Bottom Feeder

I was going to title this simply, "Bottom," but then I realized her husband is probably the bottom.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Sarah Palin opened her own "channel." The term "channel" alone, is a cynical attempt to fool people into thinking they're paying for more than just another website. But this kind of theft is as old as civilization itself. People have always pissed into bottles, stuffed minced Geranium leaves inside, and labeled it a Tonic, or a Cure.

But it's all piss.

Fox News, but also Ted Turner and CNN prior to them, began turning the news into a commodity back in the 80s, when Cable broadcasting began to explode. Some news simply explodes and the entire news-as-commodity aspect is irrelevant. But much of the news we get is traded. It isn't news at all. It looks like news. It has all the taste and flavor of news. But it's not news. It's a recently invented form of entertainment, much like that of "Reality Television."  They really do this --- the people behind the scenes: they call each other and make deals to broadcast or air various news stories: I've got this if you'll trade me that, and so on.

Anyway, the Capitalization of the news leads down, as it must, to the most base of our impulses: think how hard it is not to look at a traffic accident. That's what the people who peddle news are trying to aim for. Informing people has nothing to do with it. At best, it's a lip service thing.  What they want is to create something that you can't help but stare at, turn into, watch, talk about.  It's yellow journalism at a higher level.

And that leads to Sarah Palin. I was not in America when she was chosen and apparently sprang onto the national scene overnight. When I got back, someone sent me a link to something and the first time I saw her speak I thought it was a prank --- like a funny video. When they said it was real I was more or less flabbergasted.

And yet I had written a play during the Bush years where one of the characters actually predicts that a Sarah Palin will emerge, so I shouldn't have been surprise. But I was.

Anyway, or people of that ultra conservative --- rabid --- ilk, there is really nowhere else to go once you've dug your own grave at Fox News. That station is simply a graveyard for conservatives. They may have a loud voice and dictate what the rest of us argue about, but for the people who are actually on that show, it's really the end.

Palin's attempt to cash in on the web by starting a "channel" is really just her understanding that she is a bottom feeder. The high point of her career was the second before she opened her mouth at the convention. That failed and failed big. Then it was books written by other people. Then it was that weird "family" vacation on a hideously decorated bus to share a pizza with Donald Trump. Then a Facebook page (her own real page!). Finally, her own channel ON THE WEB! A web presence. Who would have thunk it.

She sells piss and shit. She is piss and shit. But like other bottom feeders, this is her home.