From the Department of the Painfully Obvious:
Sarah Palin is to Barack Obama as The Monkees are to The Beatles.
ash sent that throw-away line to her local paper expecting it to be ignored. Instead, the new editor replied that he "took umbrage" as a Monkees fan only to publish it anyway. Only for the letter to garner grumbling objections - or so she was told, since she no longer reads the local paper - and absolutely no approbation. Which is rather humorous, considering the transparency of the comparison, until you consider the community in which she lives. So ash wrote the following elaboration which naturally was not published.
In 1965, Don Kirshner, music producer extraordinaire, signed onto a project capitalizing on the Beatles' fabulous success not merely as musicians but as movie stars. Seeking to exploit that year's A Hard Day's Night, "aspiring filmmakers" Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, as described by Wikipedia, proposed to Kirshner an American television show approximating the movie's format for a primarily domestic audience. From a pool of 400 applicants in Los Angeles were selected four eminently qualified, talented, perfectly lovely young men from varying backgrounds - one was Oliver on the London stage, another was Circus Boy in the 1950s - and varying degrees of versatility. While they were to mature from a strictly and stringently controlled enterprise to self-propelled artists whose quality of work is a judgment call, this is the undisputed origin of a band which within several years was to be pitted against their inspiration - the Beatles - by a Chicago radio station in a contest called, "Who is the better band?"
Really. I remember it vividly. I was an adolescent and the pure cynicism was transparent to me. A manufactured commodity. A business venture. Versus an organic, naturally evolving gestalt-like phenomenon generated by grade school chums. "Who is the better band?" tied in with some long-forgotten promotion, and, astonishingly, listeners took it seriously. They voted, and though I don't remember the outcome it was no lopsided result. "Who is the better band?" as if they were in the same category allowing such a comparison. "Who is better?" as if one were not merely the synthetic imitator of the other. "Who is the real deal?" as if the question weren't absurd. Which is, to be clear, separate and apart from the issue of musical aptitude and performance appeal, as is the fact that I liked the Monkees. Hell, the Beatles liked the Monkees and watched their show. Kirshner was no slouch, and his pickins were hardly slim.
Now here comes the analogy. Sarah Palin, a smart, personable public figure with some level of achievement to recommend her. Repugnant to liberals, self-evidently, but that's not the point. Also a proven fabricator and clannish loyalty demander, which is also another matter entirely. A relatively obscure arguably credentialed entity- that would be Palin - is recruited, as a ploy, by John McCain (read: his handlers) to fill a slot. The anti-Barack Obama, or the Obama alternative, the conservative version. The "you think you got a hot one, well we got a hot one too" political equivalent of its financial model. Presto, the American Beatles. The Republican Obama as Celebrity.
So I submit one brief sentence to the SJ-R and what do I get? Actually it comes in the form of a report. I don't get the paper and I don't read it online since the homepage went topsy turvy. In fact, I so don't read the paper that free copies for having placed an ad got tossed with the rubber bands still around them. I get, according to my informed source, exclusively negative response to my obviously negative comparison. Someone uses the word "jackal" and I can only imagine who that's supposed to describe.(Strategist/spokesman/flack/mouthpiece/surrogate/apologist Tucker Bounds, perhaps? I can see him on either side of that slur.) Ah, now I get it. Having assumed the throw-away line would be ignored, I learn it has been published as a kind of a set-up, a target, for the community mindset. As humidity sows sluggish thinking so is the embrace of a perceived soulmate forecast by the atmosphere in which she was attacked. A wry comment, which may or may not have elicited appreciative nods; if it did and those people wrote to acknowledge it, why all the editor has to do is ignore them. While I, a non-subscriber, will never read my own letter in print.
Mom says consider the audience. Don't waste the joke on those who won't get it. But Mom, this is my neighborhood.
Or, if you prefer, we could call Sarah Palin McCain's Pygmalion. Or a caricature of a Manchurian candidate. The fact remains: Obama/The Beatles created themselves.