Something Someone Else Said

"See, these reporters were not there and I think that these are the political establishment reporters who love to gin up controversy and spin up gossip, the rest of America doesn't care about that kind of crap!" -Sarah Palin (transcribed by me), reacting to revelations alleged about her during the 2008 presidential campaign in the new book "Game Changer" on The O'Reilly Factor yesterday.

Ah, the victim hood mentality of the modern Republican party. A few thoughts: These reporters are not claiming to have been present when she supposedly expressed a belief that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks or that she didn't know why North and South Korea are different countries or that she wanted to call Biden "Joe" during their vice-presidential debate because she kept mistakenly referring to him as "O'Biden" during her debate prep; they're reporting what high-level campaign staffers who were present at those events have told them. And their flippant dismissal as "establishment" is the same type of tired populist bullshit that plays so very well with her incurious cadre of sycophantic fans.

Yes Mrs. Palin, America is entirely composed of nothing but erudite philosophers and serious policy wonks who hold only disdain for the establishment media's insistence on treating politics as if it were some type of ideological war or frantic horse race. This country obviously has no desire for base entertainment composed of cheap tawdry affairs such as this! Thank God that Americans have eschewed the inclusion of controversy and gossip in all aspects of their everyday lives and refuse to tolerate it as any portion of their media diet.

So I guess my only question is, if Americans hate controversy and gossip as much as Palin claims that they do (at least she insists as much when said controversy and gossip is about her, anyway) how do any of the millions of TV shows, movies, magazines, books and websites that are composed almost exclusively of controversy and gossip make any money at all in this country? It's a mystery to be sure, but then economics was never one of my strong suits.