What It Means to Hate

This entry was posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 8:16 am and is filed under Journalism, The Passion of St. Sarah of Wasilla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 Responses to “What It Means to Hate”

1. math_geek says:
   

   I suspect most politicians have higher strong negatives than strong positives, and the three politicians Ross cites fit that rule. It’s simply a lot easier for us to hate than to love. We’re a fallen people.

   January 24th, 2011 at 8:44 am
2. Jamie says:
   

   What I really don’t get about Sarahpalin is what exactly has she ever done to engender such love from the right and such hatred from the left.

   She is a 1/2 term former governor, reality tv star.

   Why the hell are we talking about her?

   January 24th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
3. Geoff says:
   

   First of all, she came onto the scene as a culture warrior. From her very first moments on the national radar, she’s been the embodiment of the down-home, just folks, small-town, God-fearin’, Muslim hatin’ “Real America” against those smarmy, elitist, atheist, liberal, latte-sipping, effeminate coastal types. That pushes peoples’ buttons.

   Then you have to add her tireless sense of self-promotion. Mix in a robust persecution complex which inspires so many conservatives, as Tom has frequently commented, to circle the wagons at the first sign of Anti-Palin criticism. Top it off with a tendency to say things that are, if not stupid or crazy, at least phrased in such a way as to sound stupid or crazy.

   This combination turns her into an almost endless source of (in internet-speak) GRAR and lulz, which are the bread and butter of the modern news cycle.

   Only she knows how much of this was conscious planning and how much serendipitous, but it’s pretty clear that she means to ride it for all that it’s worth. In that way, at least, she does embody Real America.

   January 24th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
4. Apollo says:
   

   First of all, she came onto the scene as a culture warrior.

   That’s a big negatory. She came onto the scene as a popular governor who had successfully taken on the corrupt political culture in Alaska. She was no more culturally conservative than John McCain, though her family situation was thought to appeal to social conservatives.

   Generally speaking, it’s easy to vilify women in politics (see Clinton, H.). Add on to that the fact that the left has a seething hatred for conservative women who get involved in public life (the left has staked out women as one of their groups, so anti-abortion women are treated as traitors in the same way as anti-affirmative action blacks), and that explains a large part of what happened. The attacks on her were instantly venemous, and a cycle of action and reaction began.

   January 24th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
5. Jamie says:
   

   If she didn’t burst onto the scene as a culture warrior, she has certainly embraced that mantle subsequently for her own self-promotion.

   January 24th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
6. Apollo says:
   

   Am I correct that “self-promotion” is just an unflattering way of saying “giving the people what they want”? Saying and doing things that the public will pay (time or money) for is not, normally, something that libertarians gripe about.

   January 25th, 2011 at 8:00 am
7. Jamie says:
   

   The end result of most self-promotion is not gaining the most powerful political office in the world.

   Libertarians are usually wary of such people.

   January 25th, 2011 at 9:11 am
8. Apollo says:
   

   The end result of most self-promotion is not gaining the most powerful political office in the world.

   But it’s not for a lack of trying, it’s because of a lack of success. Everyone wants to go as far as their skills will let them, but the truth is that most of us just aren’t good enough self-promoters to countenance being on the city council, much less the presidency. It takes a rare genius, for example, to wear his army uniform to a meeting where the topic of discussion is who will lead the army, or to write two autobiographies before the age of 50.

   Certainly it’s the case that every single politician in the country would go for the presidency if they just had enough skills. This is true of libertarian (and Libertarian) politicians, who seem particularly inept at giving the people what they want. Mitt Romney has been engaged in self-promotion for most of a decade; Newt’s been doing it for more than two decades; and any number of people who would grossly restrict our freedoms promote themselves every day. Yet there’s a special snide ire that people reserve for Sarahpalin. Her self-promotion is better than most, but not as good as others, yet it’s regarded, somehow, as beyond the pale by a very large number of people.

   My ultimate problem with the Palin Haters is that they claim to base their hatred of her on things that may or may not be true about her, but are at least as true about others whom they do not hate. She’s held to a different standard, and I utterly do not understand it.

   January 25th, 2011 at 9:51 am
9. Geoff says:
   

   What you’re missing is the identity politics. She’s plugged herself into the “Real America” identity politics game, and people react very strongly to that, one way or another.

   January 25th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
10. Apollo says:
    

    You’re going to have to do better than that as an explanation for people take such pleasure in hating her.

    1.) Identity politics have always been and continue to be very big in America, and played by a lot of different groups. Regional and cultural identity politics go back to the Founding; conservatives have spent the last 50 years being bombarded with various identity groups insisting that they’re entitled to special privileges because of who they are. No figure from this movement is even remotely as despised (or well known) on the Right as Sarahpalin is on the Left.

    2.) Debates about what the “Real America” is go back at least to the industrial revolution, with rural Americans hyping their various rural virtues and urban Americans being satisfied with their superior lifestyle and income. It’s an ideological battle about our national character, and it’s being fought on numerous fronts by both sides. That’s the way thriving democratic societies operate; only in totalitarian states do we get official propaganda posters showing the virtues of being a factory worker or whatnot. To take a character from that debate – who is engaging in it in a way that is thoroughly consistent with our national traditions – and make her such an object of hate is, to me, a reflection of moral failing on the part of the haters. If this were legitimately the reason that people hate her – and I don’t think it is; I still think this revolves around various gender issues that people would rather not discuss – it would confirm my suspicion that the haters are just a bunch of sniveling brats who can’t hold up their side of a debate or admit when they’re wrong.

    3.) I just don’t buy that that many people (we’re talking 39% of the country strongly disliking her) is motivated by this. The “Real America” debate she’s engaged in revolves around the popular kids in high school versus the unpopular kids in high school. She was popular and pretty, went to a few state schools, married a handsome guy, has a great family, etc etc; dorks who went to prestigious schools get pissed off that she’s more successful than them. But there just aren’t that many dorks. Most people in America either were the popular kid in high school, or liked the popular kid in high school. That’s what it means to be popular. And the popular kids are popular for a reason – they’re just plain likeable and have good people skills. Certainly there’s a gentry class who hates her because of these issues, but it’s not 10% of the country, much less 39% of the country. This may be why you don’t like her, but I have a very hard time believing that it’s a motivating factor behind even half of the haters.

    January 25th, 2011 at 7:39 pm
11. Jamie says:
    

    1) Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton – laughable.

    2) You really think that a person who aspires to lead our nation telling 50% of us that we aren’t “Real Americans” is not grounds for disliking her immensely?

    3)LOL – really? You’re playing the jealousy card. How do you explain a large number of successful people despising her?

    These are weak arguments – especially from you.

    January 25th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
12. Apollo says:
    

    1) Jackson and Sharpton are, ultimately, minor villains in right-wing land. There are right-wing newspapers, and we’ve got Fox News, and the number of stories that get done on Jackson and Sharpton (who, I’m not sure if many people realize this, has a radio shows and thus gets to publicly say lots of offensive things on a more regular basis than Palin) is almost nil.

    2) She doesn’t tell people that they aren’t real Americans; she talks about what her American ideal is. That really is a significant difference. Obviously I’ve got no problem with people disagreeing with her ideal (I probably would, if I paid attention to what it is), but the level of hatred is dramatically out of proportion to what would come from rational disagreement.

    3) There’s success, and then there’s success. Palin’s a multimillionaire, has been governor of a state, a vice presidential nominee, gets her own lifestyle show, and millions of people follow her every word. Most Harvard valedictorians will live a life of upper-middle-class pleasantness and, perhaps, by the time they’re 60, be regarded as pillars of their social circle. The latter type of person is certainly successful, but that in no way means that they couldn’t be viciously resentful of some dumb-ass-state-school-beauty-queen-type being vastly, vastly more successful, popular, and good-looking. It’s not jealousy, because they don’t want to be her. It’s resentment, because they think they’re more deserving of all the good things she has.

    January 25th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
13. Apollo says:
    

    Also, regarding #3, never underestimate the degree to which the gentry class wishes to feel intellectually superior. They studied hard. They did well on the SAT. They got into the elite college. They got an A in the honors seminar on post-colonial deconstructionist race theory in 1970s Indian cinema. They look down on state-school-types the way you and I breathe air. Hell, I’m somewhat connected to an upper-tier state school, and “intellectuals” there take pleasure in looking down on Sarahpalin.

    January 25th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
14. FormerSwingVoter says:
    

    I think you guys might be over-analyzing this a bit.

    My guess – and it’s just a guess – is that this is just an after-effect of Democrats running so hard against her during the campaign. The closest equivalent on the left would probably be Al Gore: someone who lost a hard-fought, rhetorically-charged election, then actively sought the limelight after the fact (though there was a bit of time elapsed between the two, in his case).

    As for why the Dems went after her to begin with, there’s a philosophy in political campaigns that you attack your opponent’s strengths rather than (or in addition to) their weaknesses. You attack Kerry’s war record, or Obama’s speechifying, or McCain’s popular VP pick. I think what we’re seeing is just the after-effects of that.

    January 26th, 2011 at 12:23 pm

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>