AND STILL THEY CHEERED

I forced myself to listen to Sarah Palin address the Tea Party Convention the other night, knowing that I wouldn't like what I heard and that I would end up feeling distressed. I suppose that statement precludes any argument I might make that I am open-minded when it comes to Ms. Palin, but after all these months of watching her in action, if I suddenly expected her to be different, it would also mean I was suddenly delusional. Sarah won't change because Sarah likes Sarah and sadly, so do too many others within the right-wing of the Republican Party. Listening to her was bad enough - it truly was distressing - but listening to the cheering crowd was so much more than distressing, it was downright depressing.

Why were these tea-partiers cheering? As far as I could tell, Palin didn't say anything of substance or anything that was meaningful or insightful. And yet they cheered. She spoke like a not-too-bright cutesy teenage girl with all the requisite winks and smiles, and still they cheered. She rehashed partisan lies, she was sarcastic and snarkey, she mocked and ridiculed Obama, and you betchya, they cheered. Palin is an embarrassment to any woman who is serious about governing and who demands to be taken seriously; she is an intellectual light-weight, a woman lacking substance - she is a caricature of everything that is wrong with politicians - and still the crowd cheered. No wonder I was depressed!

My short assessment of Sarah Palin: ego-centric narcissist with delusions of grandeur. Her self-image is so distorted and inflated that she actually sees herself as someone who is capable and deserving of being President of the United States. This is so outrageous, it is laughable. But that there are grownup, voting Americans who feel the same way, well, that isn't funny at all - that is so very, very sad. And it certainly isn't worthy of our cheers.