumatic "tires" as it were. I know she makes me feel tired just looking at them.
I mean, her.
But then . . . I don't know what happened. Maybe the craziness of Ann Coulter--the looks of a fast-deflating blow-up doll with the high-pitched screech to match--overstayed its welcome and the Bowtie-and-Viagra set started frothing at the mouth for a different kind of gal. No more of those one-night-stand-and-a-boiled-rabbit-in-the-morning babes like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Instead, we'll have the sloe-eyed and pouty-lipped comforts-of-home honey that is Miss Anne Archer!
So along came the hockey mom and the pit bull combined--ladies and germs, I present to you, the Guns-and-Ammo Playmate of the Year for 1985, Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin and Tall, as it were. More like Sarah Plain and Small. Caribou Barbie (wish I'd thought of that first). The WASP version of Evita Peron, at least if the photo (thank you, Wikipedia) of her waving to the descamisados at the Republican National Convention can offer any insights into her Miss Half-Baked Alaska persona.
It has been challenging for me to fathom the appeal of Sarah Palin. Oh, I get how that tough-talking, gun-toting, Jesus-loving mother/political barracuda plays in Heartland and Hearth. (Sort of.) She's just like us! Except that her opinions are better-defined than ours! Let's follow her!
It's a wasp-waisted George "Dubya" Bush in a pencil skirt, folks. In fact, it's highly reminiscent of the I-could-have-a-beer-with-that-politician mindset, just with a gender twist, brought up-to-date with beauty queen hair and a flattering choice of discount eyewear from LensCrafters. The same mindset that led a significant segment of the population (aka, Joe Six-Pack, as Sarah likes to call them, in her patronizing, homespun way) to think that they would far rather have a beer with Dubya than, say, Al Gore or John Kerry. And realizing what a good drinking buddy Dubya would make, it stands to reason that he would also make an excellent president.
It's hard to fault that sort of logic, of course, but, hey, that reasoning didn't turn out so good, now did it?
As the saying goes, most poor souls are just dying to be told what to do, and I guess Sarah Palin is as good (relatively speaking) a person (relatively speaking) to do just that. She is, if nothing else, more palatable personality-wise (relatively speaking) than Dick Cheney, for example, or even the now soul-deadened, right-wing marionette that has overtaken John McCain's cerebral cortex and voice box. You can only go but up from there, I guess, especially if you like your strychnine candy-coated.
I've never been one, though, who enjoys being told what to do and, in fact, when done so, I often have chosen to do the exact opposite. One too many entreaties to buy a "sensible car" impelled me to buy a Mini Cooper this summer. One too many admonishments to "get with the times" makes me hang onto my vinyl disco collection. One too many recommendations to settle down, buy a house, and get a boyfriend still finds me mortgage-free and unencumbered. It's just my nature to be different, to samba to the percussive tonic of my own drummer, and I think it's served me rather well over the years.
So I question authority and conventional wisdom at all times. It may have taken me ages to invest in an iPod, it may have made me wary of jumping on the Obama bandwagon early on, but I think I'm happier, safer, and saner for it.
Nonetheless, I don't think I'll ever come around to getting Sarah Palin. I simply don't understand the fuss, at least on a deep level (assuming there is one), and I certainly don't fathom her alleged sex appeal.
Granted, I don't butter my toast on the side of the bread that rises up for Sarah Palin. We know this already--and besides I'd prefer a nice imported marmalade, if truth be told. But doing my utmost to be objective, I simply can't comprehend her alleged va-va-va-voominess, the thing that for a while there seemed to bring grown reporters and pundits to their knees--or at least prevented them from standing up from behind their desks while on camera.
These guys keep acting like Sarah Palin is Veronica when she is really more Betty. No, wait. Betty had some good sense and a serviceable wardrobe. Rather, Sarah's got Betty's looks but Veronica's steely determination to sucker Archie into going steady, whether she's expecting his baby or not. Or maybe it's that to them, Sarah is Barbie, when she is so obviously Skipper. Or, worse, Midge. (Cindy McClain is clearly Barbie. All plastic with no moving parts. Duh.)
It was all going quite out of control there for a while, and, thankfully, a few too many deer-in-headlights answers about geopolitics and the inability to name one major newspaper or magazine has allowed heads to cool, reporters to stand, and realities to be pondered.
Still, I knew we'd hit a new low in American culture when mainstream media outlets starting discussing Sarah Palin's "MILF" factor.
For those of you who don't know, MILF is an acronym made popular by that other pinnacle of contemporary culture, American Pie. That's right, folks, a movie that made famous the salving of a youthful male's sexual yearnings through intercourse with an apple crumble is giving us new ways to think about government and politics. And MILF stands for (brace yourself, gentle readers) a "Mother I'd Like to Fuck."
Charming, no? A mother one would like to fuck. But then, if she's a mother you'd like to fuck, wouldn't that make you a mother fucker?
A MILF. I don't think even at my most unbridled and horndoggiest I could ever imagine saying that to another human being--even if I were a heterosexual teen with raging hormones, Stacy's mom has got it going on and all that. Every now and again I see an attractive father out with his kids and I think to myself, hmmm, I wish you were my Daddy. But I don't mean that in a literal, parent-child way, of course, just a lascivious one. (Which I guess would make me interested in, appropriately enough, some FILF.) Nonetheless, I'm certainly not walking up to one of his kids to share that information.
However, our pundits and reporters are secure in themselves enough to share this feeling with us. We are indeed blessed!
Yet I guess the situation with Sarah is not much worse than when early on in this interminable presidential race the Pundi-tards tried to make a shirtless, frolicking-on-the-beach Barack Obama an International Male catalog pin-up. And I'm still haunted by that postcard during the 1990s of the heads of Bill Clinton and Al Gore photoshopped onto buff, surfer bods, hugging each other, and smiling brightly for the cameras, as if that tag team was about to usher in a new era of gay love--at least right before Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act.
Which begs the question, at least for me--do countries that have parliaments or dictatorships have to go through this much psycho-sexual meshugas to elect a new leader?
Is anyone north of the border working up a sweat over a photo of a tight-jeans-and-plunging-neckline-down-to-there Stephen Harper?
Did heterosexual Cambodian women and homosexual Cambodian men dream of a page 3 layout in the Phnom Penh Daily News of a six-pack-abs-bedazzled Pol Pot?
Did British men in the 1980s fantasize about a hyper-shellacked centerfold of Maggie Thatcher?
Does anyone really want to see Venezuelan bully boy Hugo Chavez posing in a cowboy hat, fringed vest, and buttless chaps? Or German prime minister Angela Merkel in full dominatrix gear?
Or is this all too much of a Maxim-um overload to consider?
Somehow I can't imagine any of this political porno happening anywhere but in our own little fair-to-middlin' republic. The land of the freak, the home of the bored, with libertines and cheap thrills for all. Oh man.
I figure it must all come down to dissipation and decadence. At least that's the only way I can explain to myself the appeal of Sarah Palin. That or there's just so much Viagra in the water supply these days that most of the country's gone blind.
Not to mention deaf. As well as just plain dumb.
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