Travis Compton
Staff Reporter
It’s been nearly a year since we last saw a reason for Sarah Palin to matter in the national scheme of things. And even then most people then thought she wasn’t worth taking seriously. But now as October approaches we still see her in the news. My question is why? The title of governor of Alaska isn’t really worth the time that CNN and FOX NEWS are giving. So is it because she is a woman? Well Hilary Clinton almost disappeared, with minor exceptions for endorsement, after her primaries defeat because of the Obama craze. So again I ask what is the driving factor behind her stardom? Is it because she shares the same qualities as a pit bull with lipstick? Maybe it was the winking or funny accent? It might be that she is mildly attractive. Then again that wouldn’t be enough to get time on CNN. Megan Fox hasn’t gotten nearly the attention from the major news station as Palin has and she destroys Palin in that category. Her interest in the national scheme can only be described as a “fluke.” A former Vice-Presidential candidate, with less than acceptable credentials, minimal experience in a executive position, and no sense of sentence structure, has managed to make a name for herself in a political party that has such heavy hitters as Carl Rove and Michael Steele.
Now normally I’d be bashing Palin on some little thing like not knowing the Bush doctrine… However for this piece I will spare you my personal rhetoric and go back to the matter at hand. Why is she still in the news? Is it because of her pregnant daughter? I must apologize for that last sentence as she has explicitly told the media to lay off her family. However since we still laugh about Clinton getting blown I will pursue the topic none the less. Her daughter Bristol, who had a child out of wedlock, is a supporter of abstinence only education. Aside from the irony of it, this fact helped Sarah stay in the news long past her allotted tenure. I believe that to ascertain a definitive we must take all of the little things that she has done and clump them together into a group we will call “things Palin has done”, (nice, simple, non-accusatory name). These things done as single events would have made her a pariah among the Republican party. However her status as an ex-running mate has rendered her immune to the normal ramifications of not speaking coherently with Katie Couric, or winking during a debate, or blatantly lying about seeing Russia from her house.
So we settle for the fact that as someone who was thrust to the front lines of the Republican party. She was inexperienced and might not be able to handle the pressure. We settle because she had an experienced very qualified mentor. However as the possible Vice President to a man who’s health came into question during the election, her less than adequate resume destroyed the chances of her entering the White House as a Vice President.
So fast-forward up to this date. She consistently is seen or heard bashing the current administration and making up lies about the bills being put to congress, and yet we still listen. Why do we listen? I do because it’s a nice way for me to feel better about myself watching a complete buffoon struggle to make sense of her ridiculous claims. However her appeal during the election to, as she put it, “true Americans” has created an audience of theses “true Americans” and as such they are completely blind to her zealous and idiotic comments. In short, why is Sarah Palin still in the news? Because we watch it when she’s on, me included. Although we may watch for different reasons, to make fun of or to agree with her, we watch it none the less. So when the ratings come in to FOX and CNN, they don’t see “30% of watchers hate her and 40% love her.” they see “30 million viewers.” I don’t blame any single person for her fame, not her or her family, not even her secessionist husband. I blame the masses of people that watch her. If not for us then the “for profit” media would not run her stories. The question then comes up “if the media is supposed to bring us news, then why is a campaign contribution from Palin even on the radar. It’s a simple answer. Somewhere along the lines the news industry became a corporation that became interested in profit margins instead of actual stories. Stories that I think should take up the time that Palin is getting are, the reason why the U.S. hasn’t stepped in in Darfur, the official death toll from hurricane Katrina which has up until this point not been revealed even when some estimates put it over well 100,000 people, and finally, the story of the ponzy-scheme we call the federal reserve.
For those of you who are ill-informed, this is how our Federal Reserve bank works. We borrow money to pay for things we want, wars, military actions, anything we really want quickly. Then we borrow more money to pay the first loan off, then we do it again for the second loan and so on and so forth. Imagine what Bernie Madoff did, now apply that to entire countries. This story should be in the news, not some stooge from Alaska who doesn’t know sentence structure.