Palin and the Real America

The real Americans according to McCain and Palin are those folks who subscribe to the politics of the right wing. You know guns and god and good ol' free enterprise. These traditions are all new to the American experience. They certainly weren't handed down from the likes of Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, or Teddy Roosevelt. No, they were concocted in the minds of ad men who saw the relationship between brand and choice. With a slight of hand, these hucksters have re-defined what it is to be American so that it fit their sales plan. We find ourselves in a world now dominated by politicians as well as products forced upon us by folks who don't give a hoot about the stuff they sell. Their only concern is the sell.

How can a person who attempts to hold the the Vice Presidency not understand its constitutional role? To hear Palin, one wonders if they even teach a civic class in the Alaskan schools. But then again isn't that so like a true American? Belief without facts is the hallmark of a true believer -- buying into the product without any information whatsoever. Then, feeling the horror of the buy and knowing it just wasn't what was needed or desired.

When you look upon the vast expanse of the American electorate, one wonders if our world is so shallow that any anomaly stands out as significant. Joe the Plumber becomes iconic only because the press and the politicians can only see what is right in front of them. There is no real depth to the news. In fact, I would wager that most television reporters spend more time in make-up and on camera then they do on the news. One can see the lack of depth in the almost childish banter and comments of these personalities as they fill in their alloted time lots with blather. In fact, on a given day, they, regardless of the broadcast, repeat the same story over and over. It is as if the entire audience has lost its collective senses and memory. And the funny thing is that is what we must want it. Heck, doesn't the “Enquirer” sell more its paper than any other paper legitimate or not.

In some Orwellian nightmare, we have all become captive of the media moguls and their minions of ad men who give us stuff we just don't need or want. Take for example baseball. A storied American tradition is in the firm grasp of snake oil salesmen who determine when the game is played. As a child, I remember the excitement, nay the tradition, of sneaking a transistor radio into school to catch snippets of the unfolding classic. The score was circulated in a fashion that was Bond like. Now, youngsters fall asleep as the game scheduled for prime time rolls on with commercial after commercial. Why? So revenues can be maximized. And if a national pastime time can be stolen, is it no wonder that our elections have been as well?

Fortunately, in this election cycle, people seemed to have risen above the all encompassing reach of “Madison Avenue.” The old tried and true has been reduced to a song that has long lost favor with the public. Of course, the Bush presidency has shook the electorate from its rut. When Palin speaks of the real America, she must be referring to those sleepy little hamlets that the Republicans could always count on for support. We can only hope that like the rest of this country the alarms in these community are sounding the need to awake and to face the challenges that have been thrust upon us. The public was sold an inferior product that did not have a money back guarantee. And as Bush could never master, “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”