"When people actually meet her, they're blown away"

 

"Someone called me a redneck woman once, and you know what I said back? 'Why thank you,'" quipped the Divine Mrs. P at one of her rapturous rallies yesterday. She's on a roll, and media fuddy-duddies are falling in droves (see below). Above, statue by Rudolph Tegner (1873-1950) of Sarah Palin lookalike, woman warrior Goddess of Wisdom Athena, emerging from John McCain's Zeus's brow.

"I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful." 'Sounds like something we might have said, but it was "Saturday Night Live" Executive Producer Lorne Michaels (!), cited by the WSJs Daniel Henninger this morning. In fact, all but the most hard-boiled of Palin's critics are falling — like flies  — head over heels. First a few excerpts from Henninger's breath-of-fresh-air column, and then on to the Palin-ing of MSNBC:

The stoning of Sarah Palin has exposed enough cultural fissures in American politics to occupy strategists full-time until 2012. We now see there is a left-to-right elite centered in New York, Washington, Hollywood and Silicon Valley who hand down judgments of the nation's mortals from their perch atop the Bell Curve.

It seems only yesterday that the most critical skill in presidential politics was being able to connect to people in places like Bronko's bar or Saddleback Church. When Gov. Palin showed she excelled at that, the goal posts suddenly moved and the new game was being able to talk the talk in London, Paris, Tehran or Moscow. She looks about a half-step behind Sen. Obama on that learning curve.

Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," lives on the forward wave of American life. This week he gave his view of Sarah Palin to EW.com: "I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful. Her politics aren't my politics. But you can see that she's a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her."

Hephaestus (with axe, above, in detail from vase painting) was the "patron of all craftsmen, principally those working with metal [plumbers included?]," who "split the head of Zeus with an axe, from which Athena appeared fully armed," according to Encyclopedia Mythica.

We connected to Sarah, big time, the moment she sprung full blown into our consciousness in a Larry Kudlow interview we stumbled upon at YouTube two months back when rumors were rumbling that the Alaska Governor would be McCain's VP pick. As for the Palin-ing of MSNBC, we happened to catch what may have been a bellwether moment over there this morning. Former Republican Florida Rep and current "anchorman" Joe Scarborough has been unwatchable since he left "public service" and fell in with the Northeast Corridor herd at MSNBC. But today "Morning Joe" was transmogrified, going out of his way to praise the wit and wisdom of Sarah Palin, to the consternation of his horrified fellow anchors:

What we're finding is that when people actually meet her, they're blown away.

"Yes, she's pretty," sniffed the scowling anchorette beside him, attempting to trivialize the issue, but Joe brought out his big guns and left her biting the dust:

When Jack Welsh met her, he was extremely impressed, not with how she looks but with her intellect.

The diehards are still digging, of course. Digging themselves into a hole. Andrea Mitchell & Company are shocked, shocked at Palin's $150,000 clothing allowance [worth every pretty penny, in our view], and Brian Williams is deeply concerned that Caribou Barbie hasn't released her medical records yet [hoping against hope for something nasty, Brian?], but the Northeast Corridor holdouts' desperation speaks for itself.

Update: A totally excellent related post from Bird Dog at Maggie's:

I promise you that, if she had a "D" after her name, she would be a MSM heroine. Colorful and exotic. The Dems would find a way to make her "Josephine Sixpack" - "The fresh voice of the American worker from the American Frontier." Anybody who criticized her would be slammed as "classist" or "intellectual snobs" or "out of touch with real Americans."

Colorful and exotic, a fresh voice of the American Frontier, a real American. YES! So glad she's on our side.

Update: A mental ward full of voices we're glad are on our side at Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

Update II: Palin4America links years later.

Comments

[yochanan]

I ♥ GOV'R PALIN
she is a total breath of fresh air and the fact that i live in the middle of chicagostan and that besides being a national security hawk i am a bit of a R.I.N.O. on social issues is beside the point.

[goomp]

For those who wish to vote for a true patriot with strong, uncorruptible, traditional American values instead of self-centered, wishy-washy values and beliefs that change to gain votes, Sarah is the one.

[Gayle Miller]

And yet, just yesterday I read on Yahoo News that the McCain campaign is supposedly trying to conceal as many of Palin's utterances as possible because of the numerous gaffes she is committing on the campaign trail (of course, no examples were given) - I read it three times before I realized that actually it is the OBAMA campaign which has pulled Rosary Joe off the campaign trial to just shut him the heck up for a couple of days while Senator Obama is in Hawaii with his grandmother.

[MarkJ]

"I read it three times before I realized that actually it is the OBAMA campaign which has pulled Rosary Joe off the campaign trial to just shut him the heck up for a couple of days while Senator Obama is in Hawaii with his grandmother."

1. Word on the street says that if Obama wins, his first order of business will be to transfer Biden's VP office to the West Wing attic--and Obama will be keeping Joey B.'s office door key pad combo in the same attache case as the nuclear codes.

2. Question of the Day: if Obama's grammie is in such bad shape, how did His Majesty find time to go dancing AGAIN on "Ellen?"

[mog]

Two points, one - no one mentions how much Obama's greek columns cost (at the DNC) and two - I thought Biden was supposed to be the foreign policy expert Obama so sorely needed as VP as he had none. Biden sure showed him. Pulled, gotta love it.

[truthynesslover]

Who needs those fruitflys anyway?
answer;researchers on autism....oooops duh!

[Susan]

McCain campaign is supposedly trying to conceal as many of Palin's utterances as possible because of the numerous gaffes she is committing on the campaign trail (of course, no examples were given). http://findmediafire.com