The first time I heard the lipstick-pitbull line? Well, I remember reading this a couple of days before Sarah Palin’s big convention speech. William Kristol wrote it, of course:
McCain aides whose judgment I trust are impressed by Sarah Palin. One was particularly amused by this exchange: A nervous young McCain staffer took it upon himself to explain to Palin the facts of life in a national campaign, the intense scrutiny she’d be under from the media, the viciousness of the assault that she’d be facing, etc.:
Palin: “Thanks for the warning. By the way, do you know what they say the difference is between a hockey mom and a Pit Bull?”
McCain aide: “No, Governor.”
Palin: “A hockey mom wears lipstick.”
Oh, that nervous young staffer. I like Palin’s amused, unruffled air in deflecting him. I also like the idea that anyone would trust William Kristol’s assessment of who is trustworthy. And the idea that we would think Palin came up with the lipstick line. And the idea that this conversation ever took place.
We all know how the line went over. Now, from the big Times article on why the governor decided to quit:
Late last week, as her sport utility vehicle made its way through the town of McGrath, Ms. Palin said in an interview that the seeds of her resignation had been planted the morning Mr. McCain named her as his vice-presidential choice.
“It began when we started really looking at the conditions that had so drastically changed on Aug. 29,” she said. “The hordes of opposition researchers came up here digging for dirt for political reasons, making crap up.”
Well gee, Princess! You should have listened to that nervous young aide! Though, admittedly, his probable nonexistence could have gotten in the way. But, all right then, listen to Janet Kincaid of Palmer, Alaska. I don’t know if she’s involved in politics, but she seems to have glommed onto a fact of political life that everyone in the country knows except Sarah Palin:
“In politics, you’ve got to just let it roll or it will eat you alive.”
Good point. By the way, I don’t concede that anyone has made up anything derogatory about Gov. Palin. All the inventing seems to have been intended to build her up. For an example, see the start of this post.
The press loves cliches and taglines and obvious irony, so I’m kind of surprised that we don’t hear about the pit bull line now that Palin has turned tail. Even the liberal bloggers haven’t harped on it much, from what I’ve seen. So I’ll say this: some fucking pit bull.
She wasn’t much of a governor either. I don’t mean just that her policies were bad or that she proved inept. I mean that she progressively forgot that she was supposed to be governing:
Amid all the turmoil, Ms. Palin’s enthusiasm for the job itself seemed to be waning, her office appointment books from January 2007 through this May indicate. Since her return from the national campaign her days have typically started later and ended earlier, and the number of meetings with local legislators and mayors has declined.
That 70% percent of Republicans say they’d be likely to vote for Palin in a presidential race shows that the GOP has become a system for generating and then swallowing bullshit. It’s bad enough that the schmucks think that being tough beats or encompasses all other virtues, like intelligence and competence. But they insist on thinking Palin is tough when she has demonstrated that she isn’t. She has broken before the very test that, way back at the beginning of her national career, was supposed to prove what superior iron she was made of.
Come to think of it, her downfall wasn’t even pressure at the national level. The ethics complaints that she says drove her from office were all filed by locals. Forget the big time — Palin can’t hack politics in Alaska, a state with fewer people than Barack Obama’s old state Senate district.
What a fucking loser. Sarah Palin is a pair of breasts, a pair of cheekbones, a pair of glasses, and a winsome mouth that delivered a speech somebody had handed her. Republicans have given up on political life and switched to a fantasy life, and for those purposes she works just fine. She never was a pit bull, just a party doll.
More like quitbull, amirite?
Rimshot.