What You Are Speaks So Loud, I Can't Hear What You're Saying

The New York Times gets the message, finally:

Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it.

That is not how we’re primed to see Ms. Palin. A pugnacious Tea Partyer? Sure. A woman of the people? Yup. A Mama Grizzly? You betcha.

But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa. Along with her familiar and predictable swipes at President Barack Obama and the “far left,” she delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide...so here is something I never thought I would write: a column about Sarah Palin’s ideas.

Imagine that! After three years of covering her on the national stage of politics, the Times finally decides she has something to say that - heaven forbid! - people might want to listen to.

As William Jacobson suggests, maybe pigs do fly. Or, as Don Surber mentions "Welcome to the party, pal!"

Three years after John McCain nominated her for vice president, someone at the New York Times finally bothered to listen to Sarah Palin to find out what she has to say. Lo and behold, columnist Anand Giridharadas discovered that he agreed with some of what she had to say. All set to mock Missus Palin based on Tina Fey’s stereotype of the woman, Anand Giridharadas discovered that he agreed with her...what’s so strange? Liberals didn’t listen. They leaped to conclusions based on her color, her income, her looks and her sex and automatically assumed that all her positions were 180 degrees opposite of theirs.

As Surber points out, the evidence has been hidden in plain sight since two years before she was introduced as the Vice-Presidential nominee:

For a smart guy like Anand Giridharadas, it sure took him long to see what is as obvious as the nose on his face. She beat a sitting governor — Frank Murkowski — in the Republican Party by pounding the cronyism and corruption of his rule. He received less than one-fifth of the vote in the primary.

Wait, he did not know that she went after Exxon? Was he so completely unaware of her biography? Has he never heard of Wikipedia? Did he not at least look at “Going Rogue”? I mean beyond the beauty on the cover.

Now, three years after the fact, I don't think it's possible to overstate how badly the McCain camp misused Palin. After the selection, one of the primary arguments against Palin was "How can we vote for an old and possibly infirm man for President when we don't know anything about the woman who would replace him?" Beyond her gender, looks and charisma, the McCain people never gave us much of a clue.

Of all the legions of reporters and bloggers who descended on Alaska during the primary, how many stories did we see reported about how she took on the corrupt politicians in her own party and then, once elected, how she took on the oil companies themselves? Not many. But there were plenty of stories about how strange her church was, how she wanted to ban books and how she had used her position and power to get a state trooper fired.

To this day, if you haven't read Going Rogue or seen The Undefeated, it's highly unlikely you know the things she accomplished that brought her to the attention of John McCain in the first place. If you know her at all, then you know that she's a celebrity, that she made tons of money from writing two books, that she hosted a television show with her family about Alaska, and that she's a dim bulb who once said "I can see Russia from my house".

If you know anything about her politically, other than vague memories of the 2008 election that brought Barack Obama to ascendancy, it's that when she returned to Alaska, she promptly resigned from being governor because, well, after being on the national stage, the governorship wasn't good enough for her anymore, or maybe it was she just wanted to make some real money. Whatever.

Seen in that light, it's highly understandable that the New York Times would say "...if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it..." because, once you know somebody, once you've figured them out, once you know where they're coming from (add your own cliche here), you don't have to listen anymore.

The article in the Times concludes:

No one knows yet whether Ms. Palin will actually run for president. But she did just get more interesting.

Perhaps. For some of us - many of us - Sarah Palin has been interesting for quite a while and maybe someone at the Gray Lady is finally willing to look beyond the ideological blinders they wear so proudly to discover that there is something of substance to this woman. Or maybe not. This is the Times, after all. And, as Ed Morrissey points out, maybe they've known this all along:

Something tells me, though, that the Times knew this all along. I’m guessing that their sudden interest in the substantive Palin has less to do with being shocked, shocked to find that she’s anti-establishment than in subtly encouraging her to jump into the GOP race, which they might see as a way to split Republicans and keep Barack Obama in office. That’s flawed, too, but having seen their subtle encouragement of John McCain and their disgusting smears of him as soon as he wrapped up the nomination in 2008, their sudden appreciation for Palin has me just a wee bit suspicious.

To me, it doesn't matter. I'm already on record as saying I'd love to see her in the race. First of all, the entertainment value would be enormous. Who wants to listen to "Madison Avenue" Mitt against "Rough and Ready" Rick for the next year? Second, believe it or not, Sarah Palin can position herself to be the "smart" choice between two candidates that people aren't quite comfortable with.

So whether the Times is just late to the party or being devious doesn't matter. By lending whatever credibility they have left to her words, they may make people stop and take a second look at Sarah Palin.

And in looking, people may just discover that they don't really know her at all.