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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Anti-Palin Hysteria: A Sample


Folks are calling it Palin Derangement Syndrome. Here's what it looks like in its advanced stages.


By all indications, the desperate campaign to destroy Sarah Palin is not just failing. It's flat out backfiring on the Democrats. And if you thought they lost their grip on reality in the days after her selection as Senator John McCain's running mate, you should see them now. For example . . .

Naomi Wolf is a fairly prominent feminist, Democratic consultant, and author. She is known, among other things, for her work repackaging then-candidate Al Gore to appeal to women. Her recent blog post at The Huffington Post is as far 'round the bend as anything I've seen about Palin in the major national media so far. It is a frenzied rant on the breathtakingly desperate theme of Sarah Palin as "the designated muse of the coming American police state." And she really means police state, complete with corrupt elections, torture, mafia tactics, political prisoners, secret police, censorship, the works. You know, like Russia and China and North Korea. Like Vietnam when John McCain was a prisoner there. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Or, closer to home, the logical extension of the society the frenzied American elite think they live in under the Bush adminstration. Police state.

Try suspending your disbelief and stifling your gorge long enough to read the whole post. It's hysterical, in more than one sense of that word. It's slightly more hysterical than most of the Left's discussion of Palin at the moment, though probably no more hostile than the norm. It's also about half a step short of declaring that Sarah Palin needs to be assassinated, and soon -- literally, that is, not just politically. Saying that would be a crime, if a Republican said it about a Democratic candidate. When they start saying it about Sarah Palin, they'll call it "free speech."

The thought strikes that Wolf could have saved herself a few hundred words and made the same point if the most of the American Left had not renounced the nation's Judeo-Christian roots and zealously jettisoned all related language and concepts. The point would have been the same, but in far fewer words: Sarah Palin is Satan incarnate.

It will get worse and weirder before it gets better. At least it will get worse. I'm not sure it can get weirder.

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