Bill's Notes

(Hat tip: The Corner.)

CBC News (the first C is for Canada) printed the following column recently. What you'll notice is columnist Heather Mallick's perfect contempt. Quoting liberally:

[Sarah Palin] added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right [...]

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. [...]

Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too. [...]

White trash — not trailer trash, that's something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave.

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. [...]

Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest. [...]

The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party, and that's the mystery of the hick vote. They'd be much better served by the Democrats. I know Thomas Frank answered this in What's the Matter with Kansas?; I know that red states vote Republican on social issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their broken, economically abused existence. [...]

When Palin and Rudy Giuliani sneered at Obama's years of "community organizing" — they said it like "rectal fissure" — the audience ewww-ed with them. Republicans dream of a personal future that involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to vote.

So I'm trying to imagine the pain of realizing, as they all must at some point, that it is not going to happen for them. It's the green light at the end of the dock. It's the ship that never comes in, gals, as Palin would put it. But she won't because the lie works for her. It helps her scramble, without compassion, above all those other tense no-hoper ladies in the audience. [...]

Think, Heather, think like a Republican! The Skeptics, shall I call them, are my base, and I'll pander to them as ardently as the Republican patriarchs tease their white female marginals.

Well, Heather, that was a lot to share. It takes courage to reveal such sneering contempt for a good portion of humanity. I'm reminded of the lines from the book of Sirach:

Should you draw a sword against a friend, despair not, it can be undone.
Should you speak sharply to a friend, fear not, you can be reconciled.
But a contemptuous insult, a confidence broken, or a treacherous attack will drive away any friend.

Contempt is a kind of emotional cancer — it damages the soul of the speaker far more than the listener. This is HunterSThompson-esque vilification, but without the wit. I guess some people never quite mature out of junior high school -- putting down the kids whose parents lived in trailers or ridiculing those who think differently. Tut-tut.