Miss Word Salad and 'common sense'

I bit the bullet and watched Sarah Palin on Bill O’Reilly’s show yesterday, and it was fascinating. But not in a good way. The tete-a-tete between the two conservative intellectual giants was fascinating in the same way that watching a slow-motion, 10-car pile-up a short distance ahead of you would be fascinating. Seriously, if these two doofuses were leading lights of a movement I believed in, well, I’m not kidding – I’d re-examine my beliefs, and pronto.

Palin, when she wasn’t spinning her usual FrozenValley Girl word salad, said she attracts controversy because her foes don’t like her “common sense, conservative solutions.” Such as what? The common sense, conservative way she ballooned the town of Wasilla’s debt when she was mayor? The common sense, conservative “value” of quitting your important public service job when it gets hard, and there’s more money to be made by peddling your, er, image around the country?

Every time Palin is criticized, her wingnut fans gloat, “Look how scared the liberals are of Sarah! Go, Sarah, go!” I can’t speak for all progressives, but personally, what scares me isn’t Palin per se, but rather the fact that someone as know-nothing and do-nothing, someone as transparently and fundamentally ignorant about government, the world, or even how things work – someone who, for example, admitted yesterday that in 2008, she thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 – can honestly be considered a serious contender for higher office by so many people. Yes, that’s genuinely scary.