http://www.biography.com
We're Not In Alaska Anymore, Toto
for release 10-02-08
Dallas, Texas
by Lighting Rod
It's long been a part of American mythology that our leaders come from the people. As Jefferson envisioned it, our leaders would be amateurs. They would be farmers and shopkeepers and small-town lawyers and soldiers who would give an amount of time to public service and then go back to their usual occupations.
Even in Jefferson's time this was a fantasy, an ideal. As a fledgling nation we soon developed a professional political class. They were chiefly rich landowners who were masons. Ben Franklin started out as a printer's apprentice and when he died he was a revered scientist and statesman and the most popular and respected world celebrity since Voltaire. It's the stuff of the American Dream.
Sarah Palin should cash in on this classic myth. She is a self-made person, a pioneer from the hinterlands of Alaska who has made good. She's been in the PTA and she was a hockey mom. How American.
Or maybe she is like Marie Antoinette who was an imported bride designed to sex up the monarchy. Marie could have perhaps avoided the guillotine if she would have provided bread instead of delivering zingers about eating cake.
In Texas we call it horse sense. Your horse doesn't know the ABC's, doesn't know geography or world affairs. But your horse can smell a rattlesnake. You can call it common sense or instinct. It doesn't depend on schoolbook information.
It only recently occurred to me that Sarah Palin has a voice much like Judy Garland's in her depiction of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Classic niavete. She should stick to it, show herself as a complete innocent, a stranger in paradise, which she is in terms of national politics. The Poet's Eye sees that Sarah Palin needs to sell her horse sense, not her knowledge.
Who knew that Toto was a husky?
Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly Over The Rainbow. Why then, oh why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why cant I?
--Arlen
