The Daily Show to Sarah Palin & Crew: Fuck You Right In Your Real American Ear

Yesterday’s The Daily Show was kind of remarkable. The entirety of the show’s non-interview material was dedicated solely to ripping Sarah Palin, her “real America” schtick, and the sentiment of small-town reverse-snobbery to ragged and bloody shreds. I don’t think I have ever seen the show dedicate an entire episode to such a singular and partisan purpose. Jon Stewart and crew must loathe her every bit as much as the folks at Saturday Night Live do.

And you know what? I don’t blame them in the slightest.

I spent the first few days of Palin’s emergence trying my damndest to keep a clear head about her. I thought her family weathered a level of scrutiny and a slew of jokes that were genuinely out of line. The negative reaction to her lifestyle among many commentators, and among many of my peers and friends here in Los Angeles, was off-putting. And I admire Palin’s decision to not abort a child with Down Syndrome as a noble act worthy of emulation.

Then came her speech at the GOP convention, and all that vanished right into thin air. The arrogance, lack of intellectual curiosity, and self-satisfied know-nothingism she put on display was quite simply epic. Her crack about being mayor of Wasilla sort of resembling the job of a community organizer, except for (snicker, snicker) actual responsibilities, was obscene. Forget the disrespect it showed to Obama the candidate, a disrespect he has never responded to in kind. She dismissed an entire field of people who work long hours for often meager reimbursement in order to help their local neighborhoods and better the local governments which respond to those neighborhoods. And by implication, she dismissed the concerns and struggles of every last person those community organizers attempt to aid. People who are overwhelmingly poor, black and urban, and whose situation in every way ought to secure our compassion. And hers.

Her rhetoric since the speech has only gotten worse. Granted, politics isn’t beanbag, and if John McCain wishes to make William Ayers the centerpiece of his campaign, that is a vacuous and stupid approach to take but it does fall within the rules of the game. What sets Sarah Palin apart – from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even her own running mate – is her willingness to attack the other ticket by way of attacking other Americans. That does fall outside the rules of the game. She is not calling urban liberals “bitter,” and she is not merely condescending to them or psycho-analyzing them. What she is doing is effectively declaring them to be disloyal, morally inferior or less worthy of consideration as citizens, simply because of their political views, cultural lifestyle and their desire to vote for the other guy. Here’s the Palin comment that got Stewart’s hackles up:

We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.

Sheesh. I’m just going to print Stewart’s response.

We’re all a little chafed here about this whole ’some parts of the country are real and American’ and other parts are not. This weekend I was performing at Northeastern and I just read the statement that Sarah Palin had made about the ‘pro-American’ parts of the country and I…in response to that, I think I might have said, you know, ‘Fuck you!’ That’s just my way of saying that I think that’s a profanity to say, and I was answering with a profanity. But it’s not really fair, and it makes it seem like I’m just addressing Governor Palin about this, and I’m not, it’s just this whole entire theme that there’s more American areas, or some people love the country, some people don’t. So what I meant to say is, ‘Fuck all y’all.’

A few nights ago, Stewart made the comment that New York City was just a bunch of small towns all stuffed into one building. Palin and her cheerleaders would have done well to remember an implication of her own rhetoric, which is that if you go after someone’s home town – and that’s clearly how Jon Stewart feels about New York City – then you’re gonna have trouble.

~ by Jeff on October 22, 2008.