Posted on 12/26/2008 6:05:02 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Okay, maybe — maybe — someone could have given Kathleen Parker the benefit of the doubt as a voice of “loyal opposition” when she recommended that Sarah Palin drop out of the race after her interview with Katie Couric. That is a big maybe.
The maybe comes from the fact that Couric — no intellectual giant herself, given that she offered no comment on Joe Biden’s claim that “when the stock market crashed Franklin Roosevelt got on television” — did make Palin look awkward with “gotcha” questions probably scripted for her and that she would never have asked any Democrat.
Clearly, McCain’s traitorous and inept team threw Palin to the wolves.
But with her latest column comparing her own criticism of Palin with concerns about Caroline Kennedy’s lack of experience as she vies for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, I have to conclude that Parker just has it in for Palin. Weighing, among other criteria, relative “erudition,” Parker concludes that Kennedy is more qualified to be senator than Palin was to be vice president. What evidence does she present?
Well, she “has authored several books.”
I was not familiar with Ms. Kennedy’s oeuvre so I did a search.
Here’s something to delve into in our wood-paneled libraries, her latest, published in 2007: A Family Christmas.
Or maybe Parker sees Kennedy as a woman of letters as evidenced by her 2005 literary collections, Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and A Patriot’s Handbook: Songs, Stories, and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love.
One suspects that the Patriot’s Handbook was part of the larger post-9/11 effort by liberals to reclaim — or rather co-opt — the word “patriotism,” for among the standard textbook offerings in the volume are several reprints of speeches by her father and uncle, as well as songs by Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.
Oh, we have also heard that one of Ms. Kennedy’s areas of expertise is “education.” Although she could list A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children on that part of her resume, she would have to give credit to her scholar/collaborator, John J. Muth.
And I am certain that it was the strength of her intellectual abilities and not her family name that garnered the publishing contract for Profiles of Courage in Our Time in 2003.
She does have two books about law but their primary author is Ellen Alderman. The Right to Privacy — the favorite right among abortion-loving liberals — opens with a lurid, verging on pornographic, description of an illegal strip search of a woman stopped for a traffic violation. This book and In Our Defense (about the Bill of Rights), both published in the 1990s, are written in a style that suggests no heavy intellectual lifting is required.
Well, even if you write fluff and have a name like Kennedy, Clinton, Obama, or Ayers, agents and publishers will come with big contracts in hand.
Liberals control publishing and academia through ideological nepotism. Then they cast those who are not published or tenured as not up to par in erudition. I’ve heard it over and over as an adjunct. A thesis on Paradise Lost and a dissertation on Walker Percy do not fit into such currently fashionable categories in English departments as “trauma studies,” digital technology, video games, or explorations of the nine different genders put forth by “cutting-edge theorist” Judith Butler.
Kathleen Parker, seeing that my book manuscripts remain unpublished, might question my “erudition,” as she would that of my conservative colleague, a history professor with a book with original research on a trial of American communists, who is being edged out at the university where he has been teaching for several years by doctoral candidates who teach “gender history.” These gals come to interviews with dissertations on such topics as cookbooks, medical attitudes toward masturbation, and a feminist writers group for junior high girls.
Indeed, it was Barack Obama’s authorship of two memoirs that vaulted him to a position of more “erudition” than any Republican, by the standards of the liberal media. But a quick read of those two tomes reveals a solipsistic insipidness that rivals those of his speeches, written by a twenty-seven-year-old, who, in frat boy fashion, made the news with a photo of himself fondling the breast on a cut-out of our future secretary of state.
Yet, Parker in her column calls Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau a “wunderkind,” a “golden boy,” engaging in a “little harmless male sport.”
What Jon Favreau wrote for the reputedly great orator Obama resembles what I encounter in freshman essays that earn “D”s for content. It was no wonder that Obama captured the youth vote.
Parker, as could be expected, was courted by the liberal media, including CNN, where she used the interview to continue her analysis, calling Palin’s performance with Katie Couric “catastrophic.” Parker also claimed a double standard was in place for Palin: her “histrionics” like “winking” and saying “betcha” were tolerated only because she is a woman.
In addition to being wrong about where the real double standard was, Parker was wrong in predicting that Palin would bring down the ticket. Palin, instead, energized the moribund McCain campaign. It was McCain and his team that botched things up. Yet, Parker’s analysis is that the “GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows,” the “evangelical right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP.”
Latin this is not. The slam at a particular religious group with such terms invites like responses. So does Parker’s double standard in failing to question the community-organizer presidential candidate’s credentials, or the vice-presidential candidate’s grasp of history that would have gotten him kicked off Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?
Ms. Parker, then in parading her hate mail from the column in which she suggested Palin drop out, tried to present herself as a bold thinker, brave enough to say what others would not. The “vicious” comments she interprets as readers’ “overinvestment” in Palin.
No, among those comments and emails from which Parker selectively chose, some, I am sure, are pearls of wisdom from readers who know erudition when they read it. Rather than being the daring thinker she fancies herself, Ms. Parker has come to serve a very useful purpose for those who control the media and the academy.
Was she ever alive?
KP got a big reaction out of one anti palin article so she is going to try and ride this gravy train forever.
It’s almost as annoying as Tina Fey still walking around imitating Palin. It’s become like a party trick.
Get real careers girls.
Kathleen Parker is the new Arianna Huffington. Opportunists who lack strong conviction and principles follow a playbook that leads them to personal gratification and fortune.
“Personal gratification”? You mean like in “sexual gratifucation”? What a nasty little girl.
Who is Kathleen Parker?
for later
Yeah Parker is really “bold”. I defy her to say any of the crap that she spewed to Gov. Palin’s face. Of course it would never happen because Parker is a phony wanna-be elitist who would wet her pants if Sarah said boo. Of course, she is too much of a lady to do it, but I would love to just once see Sarah knock the teeth out of one of these prissy, tough talking journalists! That goes double for that elitist weenie Gibson!
They don’t call the media presstitutes for nothing.
I had no clue who Kathleen Parker was til this election, she is just jealous of Sarah’s success. She is no different then those whackos from the daily kooks
Quote:
She’s been a pretty reliable moderate conservative commentator, but I think she saw the attention other gals like Peggy Noonan and Chris Buckley were getting and decided to get on that train before it left the station.
Yes and with no price to pay for any of the bullshit they espouse. We need a grass roots operation to counter this kind of garbage.These kinds of people need to pay for their sins.
She is just plain stupid. There is no other word. Except maybe trashy. I think she’s the one Carville referred to dragging a $100 bill through the trailer park.
I agree 110%! Let’s think of a name for such an organization. Here’s my 2 cents: Don’t Feed the Dinosaurs ... Conservative Backlash ... Get Inky ...
You know, I attempted to start up a blog called Backlashed, but didn’t see much support when I posted messages like this one.These people really need to be attacked and attacked as soon as they post their poison.Something really needs to happen and happen soon. These assholes are already trying to pick our candidate for 2012.
That sounds like a good idea to me.
Kathleen Parker has been relentlessly attacked on Townhall.com. for her specious attacks on Palin and her fawning worship of Camelotian Caroline. It’s obvious she is angling for cocktail party invitations.
Meanwhile, the crusty feminist Camile Paglia loves Sarah, and has been burned alive on the stake for saying so on salon.com.
Really.
When I was a kid in the early 60’s in California I used to hear my father and other speak with great disdain of the “Eastern elite/liberal establishment”... seem that snobby little “Eastern establishment” clique is alive and well
S. Palin is far more qualified than C. Kennedy. Palin comes across as alive, full of energy, and has charisma. C. Kennedy strikes me as drab with low level of energy and no charisma. We don't need the Kennedy, Clinton, and Bush dynasties.
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