SARAH PALIN = LONESOME RHODES

Morning after the Veep debate --

Watching and listening to her was a terrifying event because of her artificiality and mean-spiritedness, all of which seemed OBVIOUSLY drilled into her by the operatives of the campaign (Karl Rove's former henchmen) to memorize and use.

Even more unsettling was the resonance -- her carefully assembled phony folksy phrases reminding of nothing other than "Lonesome Rhodes," Andy Griffith's character in Face in the crowd -- a vicious, petty, vengeful, unscrupulous shark who talks like a good ole boy and rises to power that way, with eveyone saying "Aww, ain't he cute?" (modeled, so they say, on Arthur Godfrey -- who managed to cover up the monster below the surface until the day he fired Julius LaRosa on the air and the TV audience got to see what the smile was hiding.)

Let's see:
Tina Fey impersonates Sarah Palin
And Sarah Palin impersonates Andy Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes/ Arthur Godfrey

It was appalling with the worst, phoniest, most psychotic line being:

"Say it ain't so, Joe. There you go again, looking backward..."
("OK, honey, be sure to work this in there somewhere.")

But there was another line even more insane:

"Your plan for Iraq is raising the white flag of surrender."

My immediate reaction was:

Hey, Sarah -- the only one around here who's ever raised the white flag of surrender is John McCain who got shot down while in the act of killing Vietnamese from the air (sort of like killing wolves from airplanes, except the wolves don't have Surface to Air Missiles), a man who SAYS he only turn-coated America because they threatened to kill "his men," but others who were in the POW camp say McCain was not their leader at all and no one thought he was and none of them were "his men"... regardless, whether his story is true or not is not the point

-- maybe it's true, but for the son and grandson or admirals, there had to be SOME cover story because he couldn't accept the fact that he surrendered, even less that, like anyone in that situation, he finally cracked -- and it still seems to haunt him and motivate everything he does -- just consider how many times he uses the word "SURRENDER."

Back to Ms Palin -- Those words and phrases bear the mark of coaching by the Karl Rove acolytes running the campaign (remember these were the same people who turned a spoiled brat Connecticut Prep School and Yale frat boy into a good old mushmouth "Howdy Y'all" Texican fellow -- Rove even had him buy a ranch the year he announced for president, a move that had two benefits: (1) It made him look like a rancher (even if looking like a schoolboy on a bicycle.) and (2) It kept the press away from him.

But enough of Bush -- we all know what he is.

But Sarah Palin -- there's something very very scary about a poorly programmed animatronic discipline babe getting so close to having power over all our lives.

With any luck she won't.