Political journalist Meghan Daum responds to friends and colleagues who ask why she doesn't take the gloves off when writing about Sarah Palin:
Alas, we cannot. Not only because it would be cheap and lazy and unbecoming, but also because Palin is too well-shielded by her own incompetence. By casting herself as the less privileged, less polished outsider in the fancy school, she fashions the rest of us into playground bullies (ironic, given her predilection for bullying language) who taunt her with big vocabularies and book learning and obsession with nuance. By playing the victim (ironic, given how closely she associates victimhood with liberal whining), Palin forces her critics to choose between the roles of merciless oppressor and guilt-ridden enabler. And since the merciless oppressor part is already played ably by various screamers on blogs, cable TV and Internet comment boards, writers like me have taken the other route, leaning over so far backward to avoid saying the obvious that we sometimes can't get enough air in our lungs to say much at all.
That's why I truly hope Palin continues to fight her temptation to run for president. If there was ever a candidate who brought out the worst in people, who encouraged hollow rejoinders but made honest analysis almost impossible, it is she. Besides, if she did run, I'd have to write about her. And all the yoga in the world wouldn't keep my spine from eventually breaking from those backbends.
Over on Facebook, a St. John's buddy, Jim Leach, thinking about the just-concluded silly season, posted this stunning performance (from the 1979 documentary "The Kids Are Alright") of Pete Townshend's ambiguous political anthem, "Won't Get Fooled Again," which famously ends, "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss." To hear Townshend tell it, he wasn't decrying political change as mush as warning us not to put too much faith in its agents -- advice which, as I age, I find I have less and less difficulty heeding.
No three-piece (not counting Roger Daltrey's powerful vocals) has ever rocked like the Who. I regret not introducing myself to bassist John Entwistle when we were both having a drink with colleagues (his were musicians from his tour, mine were tacticians from the Nixon Center, who were helping me gird for a brewing assault by Nixon family members) in the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown in 1996. His thundering, peripatetic runs (listen especially to what he plays during the chorus) and Keith Moon's exquisitely musical drumming have been quieted. What would I have said to the bassist forever known as the Bear? Probably the only thing you can say to an artist who's given you years of joy: Thanks.
Political journalist Meghan Daum responds to friends and colleagues who ask why she doesn't take the gloves off when writing about Sarah Palin:
