"The glee that the liberal press take in reporting the (thoroughly ordinary) problems in Ms Palin's family life seems to exemplify their disdain for ordinary people."
You've got it wrong. Her perfectly ordinary problems is probably why she was chosen. So that perfectly ordinary people feel "represented." That's how backward this society of spectacle has become. Tonight I saw her on the cover of People, or some such. She will continue to occupy these spaces until the election. And this will buy the repugs votes.
I thought McCain had made a mistake in choosing her. I was wrong. I remember the last time I was in Romania (1985) how my grandfather's wife would tell endless stories about the Ceausescu family...hours of Ilie said this, and his son said that, and his wife said the other thing. A whole soap opera. Now there is no way she could have known any of this. But imagining it made her feel more in control -- like they inhabited the same dimension as she and, having some understanding of them, gave her a sense of control
People feel very distanced from govt in the U.S., as indeed they are. There is also a very dim notion (and increasingly so) of the public-social-historic realm. There is only the personal and all the sentimental crap that attaches to it. The fact that Sarah Palin is a flawed, ordinary human being is translated in the psyche of most Americans as a guarantee of endless identifications that will give them a sense of power and reality.
The repugs understand this; the tabloids understand this. The dems seem not to. America does not want to wake up,and it hopes it never has to. That's my take on it.
What fucking liberal press?
Joanna