“DOIN’ WHAT COMES NATURALLY…”

“DOIN’ WHAT COMES NATURALLY…”

2/17/10

GOP Braintrust Sarah Palin is complaining about Fox TV’s “Family Guy”’s below the belt attack on her family. In an episode of this particular manifestation of the imbecility that permeates prime time television, a character meets another character with Down Syndrome. The character with Down Syndrome states that “My dad’s an accountant, and my mom is the former governor of Alaska.” Palin calls the episode “another kick in the gut.” Agreed. Palin’s daughter Bristol calls the show’s writers “heartless jerks.” Also agreed, only much more strongly. This was a kick in the gut delivered by heartless jerks to the Palin family and to all people with Down Syndrome and their families.

But, beyond the obvious, two things are salient in Palin’s reaction. First, the Facebook post in which Palin justifiably excoriated Fox was entitled “Fox Hollywood—What a Disappointment.” A “disappointment”? What was Alaska’s first quitter expecting from Fox? Opera? Ballet? An intelligent discussion of the relative merits of Keynesian and monetarist economics? How can Fox, a purveyor of pure, unadulterated porcine excrement, possibly disappoint anyone? For that matter, how can any network, all of which are purveyors of the intellectual equivalent of undigested, yet excreted, cotton candy, disappoint in its prime time fare? Just about everything on television is pure crap. To call prime time network television, and especially the slop on Fox, sophomoric is an insult to second year high school students. That Sarah Palin is “disappointed” when American broadcast television, and especially Fox, does what it does, and what the “most sophisticated, best educated generation in American history” apparently demands, says a lot more about Sarah Palin’s level of intellectual curiosity and cultural literacy than it does about Fox or about network television. In this sense, one can hardly doubt Ms. Palin’s claim that she can identify with her electorate.

Second, Sarah Palin works for Fox. She has a high paying gig in which she spouts talking points she just recently learned how to pronounce. Will her employer’s shameful treatment of her child and others like him cause this woman, who has built much of her political career on her concern for her family, to quit? Didn’t think so.