{"id":4959,"date":"2008-10-30T07:13:11","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T12:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=4959"},"modified":"2011-05-16T13:39:16","modified_gmt":"2011-05-16T18:39:16","slug":"mal-apropo-palin-finally-gets-it-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/mal-apropo-palin-finally-gets-it-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Mal-apropo: Palin finally gets it right"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/strong><\/a>, was published on Monday. –RA<\/em><\/p>\n

“Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the RNC purchased, I’m not taking them with me.”\u0412\u00a0— Sarah Palin, at a Republican rally in Tampa, Florida, regarding the controversy of her campaign wardrobe.<\/p>\n

Dear Friend and Reader,<\/p>\n

THIS HAS GOT TO BE my favorite moment from this week.\u0412\u00a0When 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.\u0412<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, this totally pissed off the McCain people. The reaction according to\u0412\u00a0Dana Bash on CNN<\/a>\u0412\u00a0was 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:<\/p>\n

“‘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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Yours & truly,
\nShanna Philipson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.”\u0412\u00a0— Sarah … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[111,1],"tags":[36,52,117,143,463],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}