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Margo Howard | 07/05/2009 7:15 am

Margo Howard, Ann Coulter Miraculously Agree: Palin Too Big for Alaska

Margo Howard
Editor’s Note: A longtime journalist, Margo Howard went into the family business (her mother was the fabled Ann Landers) in the 1990s as Dear Prudence. Her broad experience and understanding of human nature provide answers for the troubled — and entertainment for everyone else. Margo’s advice column, Dear Margo, appears twice a week — on Thursdays and Fridays — on wowOwow.com.

To slightly skew an e-mail that was going around a few weeks ago, let me just say that friends said the day I agreed with Ann Coulter pigs would fly. Well, swine flu … and I now find myself in agreement with Coulter. [Click here for Coulter’s post.] Sarah Palin is too big for Alaska. And you know why? She signed a book deal – reportedly for somewhere between $7,000,000 and $11,000,000. In April. I do not know how I missed this news, but I did. Maybe you did, too. In any case, no one is particularly tying this news to her resignation. I mean, wouldn’t you rather earn X millions of dollars than $175,000? The haste with which she made her announcement, however, does nothing to disabuse me of the idea that she and the Mr. might be in some legal trouble.

I think quitting for a big-bucks book deal shows a real lack of character, but a great deal of opportunism. The citizens of Alaska elected her to a term of office and she is skipping out because … well, she is too big for Alaska. People who are lame ducks seldom deal with their duckhood by resigning, so let’s scratch that one.

I do disagree with Coulter (my usual stance) on one point she makes in her post. She writes, "I thought her press conference explained it very clearly – though she couldn’t put it precisely this way without sounding vain, but it’s obvious." She "explained it clearly"? That, my dear, is a stretch. If she had explained it clearly the news outlets and the blogosphere would not be talking about how it could barely qualify as English.

Should you want to read a hilarious entry from Jim Washburn’s blog, here’s the beginning, and the link:
‘Let’s go quit!’ That was CNN’s Candy Crowley Friday night, imagining the decision process that led to Sarah Palin’s resignation, so spontaneous and unplanned did it seem. Nutty, too. It sounded like Richard Nixon if, heading into his Checkers Speech, he’d first taken the edge off by mixing Benzedrex inhalers into his rum and Cokes, the ones Dick Tuck had laced with pure Sandoz LSD, and then Nixon had gone on camera and wrestled an imaginary bear that turned into a black Satan and he’s going to keep that precious baby, no matter what anybody says, even the NBA coaches. That kind of nutty.
Click here for the rest of Jim’s blog.


648 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Lizzie R.
Where have you been? When a teenager gets pregnant and she’s not married it’s "knocked-up." It’s hardly "base and disparaging."
By Lizzie R. on 07/05/2009 10:16 pm
Olive Weir
It is to a lot of Folks. Then, maybe not where you come from Lizzie?
By Olive Weir on 07/06/2009 7:00 pm
Lizzie R.
I was a military wife, so am from everywhere. I am a university graduate with one year post grad, so ignorance is not my excuse. I am just older than all of you, so am more relaxed. Also my daughter got "knocked up " in high school, and I use that term as the boy she was with was involved in drugs during the "slimy seventies." We were not pleased….she was hysterical! A private story, but please do not pass judgment until it happens to your daughter and your family. OK?
By Lizzie R. on 07/06/2009 11:55 pm
Lizzie R.
BTW - my daughter is now a 54 yr. old woman with 2 adorable grandsons. She also is a very lovely person who has been married for 35 yrs. to a very nice man.
By Lizzie R. on 07/07/2009 12:14 am
Desiree McHan
I am a military brat, so I too am from everywhere.  And I am 25 years old.  I use knocked up all the time, as do my friends, even the married ones.  It is not disrespectful, so I don’t know what is wrong with these women.
By Desiree McHan on 07/07/2009 10:50 am
deber B
"The accomplished Alaskan governor can gaze into the face of tiny Trig and inherently know that she still has much to learn, even from her little guy.  Meanwhile, her less accomplished critics gaze mostly into TV cameras (and mirrors) and have convinced themselves that they already know it all.
Well gosh darn. Who is right?
Palin v. the pundits demonstrates a profound disconnect that explains not only how and why the pundit class remains so incapable of understanding her (and much of America),  it is a decent microcosm of the bigger political debate going on in this country.
To the Beltway-Big Apple pundit elites, the idea that anyone would (or could, or should) live a life not centered on the government-Ivy League-media capital corridor is simply an idea that is not on their radar.  That Palin did not have such a life, and was not interested in such a life, was by definition a disqualification in their minds. That she was not willing to do anything to curry their favor was simply not forgiveable. The only possible reason was that she must be too stupid to realize that all wisdom worth having is contained within this rather closed circle of geographies, people and philosophies.
After all, what good is being able to hunt and prepare your own food when any decent speed dial will get you the Maitre’d at the Four Seasons? Why learn to run a business and turn a profit when real wisdom is running a deficit and taxing those who turn a profit to make up the difference? I mean, there is wisdom and then there is wisdom. There is Washington — and then there is the real world.
Thus, just as they were last August, the D.C.-focused pundits remain totally incapable of properly analyzing what she is all about.  They continue to filter her decision through purely beltway parameters. It is clear that they were not listening to her words.
Beltway pundits view the world through the template that everything in life is a calculated PR stunt with an eye on the next election because politics and government are everything.  They also have a template that no one from a state university in Idaho could possibly play in a world dominated by Ivy League insiders.
Well, just for the hell of it, let’s examine both templates.
Take Ivy League-educated and connected Jamie Gorelick. Harvard B.A., magna cum laude, Harvard Law School, cu laude. Now this is the resume the pundits have immense respect for. 
Ms. Gorelick moved to the position of Assistant Attorney General under Bill Clinton (not literally).  From that perch, another one for which she had no qualifications, she authored the infamous "wall" that kept the CIA and FBI from comparing notes on some young Middle Eastern men who ended up driving jet planes into buildings on 9-11.

After that adventure, she managed to make tens of millions of dollars while a Vice President at Fannie Mae. Never mind that she had no background in real estate or mortgages.  She was an Ivy Leaguer with connections. Policies enacted by her and Franklin Raines (another Ivy Leaguer with connections and no experience) greatly contributed to the crash of not only Fannie Mae but the entire housing segment. Meanwhile, she and Raines got filthy stinking rich for their efforts. Come to think of it, maybe the pundits are right. No one from the University of Idaho could possibly screw up that much in one lifetime. Score one for the outsiders.
And then there are the brilliant and respected Republicans like Christopher Buckley and Colin Powell.  While these two wizards were among many swooning at the elegant and brilliant Obama and chafing at the plain spoken Palin, they failed to notice that the elegant one was a socialist who was mentored by American hating radicals.
Dumb ole hick Governor Palin was never fooled of course. Now Buckley and Powell have chimed in publicly with various degrees of buyer’s remorse.  Maybe living within sight of the Soviet Union does sharpen ones sensitivty to certain vibes. Point to Palin and the outsiders again.
And let’s not forget that brilliant strategists like Dick Morris and Frank Luntz were  preaching that Republicans must embrace the moderate platform of the McCains of the party to have any chance of winning.  You know, global warming and government nanny state programs for every phase of life and so on.
Uh oh.  That backwoods Annie Oakley would talk about limited government and drilling for our own oil whenever she could break free from McCain’s handlers. She even had the audacity — as someone who has actually been to ANWR — to differ with the beltway elites on what ANWR looked like. What nerve.
Of course we know now that global temperatures have not risen in nearly ten years and Americans do not want to pay a cent more for gas due to climate concerns. And there are surveys indicating that their number one concern is government spending, too.  Oh, and now Morris is writing a book a week about Obama the socialist. Score a couple more for the Killa from Wasilla and other assorted Neanderthals.
What Palin has — along with folks known as the conservative base — is a lot of common sense. The kind of common sense that is so easy to get while studying at the University of Idaho, hunting moose in sub zero temperatures or managing a little league hockey team. 
It seems out of reach for folks who all went to the same pretentious schools K thru Ivy and who spend their entire adult life in the D.C. to Manhattan corridor giving each other jobs for which they are not qualified and worryng incessently about what the press is saying about them. 
That is not how Sarah Palin thinks or lives. It is not how the people who made this country great think or live. And folks who are trapped in that mentality are simply not able to figure out someone like Palin or the millions of voters who were energized by her addition to the McCain ticket.
So while it would be folly for me to feign insight into her heart and mind now, not to mention any kind of prediction into the future, I think it is safe to say that her calculations were not those of the pundit class so busily analyzing this resignation.
Maybe it was just some practical common sense. With her star power now, she can surely make more money in a month on the rubber chicken circuit than she makes in a year as governor. A book deal could easily be done also. And she needs the cash, with the politically motivated grievances leaving her a half mil in the red in legal bills.
Such a strategy would open up all kinds of possibilities outside of politics (gasp!) while stabilizing her finances. Meanwhile, the increased exposure and rolodex stuffers she would pick up would always be a plus if she ever does think about office again.
In other words, I think it might be wise to consider this as a "business decision" and not a political one. I would never say political future considerations never entered her mind. But I do not think it is her obsession every waking moment.
Some folks just don’t get this kind of thinking. If you can get Tony Rezko to buy the yard of your house, you don’t have to think this way. If you inherited the Kennedy liquor zillions, you don’t have to think this way.  If you married a widow sitting on top of a business fortune of a Republican senator, you don’t have to think this way. If you can simply call up some Ivy League connection and get a cushy government job with seven figure bonsues regardless of performance, you don’t have to think this way.
The Palins have to think this way. My family has to think this way. Yours probably does too. That’s why the the beltway pundits and other Washingtonians will never understand the Palins or most of us.
And the battle is this. Our way of thinking made the country what it is. Their way of thinking will destroy it.  The Palin V. Pundit contest is but one battle on a huge stage in a vital war. " http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/palin_v_pundits.html
By deber B on 07/06/2009 2:45 pm
Burke Omalley
What a blowhard.
By Burke Omalley on 07/06/2009 5:19 pm
Diamond In The Rough
deber…….great comment…ITA!
By Diamond In The Rough on 07/06/2009 8:04 pm
Linda Mason

That’s some speech, deber B.  All I have to say is:

"Can I call ‘ya Joe?" 

 

By Linda Mason on 07/06/2009 10:18 pm
Andrea Brandon
Awesome, Deber, awesome.
By Andrea Brandon on 07/06/2009 10:24 pm
Dawn Smith

deber B,  Excellent post !!

By Dawn Smith on 07/07/2009 4:13 am
Terrie O

Thanks Margo for your insight, it did scare me though when I read the intro that you agreed with AC!  Got your point of view!

By Terrie O on 07/05/2009 1:28 pm
Pia Holm
re: the link to Wshburn’s blog: Thank you! As to Palin’s syntactical manglings: Ye gods and little catfish. Doesn’t say much for the educational standards in AK. Palin quit for the greater good? Right. And McGreevy quit because he’s gay? I want to know what’s about to hit the fan this time.
By Pia Holm on 07/05/2009 4:00 pm
L. C.

Margo

I agree with you 100%! … The facts are the facts. Bristol got KNOCKED UP! … I’ll say it again she got KNOCKED UP!

Margo, I think there’s a double standard at work here. It’s okay to say poor girls get KNOCKED UP. However, when it comes to the likes of bristol palin she’s suppose to be handled with kid gloves. Yeah, she’s a teenage mother! … A girl who along with her boyfriend failed to use birth control and in the heat of passion bristol got KNOCKED UP!

Margo, I have a question. If the publishing house is not pleased with the book what happens?  Is there the possiblity that someone other than sp will be doing the actual writing? Will she dctate the story and a writer and editor actually interpret her words.

By L. C. on 07/05/2009 5:17 pm
deber B

And would you use that term if your very own mother got pregnant with the person she loved but had not married?   Would you say the same about your mother that she got knocked up with you?    And what your daughter or your granddaughter…two precious people in your life who found themselves in the same situation?   Would you talk about them the same way….they both got knocked up?    Somehow, I don’t think you would use that terminology….in fact, I know you wouldn’t.    We are women.   Sometimes the unexpected happens but it never decreases our respect and our loyally to those women we love so much.

Shameful!!

By deber B on 07/05/2009 5:22 pm