Responding to a domestic violence report last week, police officers arrested a 26-year old suspect for punching his girlfriend in the face and brandishing a firearm while intoxicated. Is this your typical crime blotter from Any Town USA? Not this time! The alleged offender was Track Palin, oldest son of Sarah Palin.
Whether Son of Sarah ends up in lockup, or receives a slap on his affluenza, is beside the point. Where was Mamma Pit Bull with Lipstick one day later? Was she arranging bail to spring her son from jail? Retaining legal counsel or family counsel?
On Tuesday, the former half-term governor of Alaska had flown to Ames, Iowa, to stump for Trump. Her signature voice screeching of chalk on blackboard, the family values mom betrayed no hint of the family mess back home.
Not until Wednesday, during a campaign stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, did she finally speak of the elephant in the room:
“That starts from the top. It’s a shame that our military personnel even have to wonder, if they have to question, if they’re respected anymore. It starts from the top,” she insisted.
Indeed! Accountability starts from the top, but was the POTUS deserving her spite? Did PTSD derail her hapless Track, or perhaps some other pre-existing condition long ignored? Let’s take a Tripp (no pun intended) down Memory Lane:
December 6, 2005 — Four teens stopped at a liquor store and stole a bottle of vodka before vandalizing 44 school buses. Although courts do not release the names of juvenile offenders, one of the four teens is believed to be Track Palin.
September 11, 2007 — Son of Sarah enlists in the U.S. Army (presumably to ‘straighten up and fly right’). In the year Track Palin deployed to Iraq, his CIC was President George W. Bush.
September 2, 2008 — On the same day John McCain named Sarah Palin as his VP running mate, tabloids broke this news: Teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant.
September 6, 2014 — Let us recall the infamous Palin Family Brawl starring Papa Todd, Mama Grizzly, bristling Bristol, and punch-drunk Track.
June 27, 2015 — After earning $262,500 as teen pregnancy ambassador for the Candie Foundation (an abstinence awareness charity), Bristol announced her second pregnancy — again out of wedlock.
No doubt, tabloid journalism opens windows on the private lives of famous people but rarely delves into more meaningful clues. Are Palin family values behind closed doors the same as they appear in public?
Ask any mental health professional. Patterns of underage drinking, teen pregnancy, and trouble with the law are signs and symptoms of disconsolate teens — and of absentee parents who are inattentive to their needs. Here is the portrait of a distressed family repeatedly mired in controversy and drama.
Of course, Mamma Grizzly does what grizzlies do best: Shift blame. Accuse. Denounce. Ridicule. Play the victim card. And avoid mirrors. Blame the POTUS for the elephant in the room, but never admit responsibility. Perhaps the public scold has revealed the caustic side of her parenting style.
If Sarah Palin has achieved anything in life, she has raised denial and self-affirming victimhood to a fine art, and her firebrand populism appeals to millions of like-minded followers. At least there is this point of agreement between lawyers and mental health professionals: Negligent parents are good for business.
People watch Jerry Springer so that they can laugh at the antics of the lower, lower classes and perhaps feel superior, or feel that their lives aren't quite at rock bottom after all. But people look at the same low-life behavior but with some sense of identification with the "like minded" as you call them. Perhaps we're talking about the mind of no mind or some such Zen, but you only have to listen to the speech she gave supporting Trump to realize that she was mindlessly drunk or just mindless. Low life and proud, low life and rich, it's like buying a lottery ticket - a dollar store dream and a license to spew hate at those who worked their way to the top, who have minds filled with fact and the ability to reason. She and the Donald thrive by being the patriot saints of inferiority.
ReplyDeleteRight wing and bitter - clingin' to our guns and our religions and drill baby drill she raves incoherently on camera. Forget the oil glut, forget the failure of all her prognostications and warnings and the lies that support them.
T.S. Eliot's vision for the end times is more soothing. Hollow Men, stuffed men, headpiece filled with straw. Alas. . .
Only squealing humanzees can put a Sith Lord and infamous MILF upon a pedestal and worship them.
DeleteAnd oh, by the way,l the claims of PTSD by Trackhead seem to be odd since as far as I can tell he never saw combat, unless you consider beating up and threatening women combat.
ReplyDeleteA combat veteran of phantom parents who were never 'there' for him.
DeleteOn second thought, this whole mess is so sad and fucked up, I really have nothing to say.
ReplyDeletePalin is without a doubt representative of the hollow people. You Captain have nothing to say; I have run out of energy to say anymore. Or maybe it has come to the point I just don't <give s sh*t.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably the best way to kep your sanity. Giving a damn about this country is painful.
Deletethe angel of ambiguation mates with the Baron of Bombast..producing a infant of indecipherable intellectal disability. They are both attention whores that give common prostituation a good name.
ReplyDeleteColumnist Kathleen Parker sums it up quite nicely:
ReplyDelete"...it looks as though Republicans may get what they deserve — a bombastic, bellicose, self-aggrandizing, mean-streaked, golf-cheating, bullying narcissist without plans or policies beyond his own, no doubt fickle, fantasies.
Once Republicans forced the party to take the governor of Alaska seriously as a vice presidential candidate, they opened a populist door that they’ll not easily shut. But the GOP really owes its thanks for current circumstances to John McCain, who, you’ll recall, spent a little over an hour with an otherwise unvetted candidate and, over coffee under a sycamore tree, decided to make her second-in-command should he win the election.
And now we have Trump, who has Palin, who has cemented the anti-intellectual, anti-“elitist” fervor of the Republican base. William F. Buckley’s conservatism seems headed for the door, and National Review deserves plenty of blame. There is, alas, no one left to stand athwart history and yell, stop!"
I wonder how accurate it is to call it "populist" I'm still holding out with the idea that these people are more than a cringe element, although that's increasingly hard to do listening to people who should know better but don't. There must be a better category for the vulgus, the low life, ignorant and angry rabble.
ReplyDeleteIt is of some satisfaction that the play dirty element has been bitten on the ass and it would be even more gratifying if some independent outdraws candidate Trump. I don't want to thing the idiot can be elected, but then I listen to "dempocrats" bitching about punishing the country because Obama didn't do enough for the transgendered or hasn't joined BLN on any of the other rabid causes and this scares me. I keep seeing posts on facebook urging left leaners not to vote because that just per[petuates all the bad things they bitch about.
My real fear is that Democracy has been defeated by all those factors our ancestors warned about when democracy was a radical idea.
"Mother of the year"
ReplyDeleteIt almost sounds strange to hear that word. No one talks about mothers any more All we have in America are "moms" Is it because 'mother' is another hijacked word or because of our infatuation with infantile terminology? Who knows.
Steve Hawking warns us not to misuse the Higgs Boson. I have no idea how that would be possible except that we already misuse everything else. Is there some metaphorical black hole that sucks in the language, the culture, the music, the popular passtimes as we fall into some sort of even horizon from which nothing escapes? Maybe we already have and we don't know it. It's coming though -- it starts with driverless cars and it goes on until we have a driverless government hell bent for some other dimension: it lies between the pit of man’s fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call ... The Twilight Zone. Or maybe Hell.
In street slang, 'mother' is a shortened version of a longer word ending in "uck." In this context, the ambiguity is apropos. I also get a kick out of calling Palin "La Petite Sarah," a play on "La Petite Syrah" because she whines a lot.
DeleteOf course, And I'm disgusted that street slang, baby talk and various low life language drives English off the market. Come to think of it that's true of politicians. Who would want to be a serious statesman today?
DeleteEvidently, her kids did not receive the nurturing and support they needed. It takes a lot of time and devotion to raise a large family, which becomes even the more daunting when you consider that one of those kids is handicapped. Furthermore, consider the additional time it takes when one of those parents has high profile political ambitions outside the family.
ReplyDeletePalin’s priorities come across loud and clear: The day following Track’s arrest, Mamma Grizzly was an absentee bear … stumping for Sith Lord Trump, the next day, and the next.
I see a family culture of negligence and combativeness that reflects in their parenting style and in their politics. These explain the constant melodrama surrounding them.
Once upon A time many people would blame such things on inbreeding, said to be common in Appalachia or the Ozarks. It prompted some regrettable things like forced sterilization to try to prevent offspring thought to be mentally and physically inadequate.
ReplyDeleteIn these more enlightened times, people who might once have been prevented from reproducing go into politics and journalism -- cultural and intellectual throwbacks and not a banjo amongst them.
In response to a simultaneous post on FaceBook, one commenter said: “If she is this bad, can you imagine the followers?”
DeleteThere is a natural tendency among people to gravitate along cultural, language, ethnic, and religious lines.
The same can be said of politics. In this influential essay, “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of like-Minded People is Tearing Us Apart,” Bill Bishop explores the phenomenon of “self-segregation” and the tendency of people to choose neighborhoods more compatible with their lifestyles and political beliefs — and the impact of those choices on voting demographics.
Similarly, psychiatrist James Masterson explores the same phenomenon from a psychological perspective in this book: “The Search for the Real Self: Unmasking the Personality Disorders of our Time.” He observes the tendency of people to make personal choices based on emotional needs. In one chapter, Masterson describes a cocktail party attended by seemingly random people, and the propensity of disturbed persons to socialize with equally disturbed persons as if some invisible force attracted them.
“If she is this bad, can you imagine the followers?” My reply is: Yes! Absolutely! Right on, Bro. The relationship between Mamma Grizzly and her followers is one of mutual validation.
Trenchant observations. Of course the Internet has contributed mightily. Once upon a time oppressive countries used to limit mimeograph machines to keep like minded people from getting together, spreading information, or disinformation and sharing ideas. Not possible any more and we really are disintegrating into dog packs, parking at each other. Hugely disruptive and politicians and churchmen are learning to use the phenomena they once tried to forbid.
DeleteI once had dreams about the Internet bringing us all together. Perhaps I should sit in the corner in a tall pointy hat.
It's obviously easier for many to be part of the tribe rather than an individual who thinks for themselves.
ReplyDeleteNice to see OCTO thinks Palin is so important to the 2016 presidential race. You should write for a tabloid trash paper.
ReplyDeleteNormally, I don’t post troll comments; but in this case I make an exception.
DeleteThe title “Sarah’s Choice” recalls a 1982 film called “Sophie’s Choice” starring Meryl Streep. We learn of a woman sent to Auschwitz along with her two children where she faces a terrible choice - which one of her children will live and which one will be condemned to death.
This post is NOT about gossip or partisanship; its about parenthood It’s about the public Sarah Palin versus the private mom. It’s about appearances and priorities, and the choices we make.
If Track Palin were your kid, what would you do? Would you avail yourself of every resource to get help for your kid? Or would you put on your public face and go on political junket?
Note: There are five offspring in the Palin family, one of whom is severely handicapped. Especially in large families, there is hardly enough time and parental attention to go around.
Furthermore, suppose the parents are self-indulgent, preoccupied, emotionally unavailable, and inattentive to the needs of their kids? In such families, delinquency among boys and teen pregnancy among girls are most common. Track and Bristol are the “lost” children of the Palin family.
Last week, Sarah made a choice. She chose politics over parenting. Now she must bear the consequences — and anguish — of her decisions.
Perhaps you're too kind to Ms Palin and to the Anony as well. The 'observation' that you think she is important to this presidential race now in it's 7th year doesn't seem relevant to anything, but certainly she must take some blame for the low-life life-style her family seems to exhibit, affluent or not. She is indeed important to American History because although Dan Quayle may be regarded as a pioneer in the government by Gump movement, no one has out-done her. She's as clueless and uninformed and unintelligent as she is arrogant and aggressive. And of course she's dishonest as well. (no she did not say no to the infamous bridge and no she didn't sell the state owned jet on eBay) she was a vice presidential candidate that played a part in causing her running mate to be ridiculed and defeated. Being associated with anyone running for president is a strong plus if you're looking for the angry idiot vote or the religious insurgent vote (perhaps I repeat myself) but she's a candidate-killer if the rational vote counts at all.
DeleteGetting cheers for babbling about protecting "our religions and our guns" and our "drill baby drill" at the exact moment the world markets were collapsing because there's too much oil being pumped shows how clueless and ignorant and oblivious to reality she is. That she appeals to the barking rabble even more ignorant and angry than she is, is significant because it means truth, justice and secular constitutional Democracy are in peril and will be as long as any two people meet in her name and sneer.
Being a parent is extremely difficult and lacking in second chances. Many good anbd great people have been bad parents and it's hard to be the child of a celebrity, but as she has no works of greatness to put on the balance against the weight of her heart, I have no sympathy. She seems proud of herself.
As to associating such measured and incisive prose as yours with the National Enquirer as the nameless one suggests, it's hard to avoid identifying such a scandal ridden, self righteous idiot and paranoid religious nut with the usual Jerry Springer / NAt. Enquirer / tabloid riff-raff: people famous for being famous, famous for nothing, famous for embarrassing the country that made them rich instead of jailing them.