Can't Stop Looking!

Sarah Palin needs to just shut up!

I think people are afraid to say that about her because they're afraid that they'll be viewed as sexist. "What?" they're afraid will be said to them. "A woman can't have her say? Because she's a woman she should shut up? You can't take a strong woman standing up and saying what she thinks? Doesn't she have a right to respond to her critics? Do you hate women that much?"

No, I don't hate women that much. That's not why I say Sarah Palin needs to shut up. I say she needs to shut up because...she needs to shut up!

Someone needs to take her aside and tell her that you don't have to do every interview. And you don't have to answer every question. Sometimes it's best to disappear for a while.

And someone needs to tell her the election is over. I read an interview yesterday where she was still harping on William Ayers (Couldn't find the interview today, but it's referenced here), saying that she was still concerned that Obama was "palling around with terrorists." The connection between Obama and Ayers was always tenuous, but two weeks ago it was okay for her to bring it up because that's what you do during an election: you use whatever weapon you can find to try to win. But the battle is over now and she lost, and comments about the President-elect being friends with terrorists are a bad idea. Two weeks ago she was talking about this tall geeky Senator from Illinois. Today she's talking about the most powerful person on the planet, and someone she's going to have to work with if she hopes to further Alaska's interests at the national level.

Also, she's been on pretty much every TV station the last week or so complaining about all of the negative press she's been getting, telling people how she knew Africa was a continent and she never spent GOP money on clothes and she knows who's in NAFTA. But you know what? If she had given NO interviews in the last week, if she'd gone back to Alaska and put her nose in her work and ignored everything, the press would have moved on by now. They have the attention span of three week old beagle.

What she SHOULD have done is disappear for a while, work hard, let the furor settle down, and mount a "comeback" in six months. By then people would have forgotten some of her worst traits, memories of Tina Fey would have faded a bit, and maybe we could all take her seriously again. But no, she had to keep going, keep campaigning, keep talking those long, poorly constructed sentences that resemble a winding road along a seaside cliff.

But do you want know what really perplexes me? Despite all that I've said about wanting her to go away, I can't get enough of her. It's like a train wreck--you don't want to watch but you can't stop looking, either. I don't know what it is, but if I'm flipping channels and there's a picture of her on a station, I'll flip back to see what's being said. It's not that I'm a sadist, and it's not that I've got a secret crush on her. Maybe it is what psychologists talked about this time last week, campaign withdrawal. I'm sad now that the campaign is over, and I don't want it to end. And here, talking on CNN, is someone who doesn't know that it HAS ended.