Palin - The Horror

As the months have gone by since John McCain revealed his total cynicism and contempt for America's national security by selecting one Sarah Palin to be a potential vice-president of the United States, we have learned that every single ghastly attribute we discovered in the campaign is worse than we thought at the time. The narcissism, the pathological and incessant lying, the viciousness, the delusions of grandeur, the vindictiveness, the fathomless and proud ignorance, the opportunism, the vanity, the white trash concupiscence and fraudulence in almost every respect: these are now indisputable. How an advanced democracy came that close to having this farce of a candidate running the most powerful country on earth reveals how deep the corruption of our politics and especially our media are.

There is not much new in Todd Purdum's nonetheless superb summary of the Wasilla whack-job. I learned that Matt Scully's concern for the welfare of animals did not prevent him from writing not one but two speeches for a woman who backed shooting wolves from helicopters and allowing them to die a gruesomely painful death. I learned that Mark MacKinnon publicly said he would never join a campaign against Obama and yet coached Palin for her presidential debate, and kept it quiet. One should remember, I suppose, that in Washington even those who seem able to put principle before partisanship are all liars and hypocrites in the end. Chief among these goons is John McCain, a man whose reputation should never, ever recover from this act of wanton irresponsibility and cynicism.

But I did learn of several new odd lies - in the same classic pattern of categorically denying things that are categorically and patently and verifiably true. This is not, as this blog noted in the campaign, the typical political lie, the Clintonian parsing of truth or lying when the truth cannot easily be discovered. It is the statement that it is night when it is clearly, by universal aggreement, three o'clock in the afternoon. So the Dish needs an update and it is imminent. Stay tuned.

(Photo: what Sarah Palin looked like when pregant.)