They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, so I'm guessing Dan Quayle is feeling pretty good about himself these days. Come on now, tell me you didn't notice Sarah Palin does a damn good Dan Quayle. There are inescapable similarities, you know, so it only makes sense. Danny boy always positioned himself as a conservative Republican. Check. When Bush The Elder tapped the obscure senator from Indiana as his running mate in '89, the average voter had never heard of him. Ditto Sarah. Dan became Vice President. Sarah got close. Dan was famous for gaffes and sometimes buffoonish behavior. Need I say more?
There was Sarah, speaking to a crowd at a university fundraiser in California recently, and adroitly tapping her obviously-cavernous knowledge of an icon of Republicanism, Ronald Reagan. After all, what better place to invoke the name of The 'Ol Gipper than before a receptive group of Golden Staters? "This is Reagan country," Sarah practically shouted, "and perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California's Eureka College would become so woven within and interlinked to the Golden State." Huh? It's bad enough she used the phrase "woven within and interlinked." (Maybe she thought she was addressing a knitting convention?) Apparently she gets her information from bad Wikipedia entries, because those who know even a modicum of modern history know that The Great Communicator was born and raised in Illinois; graduated from Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois; then started out as a radio sports announcer down the road in Davenport, Iowa. Any of those places conjure up images of wine country and Rodeo Drive? Apparently the four colleges Sarah attended purchased their history and geography textbooks from the same guys who make Chinese drywall!
So, there she was, in all her glory, poised to wow her audience on the grounds of that hallowed institution of higher learnin', Cal State University - Stanislaus, cleverly working Reagan into her remarks, completely oblivious to the fact that she really knew diddly about our 40th president. I bet if you asked her who John Hinckley, Jr. is, she'd say, "Isn't he the dude who shot John Lennon?"
You know, I used to think (or is it fear?) that there's a legitimate chance enough ignorant Americans are out there to actually get Sarah Palin the Republican nomination for President in 2012. Now, I pray that there are, because one of two things will happen: the electorate will get exactly what it deserves, giving Letterman, Leno, Kimmel, Fallon, Ferguson, et. al., enough material to last a decade, or, Palin the Pretender will once and for all be shown the door, and she'll retreat back to the igloo from whence she came, never to be heard from again. ("Not on my watch!" exclaims Rupert Murdoch.)
Until then, we'll just have to settle in for a steady diet of Quayle-esque quips and quotes from the Queen of the Northern Lights, always reaffirming that now-ubiquitous observation, "only in America," (or Italy). Sarah, darlin', you go, girl!
. . . Wishin' I Was Fishin'
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