Those of us with vivid memories of middle school have seen Gov. Sarah Palin's type before. She was the girl who was always the first to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and the last to stop instigating fights in the cafeteria.
She was the girl who always had just enough self-awareness to know when the boys were paying more attention to her than to other girls. Her specialty was flattering the alpha boys around her. Terrified of losing her exalted place, she quickly perfected the art of saying nothing of consequence. She rambled because the boys thought it was cute. If she ever had an original thought in her head, she was discreet enough to keep it to herself. She was the conformist who fancied herself a leader.
From an early age, she knew the power of a strategically placed hand on the bicep of some jock. Girls like Sarah Palin knew how to secure a place with the "in crowd." After all, she was the girl with the iridescent smile who provided the laugh track for the meatheads roaming the halls pulling wedgies on those who would never qualify as "their kind of people."
Like a lot of bullies, Sarah Palin talks tough when she's surrounded by people of like mind and even less imagination; the more gullible the mob of admirers, the better. That has always been the case with demagogues. Sarah Palin subscribes to the same strain of American anti-intellectualism and fake populism as Huey Long, Spiro Agnew and other media-savvy scoundrels from the last century.
The best that could be said for her is that she is made out of a lot more corn, chutzpah and plastic than earlier models -- she's Demagogue 2.0 for a new century.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08281/918018-153.stm
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