At almost any gathering of the self-described intellectual elite, it seems that irrationally celebrating hatred of Sarah Palin is practically mandatory. The 2011 Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention was no different. In his lecture entitled “Hicksploitation: or, the Cultural Emergence of Sarah Palin,” Scott Herring of Indiana U-Bloomington had a lot to say about Sarah Palin. Of course, all of it was negative. Herring began by describing Palin as the “once and future proponent of faux populist conservatism.” He talked about how Palin has repeatedly said that she is not a hillbilly, and how Palin has stated that the...