If you were to ask a young person today "Who is Sarah Palin?" they would most likely answer that she's that crazy, old, snoopy neighbor with the annoying voice on the toilet paper commercial. But we older folks remember her for other reasons.
Sarah Louise Palin (nee Heath) was born in Sandpoint, Idaho on February 11, 1964 to Charles R. "Chuck" Heath, a science teacher and track and field coach, and Sarah "Sally" a school secretary. It was the multifaceted Chuck who gave the young Sarah both her scientific mind and a constant desire to run.
Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Alaska where they finally settled in Wasilla. It was here that Sarah would begin to make a name for herself, playing sports — in which she earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her biting wit (and for habitually biting other athletes) — as well as winning beauty pageants and playing incredibly good flute. Her remarkable embouchure is still legendary in Wasilla.
But the lure of exotic, faraway places called and after completing high school in 1982, Sarah packed up her flute and enrolled in the University of Hawaii at Hilo. She immediately transferred to the University of the Pacific in Honolulu, but finding that there were still far too many dark-skinned and oddly Asian-looking students there as well, hopped a plane for the whitest place she could think of, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. It was there that she gave three more colleges a try, finally graduating with a BA in Communications and a special place in her heart for white culture and heavily armed militias.
Returning to Alaska, Sarah worked as a sportscaster, but soon eloped with her old high school sweetheart and rabid flute aficionado, Todd Palin, a commercial fisherman with a great line. A short time later she gave birth to her first child, Track (named in honor of her father's area of coaching expertise), followed not by Field, surprisingly, but by Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig (in honor of one of her math teachers.)
But Sarah was born to run, and soon the political bug bit. She ran for and became a member of the Wasilla City Council. She then ran for mayor, trouncing her foe 651 votes to 440. But she was not done. She ran for lieutenant governor and although she lost, she knew bigger things awaited her. She ran for governor and won. But after a couple years she grew weary of being held accountable for her questionable actions and retired. It seemed she would sink into obscurity. But miracles happen.
It was 2008 and Republican Senator John McCain, who had just won his party's nomination for president, needed a running mate. He had an uninspiring bench of losers to draw from but luckily the brilliant strategist, the unerring Bill Kristol, had the answer: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. After some hasty discussion, it was settled and the virtually unknown Sarah was announced as McCain's running mate. This would pump up the conservative Religious Right. Women would love it and vote for the ticket in droves. After all, she had a vagina. Men would fall in love with her and her vagina, too, just like Rich Lowry over at National Review. This bold gambit would entirely derail the Obama juggernaut.
Obama won in a landslide.
But Sarah Palin was not done. She became the darling of the Tea Party and vigorously fought Obama's bid for a second term with unbridled nastiness and spite.
Obama won again.
She became a commentator on Fox News, had her own cable show, put out several books with her name on the covers and then started her own subscription internet TV channel. Unfortunately, the great majority of her dwindling supporters couldn't figure out how to log in, so it was cancelled after a few months.
A few years later, in 2019, after her husband Todd was killed on a fishing trip by a rogue halibut, Sarah Palin remarried, becoming Mrs. Glenn Beck (forever dashing Rich Lowry's hopes) and shortly thereafter gave birth to a son, Frack, followed by two daughters, Dingo and Corvette. The couple toured for several years on the home schooling/unaccredited Christian colleges lecture circuit until Mr. Beck's untimely drowning in a dangerous rip tide inside a Miami shopping mall.
Sarah continued to publish children's books, such as Jesus Hates the Color Brown and A Child's Guide to Seal Hunting.
Several years later, she became the spokeswoman for You Betcha Hot Dogs, which led to a brief cameo in a low-budget MILF porn film, titled Big Gulp.
And of course some will remember the late-night cable horror movie show she hosted as the creepily sexual Sarvira, Mistress of the Dim.
Now in her late 70's, Sarah Palin still acts in commercials and lends her voice to conservative political causes, such as there are. She still does a little wolf hunting in Alaska from helicopter (when it's not too hot) and sells her own special line of bumpits. And she continues to vigorously deny John McCain's fabled last words, arguing that what the lifelong baseball fan really said was, "Just give me a bat to whack that funky pitch!"
©2014 Kona Lowell
You can hear a reading of this blog every Sundayat 9 AM Central at Brass Knuckle Progressives Radio.
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