Without google, who are AC Wharton and John Peyton?
Answer: The mayors of Memphis and Jacksonville, respectively, both of whom govern cities with population sizes comparable to Alaska. I’m betting 99% of you have never heard of them.
So why are we going to spend the next few weeks listening to the lies of a grifter from up north who couldn’t even finish her term?
b-psycho
Because Alaska doesn’t have that pesky negro problem those outposts of librul evil in Real America do.
/whatwingnutsarereallythinking
EdTheRed
Tom Regan: I don’t blame her. She sees the angle–which is you–and she plays it. She’s a grifter, just like her brother. They probably had grifter parents and grifter grandparents and
someday they’ll each spawn little grifter kids…
dmsilev
I think it’s a safe bet that neither of them were ever brutally savaged by Katie Couric, so there’s your justification right there.
-dms
EdTheRed
Oh bother, it’s Tom Reagan, not Regan…I just hate typing that name. I should’ve just gone with “Gabriel Byrne.”
geg6
Because…
Starbursts! That’s why!
John Cole
I’m just frustrated. Her two accomplishments as Governor were to give Rich Lowry a boner and to pass an ethics bill that SHE COULDN’T LIVE UP TO.
And now we have to hear her for the next month. Just kill me.
cleek
when it comes to the media: what the GOP wants, the GOP gets.
NickM
Starbursts and Wolverines, that’s why!
Zifnab
Teabaggers would protest otherwise.
:-p In all seriousness, John Edwards got a fair amount of attention after the failed ’04 race on the assumption that he was going to run for President in ’08 with a big grass roots public backing.
He didn’t get the massive media blow job Princess Sarah received, but then the Dems don’t have the media in the can like the GOP does.
Svensker
From what I’ve heard, that’s a pretty, um, small accomplishment.
Karen S.
As long as there are people buying what she’s selling, she’ll have an audience. That audience includes reporters and their conglomerate masters who are convinced that what she sells — “Real American Authenticity” laced with bitterness and resentment toward anyone they perceive to be a member of the “elites” — bumps up their ratings and page views.
Max
I knew who Peyton was. I used to live in Jax. He’s nothing to crow about. Jax has issues that go far beyond the Jaguars.
But, it’s Georgia Bulldog Red and they love them some Sarah Palin. I have a friend that is planning on going to see her when she’s there.
Fun fact, Jax is the largest city (in area) in the U.S. The St John’s River that flows through Jax is one of the few rivers that flow north.
I recommend skipping Jax and going to St Augustine instead. Great downtown and perfect for eating oysters and doing a pub crawl.
/travel guide
Lolis
Well, her self-pity tour is just one more reason she will never win in politics again. Republicans love whiners. I read a comment the other day at NYT about how Palin was teh awesome because she attacked Obama. Next sentence was about how sad it was that the media and political opponents “trashed her.” The bizarro disconnect boggles the mind. I guess the MSM never covered people who thought Obama was a Kenyan infiltrator, a terrorist wannabe, or “a racist.”
As HRC made popular again, “If you can’t stand the heat get the hell out of the kitchen.” In Palin’s case it is get out but then write a self-serving book about how unfair the kitchen was to you. Gag.
Cat Lady
I hope President McCain will be asked to explain this to us on my TV on Sunday, and then pull a Tancredo. This would be the one time I actually would watch him on a Sunday show.
Max
@John Cole: Cheer up buckaroo. Looks like her book is full of lies and the McCain campaign is disputing it’s “facts”. For example, that she had to pay the expenses for her own vetting.
Gonna be fun to watch.
maye
She’s a phenom. An ordinary, mediocre intellect, beauty queen-turned-politician, got selected to run for VP on the ticket of one of the two major political parties in the U.S. She turned into a media disaster/spectacle, and now she’s cashing in. She’s adored, reviled, and marketable for only a limited time. It’s what makes America great.
Scott H
Where’s B.O.B.? Nobody’s talking about pie today…
Zifnab
@John Cole:
See: Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, John Bennie Ramsee, Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson
Then you’ve got Newt Gingrich, Dick Army, and John McCain in the political sphere.
The media gets a fixation and they’ll dog that “story” to death for as long as they can pump it. Sarah’s just a variation on a theme.
Don’t worry. Once the next season of the Kardashians comes out, this’ll fall to the back burner.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Nah. The book comes out in four days, then it’s good for another 7-10 days of mocking.
So don’t fret. We only have to hear from her for the next 2 weeks.
On another note, the book retails for $28.99. Amazons price? 9 bucks.
.
dmsilev
@John Cole: You’re forgetting the time that she spent $200K on clothing in a month. That’s an impressive accomplishment, in its own way.
(and frankly, I’d much rather have GOP donor money go to the Sarah Palin Wardrobe Fund then to the Attack Ad Fund).
-dms
Demo Woman
@Svensker: John needs to post a warning that it’s harmful to your keyboard if you drink while reading the comments.
EconWatcher
And yet, and yet–isn’t she one of our favorite topics on this site? Let’s face it, she’s interesting. Not in a good way, but still, she’s interesting.
CatStaff
What cracks me up is how much Katie Couric gets under Palin’s skin. Of course, much of that is because Katie is doing what Myth Alaska always wanted to do, but didn’t have the required marginal talent for, and so she ended up shoveling fish guts or whatever in the back of beyond while Katie’s on TV all the time.
Palin is wearing a higher quality hair extension these days, I’ll give her that.
JGabriel
John Cole:
And, don’t forget, according to Sarah, she finished the 4 year job of governor in only 30 months. Cuz she’s such a hard worker, doncha know?
.
CatStaff
@JGabriel: Yeah, but Wal-Mart apparently started a price war several weeks ago, dropping the price to $9, and then Amazon followed suit.
Betsy
She’s hotter than they are.
SATSQ
JGabriel
EconWatcher:
I think you mean “hysterical”. In both senses.
.
geg6
@Max:
There is nothing in this world that could ever induce me to want to live in Florida, let alone the hellhole that is Jacksonville.
And having navigated both, I’ll take the north-flowing Monongahela over the St. John’s any day. ;-p
Singularity
@2 EdtheRed
God, I love Miller’s Crossing.
JGabriel
CatStaff:
Yeah, what’s up with that hairdo in the Oprah clips? It looks Palin’s hair is falling from a dome that floats 1.5″ above her skull. Kind of like Lisa Marie in Mars Attacks, but brunettish instead of blonde.
.
SGEW
To be totally fair, mayors usually do not have the same breadth of executive power over their constituents’ lives as state governors do. Even though Alaska has a smaller population than, say, Providence, RI, it is still a full State of the Union, and is vested with its own quasi-sovereignty and constitutional powers; powers that a municipality simply cannot exercise.
In other words, when it comes to executive offices, I would probably treat a state governor’s resume more seriously than I would a mayor’s; even if said mayor’s constituency was of equal or greater size (exceptions would be made for particularly massive or challenging municipalities, such as NYC, LA, or whatnot).
[However, of course, so saying, the powers of the office one has held has only so much to do with one’s qualifications; for instance, I would much rather hear about Mayor Cory Booker policy ideas (Newark, pop. 281,402), then ex-Governor Mitt Romney’s (Massachusetts, pop. 6,497,967).]
Michael D.
@geg6: I remember growing up in Canada, thinking of Florida as the happiest place on earth – when you grow up in the North, you think that way. Then I moved to Atlanta and had to drive through Florida. It is, without question, generally populated by the most backward, uneducated people in this country. Especially in the northern part. It is a godawful stain.
There’s a reason Fark.com has a Florida category.
They Live By Night
Can we please fast-forward to the time when she’s doing dinner theater in Branson?
Napoleon
@geg6:
Or the Cuyahoga, or Chagrin, or Black, ect, etc. I live w/i 50 miles of a dozen rivers that flow north (one about a mile from my house), so I don’t know what the big deal is.
SGEW
Huh, moderation. Out of practice w/ th’ spam filter, I am!
Max
Having lived in both Orlando and Jax, I can say that “Florida” stops around Daytona Beach. Everything north of there is really South Georgia.
JGabriel
Michael D.:
I’ve always heard that the Panhandle, in particular, is filled filled with Alabamian refugees who left there because it got too intellectual.
.
R-Jud
@EdTheRed: This is also what I think of whenever I hear “grifter” mentioned. And I’d much rather think about Gabriel Byrne than Sarah Palin.
GReynoldsCT00
@Scott H: \
shhhhhh! it would be nice to have one thread that he wasn’t trying to dominate
cmorenc
We’d be lots more relaxed about this whole Sarah Palin publicity phoenomenon and lots less annoyed if we were 100% confident she has absolutely no chance to succeed in gaining any actual power, instead of only 99.5% confident.
JGabriel
Napoleon:
Didn’t the Cuyahoga lose it’s status as a river after it burned down the third time?
I mean, seriously, a river catches fire once, and it’s a freak event. The second time, maybe you say, “Wow, what a coincidence.”
But three times? That’s just fuckin’ careless.
.
GReynoldsCT00
@Michael D.:
Agreed, I lived there briefly and left as soon as I could. We should just saw it off and let it drift
cleek
and put me down for the north-flowing Genesee
flukebucket
@Max:
It gets no redder than Georgia Bulldog Red. I think Sarah would carry the state of Georgia as the Republican nominee. But that is no great accomplishment. Whoever the Republican nominee is will carry the state of Georgia. It is a god damn political disgrace down here.
Napoleon
@JGabriel:
I actually think it has burned more then 3 times, but regardless it is still technically a river.
Omnes Omnibus
@Napoleon: The Fox River in Wisconsin.
Joey Maloney
@Max:
I have friends in Birmingham. They call the Florida panhandle “Lower Alabama”. Their theory is the name came about so people living south of Auburn would have someone to feel superior to.
SGEW
[reposting to escape moderation: who knew the mayor of Newark’s name is a spam filter word?!]
To be totally fair, mayors usually do not have the same breadth of executive power over their constituents’ lives as state governors do. Even though Alaska has a smaller population than, say, Providence, RI, it is still a full State of the Union, and is vested with its own quasi-sovereignty and constitutional powers; powers that a municipality simply cannot exercise.
In other words, when it comes to executive offices, I would probably treat a state governor’s resume more seriously than I would a mayor’s; even if said mayor’s constituency was of equal or greater size (exceptions would be made for particularly massive or challenging municipalities, such as NYC, LA, or whatnot).
[However, of course, so saying, the powers of the office one has held has only so much to do with one’s qualifications; for instance, I would much rather hear about Mayor Cory B00ker’s policy ideas (Newark, pop. 281,402), then ex-Governor Mitt Romney’s (Massachusetts, pop. 6,497,967).]
Pasquinade
Alex Castellanos, a conservative media strategist and regular presence on CNN, raised questions of Sarah Palin’s viability for office..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/13/castellanos-whacks-crist_n_356601.html
Michael D.
@flukebucket: I actually have faith that the people of Georgia would NOT elect Sarah Palin. I live here, and have for ten years.
I’m probably naive, but I don’t get the sense that the “tea party” movement is as wing-nutty here as it is elsewhere.
geg6
@JGabriel:
Giggle.
Sorry, but we Pittsburghers never get tired of laughing at that.
Max
@Joey Maloney: You just gave me flashbacks of my move to the Bay Area and that long drive east on I-10 from Jax. After Florida, comes Alabama, then Mississippi, then Louisiana, then Texas… it’s a red state nightmare and a horrible drive in the summer.
I will say this, Florida and Texas have the nicest rest stops that I have seen.
GReynoldsCT00
@Joey Maloney:
see Riviera, redneck
Max
@Max: edit: long drive “west”
arguingwithsignposts
@Max:
I give this to Texas, they actually have wifi at all their rest stops, even the ones around Midland-Odessa, which is the pit of hell as far as I’m concerned.
CatStaff
@JGabriel: Hahahahahahah!!!
bemused
Our media prefers gossipy, tabloid style “news”. It’s fun & entertaining for them & so much easier than doing real journalism.
Bill H
Listen people. You do realize that Alaska is populated by people who moved there to get rich? And, since there was nothing there to get rich on at the time, went crazy?
Wyatt Earp was Marshall of Dodge City at no salary, being paid $2.50 for each guy he arrested. He decided he could not get rich that way, so he moved to Tombstone, AZ where he bought taverns and silver mines and became moderately rich. Then there was the OK Corral thing. He moved to Alaska, where he met a lady named Palin.
Okay, I made that last part up. But Earp was all about getting rich, and look where he headed. Alaskans think about one thing all the time; getting rich. The lower 48 think about sex, mostly; Alaskans think about money.
Third Eye Open
@Michael D.: I have said it before, so I will say it again: Please do not come here; Do not send your parents and grandparents here; Drink our fucking orange juice, and then leave us the fuck alone. The sooner we can hit the bottom of our tourist-based economy, the sooner we can build a real one, or at the very least a reasonable facsimile. We have failing schools thanks in large part to the northern and midwesterners who come here, then refuse to actually pay any taxes, spending their leisure hours playing shuffleboard, protesting government involvement in their Medicare, and apparently, humping like rabid baboons.
Demo Woman
@Michael D.: lol, lol, lol
You need to leave downtown once and a while.
kay
I’m just hoping “grifter” catches on, because it’s perfect.
gypsy howell
What makes it even more fun is that Palin has publicly dissed two of the Villagers’ own — Katie & Charlie– and now they don’t quite know how to act. On the one hand, they should be slobbering all over Palin because they are right-wing tools, but on the other hand, Thou Shalt Not Talk Smack About One of Our Own.
An Outhouse
“So why are we going to spend the next few weeks listening to the lies of a grifter from up north who couldn’t even finish her term?”
For the chance to laugh at Tina Fey.
Michael D.
@Demo Woman: I know. Which is why I added the “naive” part.
New Yorker
Since we’re been talking about Rochester here recently, I should bring up the fact that Monroe County, NY has more people than the state of Alaska, and that the county executive, Maggie Brooks, is a female Republican with far more executive experience than Palin.
http://www.monroecounty.gov/executive-index.php
So why didn’t McCain pick Maggie Brooks to be his running mate last fall. I asked my wingnut uncle this question last year and he didn’t answer, instead looking at me like I was crazy.
ET
Because for men, they aren’t nearly as attractive to look at as she is and because she wasn’t picked to be the vice presidential candidate. Other than that I haven’t a clue. It sure isn’t because she is intelligent or has something constructive to add to the national political dialog.
I just wish her 15 min. was past so the media with their short attention span would go obsess over some new trivial made up scandal du jour or fame whore of the moment.
abrxas
John: we’re not just stuck with her for the next month, but likely the rest of our lives. She has no incentive to disappear and plenty of incentive to stick around.
And I blame McCain as much as anyone. As I posted on my FB account last night:
Punchy
Because the names you mentioned sound negroid, while Sarah Palin has front junk and winks. And plus.
Dan robinson
Because she has big hair, great teeth, and bodacious taa-taas, but I’m just guessing ’cause I’ m really drunk.
Kirk Spencer
@Michael D.:
That’s because you’re in Atlanta. Try up here where Mullis is the state Senator – the man who wants to move the Georgia-Tennessee border a mile north so we can access the Tennessee river. Or take in the political discussions in the small towns near Helen or Dahlonega. Maybe go south to Perry where they had a MASSIVE tea party rally (a bit over a quarter of the county attended despite it being during a work-day).
As Blake Clark says, “Be careful when you leave Atlanta, because once you leave Atlanta you’re entering Georgia.”
Mike in NC
Few weeks? More like ten years. See: Barnum, P. T., and Mencken, H. L., if you need to know any more…
fbjakes
@Max: As a resident of Savannah, GA, I would point out that we refer to everything south of our Historic District as “North Jacksonville.” (and the rest of Georgia as “out there”)
Xecky Gilchrist
So why are we going to spend the next few weeks listening to the lies of a grifter from up north who couldn’t even finish her term?
Trick question! I’m not going to be listening.
I couldn’t give less of a shit about Palin unless I were a rabbit dropping little raisin-turds.
Although it’s amusing to see what the bloggers have to say about her.
flukebucket
@Kirk Spencer:
I have lived here for over 50 years and that pretty much sums it up. Atlanta and Georgia are two entirely different ball games.
carolatl
@Kirk Spencer
You don’t even have to get that far outside of Atlanta. Come up to Cobb County, where I live, and you’ll find plenty of folks who think just like those in the rural parts of the state.
@Michael D
I wish I could agree w/you but I do think you’re naive. Get outside the Perimeter and try talking just about anyone you run into. Everyone in my freakin’ family (except, thankfully, my brother, and he’s a member of the “liberal MSM”) thinks Sister Sarah is the greatest thing since sliced bread. That’s b/c she’s a “good Christian woman.”
Kirk Spencer
@carolatl: I don’t think of Cobb County as Atlanta. I remember reading why MARTA doesn’t have ride-share for I-75 North travelers. I remember the Cobb gun control law. I remember that Barr was Cobb’s representative.
Yep. Cobb ain’t Atlanta. Of course, neither is Stone Mountain or Forrest park or, well, a LOT of what’s outside the perimeter.
andy
I hear the Mayor of Memphis can see Graceland from his window.
Annie
@Svensker:
LOL…..
Unfortunately, after the book tour, Palin will keep reinventing herself.
Now, we have Palin the author. Last month, we had Palin the Asian Economic Expert. Next, it will probably be Palin, the ex-Navy Seal (prove she wasn’t…); Palin, the Compassionate Conservative; Palin, the Home Schooling Mother, etc.
It will never end.
Michael D.
@carolatl:
OTP? Gurl, is you on crack?
Nutella
Are AC Wharton and John Peyton and carrying out their duties for their full elected terms of office? B-O-R-I-N-G!!
carolatl
@Michael D
I live OTP! It’s very lonely out here for me. Actually, I’m a native – born and raised in north Cobb. My whole family are wingers. I also have step-family in small-town northern Alabama, which is even scarier than this area. My dad went to a tea party in Birmingham on Wednesday. Sometimes it’s just impossible to find anything to talk about that doesn’t leave us screaming at each other.
My brother and I are the family’s “token libruls.” Strangely enough, we’re also the only two w/college educations. Hmmm, think there’s a correlation?
Michael D.
@carolatl:
My bad! It’s far more likely you are on Meth than crack.
Well, at least I know you didn’t get your degrees from Berkeley – because Sean Hannity says that’s a bastion of leftists and commies and your family would have been ordered to perform post-natal abortions on you both. Because, you know, for wingers, it’s perfectly OK to kill people after they’re born.
Be careful.
Common Sense
Yeah but can you see Russia from Memphis?
skippy
ah, john, without google, who are any of us, after all?
binzinerator
@Max:
As a friend who lives in south Fla said, you gotta go north to go south.
binzinerator
@Michael D.:
Hmm. Drive 10 miles out of Atlanta (any place except Athens) and I wonder what you’d find then.
I remember the tensions in Forsyth County in the years following the civil rights marches and the Klan counter-demonstrators there in 1987. I am certain that kind of ingrained hate that I saw there is going away without a peep. Even after more than 20 years.
I lived in Atlanta in the late 80’s and early 90’s — for a while just down the street from the Eagle, the gay bar that was in the news a few months ago when the cops came in and threw everyone on floor and arrested them for being gay.
That incident makes me confident, sadly, in believing Teabaggerism will thrive in GA.
Maybe not as nutty. Doubt it. But they know what they’re really in it for, and protesting taxes is just the abstraction of it.
binzinerator
@binzinerator:
Correction: It is NOT going away without a peep.
Deborah
If neither of those guys is willing to stand up and demand to know why the phrase “In God We Trust” has been moving around on the nickel and doesn’t it, you know, show that Obama is a godless communist, then you have your answer. They probably talk about property taxes and stuff.
Splitting Image
As annoying as it is to have Palin as a potentially permanent fixture on the noise shows, just think how much worse it would have been if McCain had picked somebody else.
Before he picked her, Palin was viewed as a popular, fairly reasonable Republican with some unorthodox opinions and not really tainted by the stink of the Bush regime. Palin would have finished her term, likely been re-elected, and would have been available in 2012 as a fresh and relatively unknown commodity, with considerably more experience and the gravitas that comes from having been re-elected.
The first thing that came to my mind when McCain picked Palin and the bus started going over the cliff was a baseball team calling up a prize pitching prospect into the middle of a pennant race and blowing out his arm in a futile attempt to salvage a losing season.
Palin could have been a valuable asset to the national ticket in 2012 or the logical candidate to take Mark Begich’s Senate seat back when it comes up in 2014. Instead the Republicans have fumbled her away to the talk-show racket.
Good riddance. And maybe the one thing to be grateful to John McCain for.
Chuck Butcher
@abrxas:
Nah, she’ll start losing her looks pretty quickly and that’ll be it. Sure, the dooling wingers she apes will hang for awhile after, but the media?
carolatl
@Michael D
Thanks for the advice, but it’s unnecessary. Around here I’m always lookin’ over my shoulder!