Happy birthday, Sarah Palin!
     My mother in 1977 was startled when she found out Jimmy Carter is younger than her, the first president to be so.  When I became aware of Governor Palin of Alaska in August 2008, I soon found out she's only three months older than me.  Had we gone to the same high school we would've been in the same class.  I doubt I would've known her except as a possible acquaintance; I knew some cheerleaders and girl jocks, but only as a human boy who crossed their sight lines and who assisted them with frog dissection and other projects.
     Sarah Palin played the guard position in high school basketball.  Contemporary action photographs I've seen show a strong-looking short girl with a big brunette hairdo typical of the early 1980s.  Later, she was Miss Wasilla.  I knew a devout Christian girl who became the Miss of my city.  She was, I daresay, better looking than eighteen year old Sarah, was also a very nice person, but unlike the Alaskan, did not become world famous.
     The day Sarah Palin arrived in collective American consciousness featured a planned event: Senator John McCain's announcement of his running mate.  Governor Palin, elected to that office only in 2006, had the benefit of being unknown.  When she strode into the auditorium packed with Republicans, accompanied by her husband Todd, two daughters and a baby, she looked great.  The beautiful hair, the stylish glasses, the poise in spite of the nation's bafflement as to who the fuck she was. 
     When she spoke, it was the kind of magic Ronald Reagan tricked some people with.  Come across as direct, don't delve into complicated issues, tell the Republicans in the room the poppycock they're expecting.  Her son, Track Palin, was serving a tour of duty in Iraq.  Her daughter Bristol was pregnant by a handsome young man with the Biblical name Levi.  Her youngest, Trig Palin, has Down Syndrome, and the Governor promised parents of special needs children they would have an advocate in the White House. 
     An extraordinary woman?  On the surface, electrifying, as she further proved during her Republican National Convention speech.  I watched that speech, not taken in by her words.  By the time of the Convention she struck me as a bullshitter, yet crowd reaction shots showed Republican eyes almost glazed with fascination for her.  I lip read one woman saying to her companion, "I love her!"
     McCain and Palin lost the election.  Some have blamed McCain's choice of running mate as a key factor in his defeat.  I think, though, the drift of history was against him.  Americans didn't want a Republican following Bush.  Palin, in another time, might've ascended to the vice presidency.  Dan Quayle is living proof that being a bimbo is no hindrance to election to that office, and I think Sarah Palin is smarter than Dan Quayle.
     Palin resigned her job as Governor of Alaska before completing her only term.  She became a Political Personality.  Roger Ailes of Fox News Channel had a studio built in her Wasilla house so she could appear via satellite, acting as an alleged political commentator, but mostly offering Sarah Palinesque opinions about Obamacare, the War on Terror, patriotism, the NRA, and whatever else tickles her gray matter. 
     She and her family had their own reality show on The Learning Channel.  I saw parts of two episodes.  She shot an elk, but watching the Palins do their thing isn't very interesting.  The Kardashians, at least, have been on camera so long they've developed acting skills covering their alleged "real" personalities.  The Palins, however, don't know how to do this.
     Sarah Palin's secret is thus revealed: the glitzy Republican former basketball player/beauty queen who can mesmerize some with her folksy ungrammatical blather is actually as mundane as the rich mother seen on her TLC reality show.  There's nothing wrong with being ordinary.  That's not the aspect of her life I find offensive.  That she continues to be a kind of Republican philosopher, her opinions sought on Fox News, her recent speech in Iowa showing she still has pull with that party's gut-thinkers, shows me Palin isn't retiring soon.  She's one of the genuine American jackasses who's made millions of dollars selling herself as an illusion detached from the real woman.

                                                                              Vic Neptune