Sarah and the Snob Factor

Anybody can be a snob. You can be a conservative and be a snob. You can be a right-winger and have an inflated view of your own intelligence, wisdom and sophistication. There are a lot of conservative snobs who look down their highly elevated noses at Sarah Palin.

There was a day--seems like yesterday to us old guys--when it seemed like liberals absolutely controlled the flow of public information about politics and just about every other subject of interest to the people.  We could read between the lines of CBS or Newsweek or any of the standard information outlets.  But it was a bore. Yes, there were a few conservative periodicals out there but their circulation was limited. You never saw them on the magazine rack at the drug store.
 
So it was a breath of fresh air when the conservative media began its ascendancy. At last there were voices who agreed with the "silent majority" who were able to find a platform that was accessible to average folks.

But of course human nature is human nature. On the right AND the left there are plenty of pundits, commentators, what have you, who are most definitely not moved by principle first.  The new media has created new opportunities for "thinkers" and talkers, but now there are a thousand times as many voices shouting to the ears of radio listeners and seeking to grab the attention of the internet surfer. Maybe millions of times as many.

So those trying to be heard jockey for position in whatever way they can.  If there are millions of Americans hungering for conservative information, then there will be at least thousands of would-be providers doing anything to get noticed—not only by the consumer, but by the big boys who have already made it in that august and respected profession. As these pundits rise up the food chain it seems that more and more their real desired audience is other pundits, preferably pundits who will mention them and their clever websites on some cable news channel during the hours of darkness commonly called prime time.

In this exciting pre-election season, there is one woman who has shown her ability to control the conversation at will and whose deliberations about her own political future are the focus of all. You know who I mean.

Now this lady is not from Harvard or Yale. She doesn't have up-east connections at all. As a matter of fact, many think the pitch and inflection of her voice prove conclusively that she just couldn't be that smart.  Smart people sound like...well, like Obama. He has a mellow voice that maintains that lofty cadence that goes so well with a side dish of Styrofoam Greek columns. In short, he is PRESIDENTIAL. He makes the pseudo-intellectual pundits feel good about themselves. Forget the fact that's he's never actually accomplished anything. He's sophisticated. He's cool. And if I approve of him that makes me cool too. That other lady is not cool. She's "folksy," a pejorative term if there ever was one. She even hangs around out in the woods. She hunts and fishes. You can't get any more un-cool than that.

So as the wannabes try to push and shove their was to notoriety they feel it might be helpful in appealing to the big name guys to make wisecracks about Palin--to mock her possible candidacy, her delay in announcing, and just about anything else that they find mock-worthy, even the slander printed by that purveyor of slime, Crown Publishers. It's all fodder for the conservative snob who wants to be seen as too sophisticated to support a backwater politician like Palin.

Snobbery is actually a cover for an acute lack of self worth. A person who really is wise and understanding doesn't need pretense as a mask. But the snob does. The snob needs to feel bigger than he is. His constant fear is that the sense of inferiority that gnaws at his insides will be exposed to the world.  To quote a famous third-party presidential candidate from the past, "It's just sad, Larry."

Thankfully, the pipsqueak snobs in the third rank of conservative punditry will not select the next president. There are too many of us hicks out here who have had enough of the pseudo-sophisticated "leadership" that has all but wrecked the most powerful economy in history. We will not be swayed by the blowhards.  We have heard a fresh voice from a woman whose first commitment is to her country and not her career or to personal ambition. We have seen her demonstrate her commitment by being willing to walk away from a highly paid position in government because her conscience demanded that she do so.  And we will back her if she chooses to run for president regardless of what the internet social climbers of conservatism have to say about it.