Editor’s note: the following piece is written by Shanna Philipson, a recent addition to the Planet Waves blogging team. Her first piece, Yer-Anus: Astrology Comes Out of the Closet, was published on Monday. –RA
“Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the RNC purchased, I’m not taking them with me.”В — Sarah Palin, at a Republican rally in Tampa, Florida, regarding the controversy of her campaign wardrobe.
Dear Friend and Reader,
THIS HAS GOT TO BE my favorite moment from this week.В When it comes to politics, I’m a bonafide cynic, and for years I’ve maintained that, outside of professional theatre, there’s nothing more staged than a national political convention — or the rallies that follow the nominations.В
I happen to have a BFA, was trained as a costume designer and worked a few years in professional theatre, so I know the score. And I see political campaigns for what they are — theatre.
So when Sarah Palin got up before a campaign rally this past week and declared, in essence, that her clothes were just costumes, and every campaign event was staged like a theatrical performance, I had myself a good, long laugh. Yeah, sister — you preach it! Tell it like it is.
Of course, this totally pissed off the McCain people. The reaction according toВ Dana Bash on CNNВ was particularly ugly and personal, the sort of gross generalization and ad hominem attack that typically spikes my cynicism about politics. Bash quotes an “adviser” from the McCain camp about Palin’s independent statements, like the campaign wardrobe defense:
“‘She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone…She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.
Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”
Palin may be a “diva” and America’s next great emerging narcissist of national politics, but she’d only be filling the role of possible Savior that hundreds of politicians before her have also played. So why attack her? Because she dared to breach the fourth wall of political illusion that depends on faith. Yes, faith.
Both religion and politics depend on faith, which in this case I’ll define as a willingness to look beyond material reality to the hope and promise of what might be. Living, as I do, in the south, I see this openly demonstrated by the religious faithful, but (not being especially politically active) I had not encountered it in the politically faithful until about a decade ago, when I returned to Yankee territory to attend a high school reunion.
It was there that I ran into my old ninth grade Physical Science lab partner. She and I weren’t especially chummy back in junior high, but we were all in the advanced track, which meant her primary interest at the lab counter wasn’t blowing up our test tube vials, a fact I appreciated as I frequently watched my classmates try to burn the school down. I don’t remember much about her except her name and that she giggled a lot while I did most of the work as she flirted with the boys next to us and occasionally wrote down necessary data.
Fourteen years later, she was still giggling like a girl totally in love. This time, though, her passion had turned to a career in politics and she gushed like a woman in the throes of a recent religious conversion: John McCain, her Lord and employer, was the promised Messiah. We smiled and listened to her as we stood around, beers in hand, and reaquainted ourselves with one another. But, like most conversations with the recently converted, it was one-sided and awkward. At each turn in the conversations that night she attempted to inject a little of McCain’s aura onto each subject, and it was clear her enthusiasm for the senator dominated her whole life.
I was both annoyed and amused. See, my ninth house (the house of belief) is ruled by discriminating Virgo, a practical earth sign, and it’s there where my Pluto resides; moreover, that Pluto trines my Mercury in Capricorn (another grounded, practical earth sign) in my second house (the home of values and possessions).
This configuration grants me extra sensitivity to the beliefs people value — and I’m particularly attuned to ideas that aren’t grounded by modesty, reason and the intellectual equivalent of “sweat equity.” To put it bluntly, I can smell bullshit from at least fifty paces. And my practical perspective has long seen that no politician is gonna be the Messiah, and anyone who’s got their chips invested on that number is eventually going to lose the bet — or rather, their faith. Sorry.
After reading this recent Palin story, I remembered my old lab partner, the True Believer, and I imagined her still laboring for her beloved Prophet of American Destiny — fuming at the implication that what they were doing was anything less than genuine, derived only from the best notions of what would be good for the country. To suggest artifice would be heresy: how dare anyone doubt The Ascended Master McCain! How dare anyone imply this is just a show.
When December comes around and we’re tallying up the year, I’m going to nominate this moment as one of 2008’s Saturn-Uranus’ Top Twenty Greatest Hits. How else would you attribute this unusually forthright statement about our political traditions? How else would you explain Palin’s Uranian “rogue” outbursts at odds with McCain’s Saturnian (and fearful) control-freaky campaign handlers?
However you think of her, I’m loving the idea that Palin upset the McCain apple cart by stating what everybody knows is obvious, but no one in either campaign was willing to admit aloud: the Emperor just wears costumes.
Yours & truly,
Shanna Philipson
“How else would you attribute this unusually forthright statement about our political traditions?”
If Palin had wanted to expose the political theatre, her most obvious choice would have been to refuse participation from the get go.
I am sorry to contradict you, she did not get it right. Even if it was ever proven that the following suspicions are wrong.
There is a very real possibility that she passes off her grandson as her son, and if so, she is truly the master of deceptive staging. That’s how she knows what staging is. If this is indeed so, it is the grandest deception. Quite a rotten moral compass in a leader, don’t you think.
It has been said that her medical story could not have been what it was, because no doctor would have allowed her to get on a plane while in labor, infact her doctor would have violated the medical oath.
I cannot imagine that a woman will board two four hour flights, have a two hour lay over, with her amniotic fluid leaking. I cannot imagine a husband who would not beg her to go to the hospital at once.
The fact that she knew the word staging only shows she is more dangerous than many suspect.
I keep looking for Pisces. Ever since Sarah walked onstage she’s been pulling projections like a magnet pulls metal filings; they’re so thick you’d think she’d be dripping with the ectoplasm of a billion imaginations by now. Seems like there’s a deep old ancient well inside women with saturated clay bottom, and this is where their hatred for Sarah Palin is coming from.
That’s not Uranus. Projections, theatre, illusion and incidentally the oil and gas industries, not to mention religious inspirations of the Pentecostal type are Neptune. I’d expect drug charges somewhere but I’m satisfied with her ruby red slippers and the only other real career as a local tv babe for proof.
I keep looking for it, shuffling charts. I’ve seen all the published ones and I think they’re wrong, but even the fact that there are so many guesses representing so many fractured realities gives me Neptune again.
What I really want to do is to put her ascendant on that 0 Aries Venus, and that would give her a Capricorn moon and a Cap MC; just about to get hit by Pluto. Then you’d get a Pisces/Aries ascendant, but it’s still not quite giving me this Neptune I want.
Eh. Anyway, vedically she’s got KalSarpa yoga, just like GWB. Thing about those people is, they just don’t have a choice.
~j
“Mrs. Palin is now using this campaign to ditch the old guy (so much for loyalty, eh?), make a name for herself and carve a place without even thinking about the American people”
Couldn’t agree more with you, io.
From the start – all too obvious it was Supersized “Sarah’s all about Sarah”.
jlo, i understand where you’re coming from, but i also have to respectfully disagree, for one main reason:
all 4 men were not part of the political machinery.
They operated outside of it, which was the most dangerous and effective way to make change because they mobilized thousands of people to get off their butts and do something about their conditions, much to the dismay of government.
MLK sacrificed his life, and that of his family’s, to get equal rights for African Americans, women, and those struggling in poverty. He made beautiful speeches, but he also lived in the trenches.
Sarah Palin sacrificed her family’s privacy and hauled them around on Alaska’s dime in the comfort of a private plane so as not to infrige on any quality time, to simply bask in the perks and advance her own agenda on the national stage.
Ironically she *thinks* she’s preaching the Christian agenda, but her record doesn’t support the poor and disenfranchised, nor do I think she would recognize Jesus if he did come back and do cartwheels on the Lake right next to her house.
Yes, those men were magnetic, but they weren’t impressed by themselves or their own words, despite their amazing skills. They spoke because they wanted to draw attention to the plight of their brethren. They used their voice to make noise about the situation and not to proclaim ‘here I am’. For them, the message was greater than they were.
Mrs. Palin is now using this campaign to ditch the old guy (so much for loyalty, eh?), make a name for herself and carve a place without even thinking about the American people at this point, and that to me is the big difference.
All:
Ha! There’s reason why “Sarah Palin” is this year’s best selling Halloween Costume!
A fraud is a fraud is a fraud is a fraud.
Best,
Raven
io, you’ve named my Four (people to look at as we emulate ourselves).
And yes, Sarah’s a selfcentric being.
But, all Four wanted something to “happen” in society. They all stood themselves up, in face of society, and said “THIS is what I have to say!”.
Sarah’s a beast as far as I’m concerned, she may look a lot like Tina Fey but, damn, Tina’s hot, Sarah has always freaked me out, I guess it’s the mentality I see (that shit means a lot to me as far as “fuckability”).
I think with the folks who truly ‘make a difference’ in this (or any) lifetime (insert many an artist and thinker who died in the gutter), It’s a connection with that inner piece/peace, that ‘nothing to lose’ realisation, (oddly sarah found it, just can’t exactly BE it, [hasn’t let go enough of herself]) (only flashes, which work through context with the masses that have ONLY half a clue).
We CAN see when someone is full of shit, can’t we. The genuine quality is somehow lacking. Politics in large are based on this B.S., I work toward the day ‘that’ is altered! (I can only imagine someone with a soul in office, but they’d have to deal with the global distribution of wealth/equal rights garbage, along with the warped social impressions tripe [that the ‘wealthy’/top’o’the’pyramid use to keep us ‘producing’]).
Thanks… just needed to spit some shit out….
Jere
io–I agree with you completely. This is a point I hope to develop in a post-election article about the (re)making of Sarah Palin. Hope you’ll return and contribute to that conversation later!
As a person who lives their life quietly bucking convention, and who can appreciate and admire the Uranian energy in people who genuinely make a difference in this world, let us not forget the real reason Sarah Palin chose to strip away the illusion:
to save her political life.
Make no mistake about it.
Before the revelation, she never chirped up before about how costly it was to paint her face with the highest paid person on her team (a make-up artist who works on “Dancing With The Stars”), nor did she say a thing when she deigned to put on the expensive and beautifully tailored costumes few of us can afford in a year let alone a lifetime.
Please. There are rebels and there are phonies who play at being rebels.
This is simply another part she plays because she knows it will help her in 2012.
She IS part of the theatre, even though she wants people to believe she isn’t.
Think about the true spirit of rebellion and what it really means. It’s never about the person. It usually involves the sacrifice of one’s life for a cause greater than themselves and about the people. Many examples can be cited: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John Lennon, and I don’t think any of them could ever be accused of exhibiting Diva behaviour, even though they may have had their respective flaws.
These people never played the part of being revolutionaries or stars in the theatre of life. They did what they did to rail against the absurdities of life -not be a part of it, and because they genuinely cared and showed more concern for everyone else than they did about themselves.
Call it the curse of the TV/YouTube/I-Wanna-Be-A-Star-No-Matter-What age, but when Sarah Palin tears down the curtain, it is only for her benefit, because she’s the only one with the spotlight on the stage.
“And yes, it’s been the longest three years of my life since August.”
I think I’ve lived another three years just in laughing through that comment!!
Yes, Fe. I did miss the hooker gossip. And the booze. The Edwards story was about as close as we got this time around, but that was more tragic than trashy.
And yes, it’s been the longest three years of my life since August.
Shanna:
Thank you for the injection of the reality of Politics as Theater, because it is.
The work of government is something else–its more akin to meat-processing than the glamour of campaigning, which is all about sales. That’s why when you see someone who has been in government a long time, they earn the title of “hack”.
I think the Palin pick was a means to sex-up the McCain brand, which had no sex in it at all aside from POW-POW-POW. Well she did what she was supposed to so, and “just what is that McCain brand again????” I don’t think the McCain campaign aides, at first, ever imagined her governing. Look at how she was vetted.
I think the whole flap over the clothes is another distraction to provide the candy before the big event next week. The only thing missing is hookers. Why wasn’t there more said about hookers this time around? That surely has some equal weight in terms of the distraction quality.
Its been a long long time since the end of August, hasn’t it?