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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.

November 25, 2010

Foot-in-Mouth Disorder

Palintology 101 (Part One)

by CHARLES R. LARSON

Well, students, in the last twenty-four hours Sarah Palin has put her foot in her mouth again—at least twice.

First, she diced that icon of the twentieth-century feminism, Barbara Bush, calling her a blue-blood, which is certainly the color of her hair, and guaranteeing further scorn from Karl Rove and other Bushies who have never been good at dealing with uppity gals, let alone uppity white gals with White House assumptions.

Second—and worse—Sarah laid into Michelle Obama for campaigning about obesity and child nutrition. Quoting Sarah, “Take her [Michelle’s] anti-obesity thing that she is on. She is on this kick, right. What she is telling us is that she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat.”

Coming as it did the day after Bristol Palin lost out on “Dancing with the Stars,” it is impossible not to connect the two. If Bristol had lost twenty or twenty-five pounds, perhaps she might have won the contest. But, no, there she was, Miss Chunky Cheese, with her typical obscenities and finger-pointing at people who were out to get her—and her mother.

Palin Enterprises—soon to offer an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange—had better sell those shares quickly. Sarah’s Alaska reality show lost forty percent of its viewers after the first week. Willow Palin’s book contract about gay bashing was rescinded. And, if Sarah gets much more desperate, she’ll begin dragging Trig around with her again as she stumps toward the nomination as figurehead of her hapless party in less than two years.

Tune in next week for the next sensational episode, as you think about what you’d rather have for Thanksgiving: turkey or moose.

CHARLES R. LARSON prays that Sarah Palin will be the Republican candidate for President in 2012. He is professor of Literature at American University in Washington, D.C.