Sarah And Carrie's Excellent Adventure

The future of the GOP? Be my guest.

Last night on Larry King Live, numbskull beauty queen Carrie Prejean made a total ass of herself. See it with your own eyes:

I won’t really remark on the obvious, other than to say that clearly Prejean is incapable of deflecting even softball questions from Larry King. I mean, Larry King for crying out loud! “Why did you settle?” is a very easy question to answer and can be done without breaching the terms of the settlement itself. A typical answer would go something like this: “Well, Larry, I had just been through a lot, and I felt that the best thing to do was to move on as soon as possible. The whole ordeal was weighing heavily on my family and me, and I just needed to get on with my life.” End of answer. Instead, she turned an extremely innocuous question into a personal affront designed to provoke her into violating the settlement. King was clearly in genuine shock that someone would accuse him of asking tough or inappropriate questions because that’s not what he does.

During the interview Prejean said that her “personal hero,” is Sarah Palin, which is actually very appropriate, and not just because Palin was also a beauty pageant contestant. In each case, we are dealing a woman who was basically thrust upon the national scene, given an inordinate amount of attention by the media, and lionized by the right wing as an upstanding representative of the conservative cause despite the lack of any depth whatsoever.

Take Palin. Unconscionably, last August this woman was selected by John McCain to be his running mate. And what were her notable qualifications? Six years as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, which has a population that could be squeezed into the bleachers at Fenway Park; and two and a half years as the governor of said state—one of the least populous in the Union. Having said that, this relatively weak political résumé did not have to be cause for concern, since Palin would have plenty of time to convince the American people that she was ready, willing, and able to be Vice President, and President if necessary.

Of course, this did not happen. In fact, the exact opposite of this happened. Rather than prove herself to be ready, willing, able, Palin engineered a two month-long media train-wreck, and the only thing she ended up proving was that McCain had a very lax vetting process for VP hopefuls. Virtually every interview was an utter disaster, with Palin showing that she didn’t know anything at all about anything at all. Perhaps this lack of depth and knowledge had something to do with the whirlwind college tour she took in the 1980s. Little reported by the media was the fact that Palin went to no less than four colleges in five and a half years.

Palin’s collegiate career began in the one state younger than Alaska, where she attended Hawaii Pacific University in the business administration program. She started in the fall of 1982. Next she headed to North Idaho College, a two-year institution, where she was a general studies major for two more semesters, spring and fall of 1983. Although she never received a degree there, she received the school's Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award this past June.

In the fall of 1984, she transferred to the University of Idaho, where she majored in journalism with an emphasis in broadcast news. She stayed until the spring 1985.

The next fall, Palin headed back to Alaska to attend Matanuska-Susitna College, just 14 miles from her hometown, Wasilla.

After one semester, she returned to the University of Idaho, which she attended for three more semesters—spring 1986, fall 1986, and spring 1987. She (at last!) graduated with a degree in journalism…

There are also some reports that she attended the University of Hawaii at Hilo for a couple of weeks just after her high school graduation, but there seems to be no record of her enrollment.

Now, I really don’t care where political candidates go to college, as long as it’s an accredited university and not some two-bit, shit-kicking Bible college in the Midwest. But why so many transfers? This is something that the mainstream media—for all the allegations against it of being anti-Palin—never pressed her on. This needs to be addressed. It is not normal to bounce from college to college as she did. What could possibly account for all this moving around? I honestly have no idea. Did she have issues adjusting? Were they psychological in nature? Was it something different entirely? I’m not saying the reasons are dubious by any means, but Palin needs to explain why she went from college to college. And mind you, we’re not talking about one transfer, not two, but four transfers here. Why?

Despite losing the election, Palin has not gone away. In fact, she gets more media attention than John McCain, who unlike Palin, has stayed in office. By resigning the governorship in the middle of her term this summer, Palin continued her history of quitting. In addition to four colleges, and the governorship, Palin also quit the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2004 after less than a year on the board.

This is not the résumé or behavior of a future President of the United States. And yet, the Right has anointed this woman as the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. The plain fact that no Republican wants to acknowledge, is that if Sarah Palin were ugly or even average-looking, she’d still be wallowing in obscurity in Alaska somewhere, overlooked by John McCain, by the media, and by extension the American public. I don’t blame Palin for not knowing anything. Ignorance is her prerogative. However, she has been railing against the very media which heaps upon her the unwarranted attention that she’s all too happy to bask in. She’s even “written” a book, Going Rogue, which will undoubtedly be a horrid, milquetoast piece of crap containing little that is insightful or interesting.

And so, this is the woman Carrie Prejean says is her “personal hero.” Makes sense. Because like Palin, Prejean was also thrust onto the national scene as a result of happenstance and not accomplishment. Take a look at the pageant answer Prejean gave that made her famous—a villain to the left and a heroine to the right:

Pageant judge Perez Hilton: Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?

Prejean: I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anyone out there but that's how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman.

A confusing answer? Yes. Worth discussing on the next day’s news? No. But since this went down, all kinds of shit has hit the fan. A Prejean sex tape, a Prejean boob-job, and a Prejean book due out this month. And the American public has eaten it up.

Both Palin and Prejean will be the focus of loads of media attention in the coming months and years. However, Prejean has one thing going for her that Palin does not: the lack of any real expectations. Having been the VP nominee of the Republican Party, the perception among many right wingers (and incredulous left wingers) is that the next stop on the Palin Express is the presidential nomination. That expectation is of course ridiculous. Like Prejean, Palin seems void of any depth or worldliness. And while the conservatives of America are not above electing such an obviously under-qualified candidate president (see, George W. Bush), Palin’s star is way too bright at the moment. Like actual massive stars across the universe, Palin is burning up fuel far too quickly to last very long as a shining light for the Republicans. Indeed, it’s only a matter of time before she collapses under the weight of her own stardom, culminating in a fantastic supernova, and, if we’re lucky, maybe even a black hole that will swallow up a doomed Republican Party. Watch out for that event horizon.

- Max