Sarah Palin’s supporters are so dumb
I like what my friend Adam Conover wrote here about the various “Sarah Palin’s supporters are so dumb” videos that have been making the rounds:
It’s the easiest thing in the world to find the dullest, least media-savvy members of a group, shove a microphone in their face, and allow them to make themselves look foolish. You could do the same thing at the Westminster Dog Show or the U.S. Open if you wanted - I’m sure there are plenty of nuts there too - but you wouldn’t prove anything about dog breeding or tennis by doing so.
Ultimately, the only purpose these videos serve is to pat you on the back for being wiser and smarter than those you disagree with, and to confirm and justify your contempt for them. It’s a form of ideological masturbation, and a habit well worth kicking. We’d all do much better to get off of YouTube, go find a smart Republican, and have our ideas challenged for a change.
"Finding a smart Republican and having our ideas challenged" is important to either know that your ideas stand up to scrutiny or to correct your wrong ideas with smarter ones if you just want to be right all the time. I definitely applaud the sentiment he's expressing here.
I'll go one further than Adam: the unrehearsed "man on the street" interview is not a format conducive to careful, intelligent deliberation. I'm a reasonably articulate and clued-in person, but if someone stuck a camera and microphone in my face on some random Friday evening I almost certainly wouldn't do as well speaking as I do writing. (This guy notwithstanding.)
My only problem with what Adam says is that it begs the question of whether Palin's message challenges ideas or just patience. True, she makes a "deep, joyful, personal connection .. with the middle class" but so did Dale Earnhardt. I've spent considerable time trying to find a smart Republican willing to explain what was behind Palin's resignation or her comments on death panels. I've looked around in National Review, Lew Rockwell and the ironically-named American Thinker. Alaska is beautiful, small towns have good people, Washington has bad people, God is good, elites are bad, freedom is good, taxes are bad, Reagan was good, people who make fun of people are bad. Palin is a winking pointing conservative boilerplate mad-lib talking point machine but there's just no "there" there.
Many supporters of many politicians are dumb. For example many dumb Obama supporters like him for personal rather than political reasons, or had unrealistic expectations about his platform or abilities or political allies. But within Obama's administration there's a recognition of the seriousness of the various problems he's dealing with, a prioritization of those problems, the pros and cons of available solutions, and a reasonably intelligent rationale (most of the time) for why they're going the direction they are. Outside his administration he's got some reasonably well-informed supporters - myself included - who can articulate a coherent strategy. Is there anyone who can distill a similar message from Palin? I haven't found that person yet.
Contempt for Going Rogue is as much an indictment of its readers as it is of the author, but that's exactly the point. The articulate college-educated Republican intellectual like William F Buckley hasn't just vanished from the party, they have been demonized and alienated by the party generally and Palin in particular. You can't find those people in her crowds beause she has deliberately mocked and driven them away. You can always cherry-pick a few idiots out of the crowd but in this case I really don't think it's necessary to cherry pick. She's used a simple, unsophisticated message at odds with reality to attract simple, unsophisticated people at odds with reality and that's who seems to be showing up in her crowd interviews. If I'm wrong - if there's a smart Palin supporter out there whose ideas are reasonably challenging - please let me know.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to find the dullest, least media-savvy members of a group, shove a microphone in their face, and allow them to make themselves look foolish. You could do the same thing at the Westminster Dog Show or the U.S. Open if you wanted - I’m sure there are plenty of nuts there too - but you wouldn’t prove anything about dog breeding or tennis by doing so.
Ultimately, the only purpose these videos serve is to pat you on the back for being wiser and smarter than those you disagree with, and to confirm and justify your contempt for them. It’s a form of ideological masturbation, and a habit well worth kicking. We’d all do much better to get off of YouTube, go find a smart Republican, and have our ideas challenged for a change.
"Finding a smart Republican and having our ideas challenged" is important to either know that your ideas stand up to scrutiny or to correct your wrong ideas with smarter ones if you just want to be right all the time. I definitely applaud the sentiment he's expressing here.
I'll go one further than Adam: the unrehearsed "man on the street" interview is not a format conducive to careful, intelligent deliberation. I'm a reasonably articulate and clued-in person, but if someone stuck a camera and microphone in my face on some random Friday evening I almost certainly wouldn't do as well speaking as I do writing. (This guy notwithstanding.)
My only problem with what Adam says is that it begs the question of whether Palin's message challenges ideas or just patience. True, she makes a "deep, joyful, personal connection .. with the middle class" but so did Dale Earnhardt. I've spent considerable time trying to find a smart Republican willing to explain what was behind Palin's resignation or her comments on death panels. I've looked around in National Review, Lew Rockwell and the ironically-named American Thinker. Alaska is beautiful, small towns have good people, Washington has bad people, God is good, elites are bad, freedom is good, taxes are bad, Reagan was good, people who make fun of people are bad. Palin is a winking pointing conservative boilerplate mad-lib talking point machine but there's just no "there" there.
Many supporters of many politicians are dumb. For example many dumb Obama supporters like him for personal rather than political reasons, or had unrealistic expectations about his platform or abilities or political allies. But within Obama's administration there's a recognition of the seriousness of the various problems he's dealing with, a prioritization of those problems, the pros and cons of available solutions, and a reasonably intelligent rationale (most of the time) for why they're going the direction they are. Outside his administration he's got some reasonably well-informed supporters - myself included - who can articulate a coherent strategy. Is there anyone who can distill a similar message from Palin? I haven't found that person yet.
Contempt for Going Rogue is as much an indictment of its readers as it is of the author, but that's exactly the point. The articulate college-educated Republican intellectual like William F Buckley hasn't just vanished from the party, they have been demonized and alienated by the party generally and Palin in particular. You can't find those people in her crowds beause she has deliberately mocked and driven them away. You can always cherry-pick a few idiots out of the crowd but in this case I really don't think it's necessary to cherry pick. She's used a simple, unsophisticated message at odds with reality to attract simple, unsophisticated people at odds with reality and that's who seems to be showing up in her crowd interviews. If I'm wrong - if there's a smart Palin supporter out there whose ideas are reasonably challenging - please let me know.