Sarah Palin joins Fox News, delighting/terrifying nation

"Everything is very simple, and people who say it isn't are lying."

By now you have probably heard that Sarah Palin has joined Fox News as a contributor, and will be providing “her political commentary and analysis across all Fox News platforms,” which by 2012 will presumably include blimps and children’s mouths. This is the kind of news event that makes so much sense, once it has happened, that you feel like you were time traveling and have suddenly caught up with the actual present. Why hasn’t Sarah Palin been working for Fox News since she graduated from college? It’s like watching Joseph Goebbels fuck The Riddler: difficult to see coming, but once it starts happening you know that only circumstances kept them apart for so long. “I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News,” Palin said in a press release. “It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.” And so it begins.

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Brit Hume seizes the moral high ground against Tiger Woods

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgMr_Zc3OtA

Corpse eating crackers Brit Hume appeared on Fox News this Sunday to pass judgment on Tiger Woods’s extramarital affairs, opine that his children might never be able to love him, and demand that he change religions. I direct your props to Ben Fowkles for the link, and your attention to William Kristol at the :40 mark. You know you’re talking crazy when you discombobulate Bill Kristol—the man was chief of staff to Dan Quayle, for crissake. After offering the generous assessment, “It’s not clear to me that he’ll be able to have a relationship with his children,” Hume goes on to speculate that Woods’s professed Buddhism does not offer “the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.” Okay, but will it make me a sanctimonious asshole? Because that’s the last piece of my asshole puzzle.

Brit Hume is not completely oblivious to how he comes off on TV, and he’s aware that certain segments of the Fox News viewing audience—specifically the 40% that watches solely to capture video and criticize it on the internet—took exception to his remarks. That’s why he went on Bill O’Reilly to address the heart of the issue: the way that people in this society immediately freak out if you so much as mention that you’re a Christian. Behold:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2MB8boLWZc&feature=player_embedded

For my money, the best part of this interview is when O’Reilly, after showing Brit Hume a videotape of himself saying that they only way Tiger Woods can ever recover is if accepts the love of Jesus Christ, asks, “Was that proselytizing?” and Brit Hume says no, he doesn’t think so. Does Brit Hume not know what that word means? After reiterating his suspicion that Tiger’s family doesn’t love him anymore, Hume opines that what made Woods so notable is not his skill as a golfer, but “the content of his character.” See, I don’t follow golf, so I thought that it was because he was the best player in the history of the sport, but actually it’s because he was such a good guy. But in fact, Hume points out, he wasn’t a good guy at all! In addition to seeing you when you’re golfing and knowing when you’re awake, it turns out that Britt Hume also knows if you’ve been bad or good, so convert for goodness’s sake.

Hume seems unaware that calling on a man to change religions after you’ve gone on national TV to speculate on the state of his marriage might be seen as a little presumptuous. Instead, he ascribes any indignation over his remarks to the taboo on mentions of Christian faith in our national dialogue. “It has always been a puzzling thing to me,” Hume says. “The Bible even speaks of it. You speak the name of Jesus Christ, and I don’t mean to make a pun here, but all hell breaks loose.” I think we can all agree that the worst thing a public figure can do in this country is speak the name of Jesus Christ. That’s why the religious faiths of both candidates for President in 2008 remain unknown, and why evangelical Christians wield absolutely no power in American politics. In a country where 83% of the population identifies as Christian, mentioning Jesus is just too risky.

If a mode of rhetoric has defined American culture since 1967, presenting the majority position as if it were a rebellious minority is it. Consider the quote-unquote rogue who is America’s second-most admired woman, or the vast, decrepit sales team that calls itself rock ‘n roll. Americans like to think of themselves as bold nonconformists, especially when they’re safely in the majority. It’s no surprise, then, that Christians in a position of power should trot out this argument when they need to excuse crass behavior. What is surprising is that people still buy into it. A marketing strategy that has come to be derided as a means of selling Mountain Dew or Jeeps still works as a means of selling bad behavior—maybe because 83% of the country has a vested interest in believing it’s true. Thank goodness for the internet, which gives us access to the Cypress Times outside of Houston, and their response to the flap: “Mr. Hume may have been speaking metaphorically, but his words were literal and they were the perfect explanation as to why he is now being vilified.” I’m not sure what the actual words in that sentence could possibly mean—although, being words, they are probably literal—but the implication is that the country is somehow persecuting its Christian majority.

I say a majority cannot be persecuted. Like those frat boys in Borat who lament the inordinate advantages enjoyed by black people and homosexuals, people who claim majority-group persecution are usually trying to cover up personal failings. In the case of Britt Hume, he didn’t fail by saying the J-word on national television; he failed by being a dick. He treated another man’s vulnerability as an opportunity to take charge of his soul. Personally, I’m an atheist. If I saw a man crying in the bar because he lost his job, and I went over there and said that the thing he needs to do to get his life in order again is to abandon his misguided belief in the existence of gods, I would rightly be regarded as the biggest asshole who ever lived. We don’t do that kind of thing here. This is America, where we shut up about religion—not because we’re embarrassed or because people persecute us or because we’re not sure about it, but because it’s decent.

Andrew Sullivan: Canary in the mine

Conservative Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan has publicly repudiated the right.

Conservative Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan has repudiated the American right, finally freeing him to publicly wear these glasses.

We here in the Combat! offices read Andrew Sullivan a lot, but we don’t get to link to him as often as we’d like to, probably because he doesn’t spend enough time saying things that are completely insane. A Tory transplant from the UK, Sullivan has identified as a conservative for most of his career,  despite his sexual preference (dudes) and his tendency to support centrist Democrats in second-term Presidential elections (Bush-to-Clinton, Bush II-to-Kerry.) Basically, Sullivan’s conservative principles guide his political affiliations, not the other way around. Until Tuesday, he’d managed to lean left and right while remaining publicly aligned with the Republican side of the American political spectrum. All that changed with this blog post, in which Sullivan announces that he can no longer support “the movement that goes by the name ‘conservative’ in America.” His public repudiation of the American right—and, by implication, the GOP—is seismic coming from a man who prides himself on being “of no party or clique.” It’s also an indicator of how far the Republican Party has drifted from anything that an informed, reasonable American who is not himself a politician would want to endorse.

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Yes: Sarah Palin drops out of 5k Turkey Trot

Sarah Palin, a couple of babies, a death panel interview and a kid who really needs to start running immediately

Sarah Palin, a couple of babies, a death panel interview and a kid who really needs to start running immediately

Last Thursday, while the rest of us were eating stuffing and probably violating the Constitution, Sarah Palin was participating in a 5k Turkey Trot in Kennewick, Washington. As is often the case with Palin, though, the word “participating” does not mean what you want it to mean. It turns out that the former Alaska governor dropped out of the race midway through, ostensibly to avoid the crowd of onlookers waiting for her at the finish line. See, she just wanted to run in the race and meet some Real Americans, not turn the Red Cross charity event into some sort of Going Rogue publicity spectacle. That’s why she announced her participation only two days before on her Twitter feed, and why her team was called the Rogue Runners. And shame on you for finding some cruel poetry in Palin’s decision to quit a charity race she had time to enter because she quit the governorship of Alaska. You try operating the complex assemblage of touch-screens and levers required to synchronize the Palin II‘s legs for 3.1 miles.

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Terrifying insight into the Sarah Palin phenomenon

The friendly snake that operates Sarah Palin, enjoying a rare moment of repose

The friendly snake that operates Sarah Palin, enjoying a rare moment of repose

Combat! blog’s vacation in sunny lazy California continues today, and I am too sunny to produce a long post about fat people/pants. Fortunately, the ever-vigilant Ben Fowlkes has sent me a terrifying video of interviews with Sarah Palin supporters. Surely it’s an example of uncharitable editing, but it still offers a chilling vision of an America that does not make its political decisions on the basis of political issues. The melange of talk radio catchphrases that passes for discourse among these people is simultaneously baffling and weirdly distinct; they all talk kind of the same, and what’s most unnerving is that Sarah Palin talks like that, too. She’s like some sort of rhetorical surrealist, who has tapped into a deep vein of subconscious connections that operates below logical reasoning. Understanding the people in this video is like trying to read a digital clock in a dream. Video after the jump.

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