In the swamp of recent Sarah Palin coverage, there have been several observers who have pointed out in print that Palin's actions are not those of someone who is seriously interested in pursuing a future in politics. David Bernstein is the first political observer I have yet read who gives a plausible speculation about what she is after. To wit: She is following the money. She doesn't care about running for office, Bernstein posits; she cares about getting onto a very substantial gravy train.
There are at least 10 million people who could be called true "movement conservatives" in America today - perhaps twice that number, including conservative and libertarian independents, along with "base" Republicans. They are not only reading and tuning in - they are contributing to conservative nonprofit organizations and political-action committees; they are attending conferences; they are buying paraphernalia; and they are signing up for e-mail newsletters and online publications.
But the analysts, thinking only of Palin's presidential prospects, are missing all of this. They are accustomed to paying attention to how people vote, not how they spend.
"We tend to think of the Republican conservative electorate," says Zelizer. "There's also this vibrant marketplace that's been built up over the past 30 years, and it can be quite lucrative."
Put another way, "There are people on the right who have learned how to milk the right wing for all it's worth," says Peter Montgomery, senior fellow at the liberal People for the American Way. "They have yet to find the bottom of this well of right-wing money that drives the creation of all these right-wing organizations."
And unlike earlier times, most of these organizations are no longer reliant on (or controlled by) large conservative foundations. A review of the biggest conservative foundations' grant-making reports found that they were responsible for about only $50 million of the $2 billion pulled in by the groups reviewed by the Phoenix.
Not incidentally, all of this is helping push the conservative base further to the fringe of American politics, and almost certainly damaging the Republican Party. But if you think that bothers the right-wing merchants, you've got it backward. If anything, they are incentivized to help the GOP lose: Democrats in power give them a foe to rally the ideologues against (and a growing pool of disaffected Americans if the economy, or anything else, goes badly). The ascension of Obama and the Democrats was a financial godsend that repowered the gravy train - it was the best thing to happen to them since the Clinton era, when conservative talk-radio listenership tripled, and much of this industry was born.
So are these organizations run by true believers, or cynical parasites? That's ultimately a moot point. It's like asking whether fast-food CEOs eat their companies' food, or if tobacco executives smoke. In a consumer market, the consumer will get what they want from someone, whether it's chicken nuggets, Marlboros, or the most reactionary, extremist fear-mongering.
This fits what I see as Palin's personality perfectly. I don't see her as being particularly politically aligned; her values are mostly self-interested. She wants to be a queen; she wants to be rich and connected without having to do anything much to actually earn it.
And she is exceedingly well-suited to go down the road that is presently making Newt Gingrich and Alan Keyes (among others) quite wealthy:
Palin can hit almost every hot button on the conservative-movement spectrum. The gun-rights crowd knows her as a rifle-toting hunter. The "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd sees her as an energy expert. The populists buy the McCain-campaign-created image of the maverick reformer. To military fetishists, she is the proud mother of private first class Track Palin, soldier in Iraq. The economic conservatives praised her denouncing of the federal stimulus (although as governor she ultimately accepted almost every penny) and her willingness to suggest that Obama might be a socialist. (Her one major apostasy, belief in global warming, is almost never mentioned outside Alaska.)
Palin also clearly knows one of the most important lessons of the world she's entering: the urgent need for people to give now. She opened a legal-funds account earlier this year, and in the midst of a recession urged people to contribute money to cover her purported $500,000 debt - while at the same time, she was cashing a book advance reportedly worth between $4 million and $7 million. She has also already raised more than $700,000 through her political action committee, SarahPAC, since creating it earlier this year.
You might be asking, "Who the hell gave Palin that sort of advance?" Why, HarperCollins. Which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. And which synergizes with Fox News (another Murdoch property) on many notable occasions. Murdoch needs another force to bring eyeballs to his rabid-right-wing media outlets; Palin needs someone willing to give her a platform. See how this works?
Again: This is not about politics. This is not about the way to the Oval Office. This is about money. It is a cynical and accurate exploitation of the sort of people who buy into this malarkey - who only incidentally overlap with the political machine which would have to pass judgement on a Republican candidate for President.
She is opting for the cash. And you need to read this article - yes, all five pages of it. Your time will be well-spent. I guarantee it. The excerpts I have put here, long as they are, do not in any way do it justice.
I'm on record as thinking that marquee Phoenix film critic Peter Keough is losing it in his old age. He seems utterly uninterested in reviewing anything that isn't Some Arthouse Film That Normal People Will Never See. He didn't show any signs of going down the Arthouse Snob road - a road that has been the ruin of many a film critic - back in the day, so I assume that he's just getting increasingly disgusted with the industry the longer he has to wallow in its leavings.
Take the Half-Blood Prince review, the first time he's reviewed what I'd call a blockbuster film in many months. On the one hand, he is the sole print critic I've read so far to actually seem to run a positive-balance opinion of it, so he hasn't forgotten his iconoclasm; and he still has a moderate amount of wit (I liked the reference to "the talents of every major British actor requiring employment"), however disgusted he seems ... but yet the review is oddly detached. It shows the signs of "I was forced at gunpoint to see this movie, and I'm going to try to give it a fair shake because I'm a professional, but you know and I know that this is not what I really want to write about." He even gets Snape's name wrong, perhaps to show just how little he actually cares about this phenomenon.
Contrast this to him writing Serious Film Theory about something he's actually interested in, and you'll see the difference. Here, in his piece about the films in the Harvard Film Archive's "Le Film Maudit" series (which, by the by, I would gloss as "damned films," or better yet "film of the damned," not "cursed films"), he comes out with the interesting and very convincing theory that what all these no-longer-quite-so-shocking films have in common is a deep and very nasty vein of misogyny.
Its nods to class warfare and its paean to paganism aside, one can't help noticing that The Beast is a prolonged and graphic rape fantasy, and one in which the victim ends up liking it. Which brings me back to my earlier observation that as transgressive as these "cursed films" pretend to be, they are not nearly as cursed as the women in them. Take the title character in Robert Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George, a campy, freak-show look at lesbians, in which the title character, an aging harridan actress (Beryl Reid), fears losing both her role on a BBC soap and her lipstick lover (Susannah York). She ends up drunk on the studio floor bellowing, "Moo!"
Similarly, Ken Russell's The Devils, despite its assaults on the Establishment and organized religion, remains regressive in its attitudes toward women [...]. An account of events that occurred in Loudon, in 1634, it is The Crucible by way of Monty Python. Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave), mother superior in a convent of Ursuline nuns, has fantasies about washing the feet of sexy Father Grandier (Oliver Reed). Alas, she never confronts the padre with her love, who, since he has spread his holy chrism nearly everywhere else, probably wouldn't mind having a go at her. But then Grandier gets not religion as much as political awareness.
So far, so good, until Grandier goes a step too far and marries the woman he loves. This infuriates Sister Jeanne, who turns him in to his enemies and a Ken Starr-like "witch-hunter," Fr. Barré, who stirs up a pandemonium of naked nuns (they are all more nubile than my recollections from Sunday school). This fills about 10 minutes of screen time with a blasphemous, acrobatic, bare-bottomed orgy. The lesson being that not only are women treacherous and sexually omnivorous, but they look really hot wearing only a wimple.
[I have altered the quoted material slightly because the Phoenix, like everyone else, seems to have cut their copy-editing budget into nonexistence.]
Finally, a back-page interview with one Russell T Davies. I link this only for certain people, and you know who you are. (My wife has already seen it.) I can take Rusty or leave him, just like I can take "Doctor Who" or leave it. ("Torchwood" I just leave.) But I do appreciate that he has a certain aplomb, demonstrated effectively in this answer:
From what I can gather - I haven't been to many conventions and I don't really go online and read fan stuff because that way lies madness - the sexuality of "Torchwood" seems to get quite a buzz. I certainly knew from "Queer as Folk" that gay male stories attract a lot of women viewers.
Very tactful, Rusty. And you're right: That way does lie madness.
Mel:
I think the money definitely played a part in Palin's decision, but she also just didn't seem to like being governor very much, and I think that was just about as big a part.
(Incidentally, Col, in case you want to know this: the website hiccuped in the middle of the night, I guess. I tried to post this comment earlier and couldn't.)
-- 10:20, 17 July 2009 (BST)