SARAH PALIN: XENA OF THE WAR PARTY... THE NEOCONS EMBRACE THE POLITICS OF CELEBRITY - The Palin-mania that is sweeping the GOP reminds me of the publicity surrounding "American Idol," the popular American television program that catapults complete unknowns on to the national stage and gives them a chance at stardom: the anticipation, the gossip, the frenzy (and partisanship) of the fans. In the last days of the old Republic, this is what American politics has degenerated into: "reality" TV.Prior to being plucked from obscurity by the neocons who run the McCain campaign, Sarah Palin was a complete unknown. Today, she is the object of a burgeoning cult that proclaims her to be the virtual incarnation of the Republican renewal. And never did a party require renewal like the GOP. What with G.W. Bush's bottom-of-the-barrel poll numbers, after eight years of nightmarish mismanagement on the home front and frenzied recklessness abroad, dispirited conservative intellectuals and activists have been asking themselves "What went wrong?" Now, they don't have to bother with such worrisome introspection, their identity crisis has been indefinitely delayed, all due to the appearance of a messiah on the horizon – Sarah, the new Wonder Woman of the Right.
From
Nony
