Osborne Ink || News that's fairly liberal, but never unbalanced.

I caught this pic over at HuffPo, provenance unknown, and immediately wondered if Sarah was signaling a confederate about how many mooseburgers to serve for lunch.

Is she waving with fingertips? Are those “spirit fingers”? Does she have full command of American Sign Language, or is Sarah secretly implanting hypnotic suggestions with gangsign?

I don’t know, and actually don’t care. But the AP caught a photo that makes her look her age, for once, and suggests she’s past the peak of her sex appeal. With her poll numbers already hollow, we may have seen the peak of Palin fever.

So Sarah Palin gives a shout-out to the “fair and balanced media folks” in Going Rogue, and surprise! They’re all right-wingers, including racists and rape-apologists along with the Faux Noise crew.

Not only does Palin like Sean Hannity, she went on his show yesterday and finally named three of her news sources: Newsmax, The Frontiersman, and the Wall Street Journal.

Newsmax is, of course, the right-wing news site where John L. Perry fantasized about a military coup against Obama. They also have Richard Poe, who goes on the O’Reilly factor every now and then to dish out George Soros paranoia. Their crackerjack staff has published false information about Obama White House appointees. Yeah, tinfoil hat stuff.

The Frontiersman is the Wasilla newspaper, which I imagine to be a colder, less interesting version of the Times Daily. The Journal is an interesting choice for Sarah: I mean, come on. Really? I’ve sat absorbed in it myself, but it’s way above her reading comprehension level. Then again, she did publish a ghostwritten op-ed in the Journal and the op-ed pages are far to the right of their newsroom, so I guess it makes sense.

This woman’s entire world is made up of right-wing nonsense.

It seems Sarah’s reputation for flaky behavior has Republican gubernatorial candidates shying away from inviting her to stump for them. This, after the New York Post reported that she’s not getting booked for speaking engagements because clients think she’s an idiot — an idea reinforced when her 90-minute train wreck in Hong Kong was universally panned.

Meanwhile, insiders say her book trashes Levi Johnston because you couldn’t see that coming.

Ladies and gentlemen, the GOP’s leading candidate for 2012.

I’ve formed a hypothesis that political damage-control is really about managing the stages of grief. Rumors of a Palin divorce are only interesting to me as a study in deconstruction; I am testing my theory. To wit: the Sarah Palin Express whistled right past Denial Station Saturday and shot straight towards Anger City in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

The conservative blogosphere outed the pseudonymous blogger yesterday evening with lots of self-congratulations. His Facebook page was reproduced online. Yes, it is shoot-the-messenger time as they dehumanize and demonize him:

During the day, the mysterious beast is a major influence on young minds in an Anchorage kindergarten. At night, he spews hatred, venom and lies — mostly directed at former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, her husband Todd and their five children. No wonder so many Alaskans are home schooling their kids. Were we in the 49th State,we wouldn’t want such a creature shaping the minds of our precious offspring, either. (Emphasis mine)

Palin’s lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, publicly vowed to sue the blogger if the offending post was not removed by 3 pm Saturday. But so far, he has taken no action. This is the fourth time in three weeks he has made such empty threats.

Why no follow-through? My gut tells me that it’s a simple fact about American law: truth is a defense against libel. Gryphen remains adamant that his sources are solid, saying:

Van Flein is forcing me to make an admission that I have resisted addressing for the four plus years I have had this blog.

Yes I DO work in a Kindergarten class during the school year. My main job affords me some time during the day and I have chosen to use it teaching children to read, and helping them to become more independent. I do it because it brings me joy to work with these children and I believe, and have been told, that I am very good at it.

Hopefully that does not diminish me in the eyes of my visitors.

I NEVER discuss politics with my children and they have no idea, nor do most of the adult staff, that I am a blogger. Because to be honest that might diminish me in THEIR eyes.

So thanks to Van Flein you now know my dirty little secret. I am an assistant teacher in a room full of five year old children.

Understanding my love for my job and my desire to protect my children from a potentially frightening encounter, Van Flein threatened to serve my summons “at the kindergarten where you assist”. He did not say the “school where you work”, he specifically mentioned my classroom in order to frighten me into compliance. Why else would he have said that?

Next stop for Teh Train Wreck™: bargaining. This promises to be the most entertaining portion, as some details become self-evidently true and the Palins are forced to redraw the limits of their narrative.

More as this story develops.

“I don’t think Clear Channel really believes that Sarah Palin couldn’t ramble on radio 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, I think they know that America couldn’t handle listening to her for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week without going into one giant epileptic seizure.”

Lee Stranahan has been posting a video a day posing as Sarah Palin’s speechwriter:

Sarah Palin was all over the cable news channels today inaugurating a new Lost Cause mythology to explain November’s electoral defeat:

What do I mean by “Lost Cause?” Well, in America the best example is the southern mythology popularized in the second generation after the Civil War. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind and D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation bookended a period in which the ‘War Between the States’ became the ‘War of Northern Aggression.’ “Lost Cause” mythology is historical revisionism that explains away failure and revitalizes the ’spirit’ of the failed effort. It is no coincidence that Griffith made his racist film during the era of Joe Turner and Mitchell wrote her book at the height of Jim Crow.

I am once again risking reductio ad Hitlerum, but Nazi Germany offers a useful parallel example. Hitler propagated the idea that Germany had been on the cusp of victory in World War One when they where ’stabbed in the back’ at home by communists, Jews, and other subversives. The reality that Kaiser Wilhelm and his generals had taken a huge gamble for empire — and lost — just didn’t suit Hitler’s need for scapegoats. The upshot, of course, was a holocaust that took in not only the Jews, but every form of pacifist and leftist as well. The point need not be belabored; you can find a lost Cause almost anywhere. Such ideas are still rampant in the Balkans, for example. The point is that these ideas always come with violent language and carry the potential for violent actions.

So what we have here is Sarah Palin laying a mythic foundation for her base: McCain lost because he wasn’t Christian-y enough, conservative enough, right-wing enough. To beat the antichrist (Obama), good Christian folk must stop playing so nice with the doggone secularists in their party and TAKE OVER, gosh darn it.

Lost Cause mythmaking is an essential part of Kulturkampf. Sarah Palin is a culture warrior trained by some of the best culture warriors out there (though they prefer the label “prayer warriors”). And these people will spend the next three years getting ready for their Last Stand in 2012. Just in case you doubt me, here’s a sample of where Sarah comes from — and you can see for yourself that these are not rational people: