The other politics

I keep posting a lot about Sarah Palin. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with her—not stalker-obsessed, it's not a sex/sexism thing. It's more like the proverbial train wreck: I can't look away because it's just so painfully awful. So I get this constant sort of Schadenfreude out of watching her fumble through stock phrases when answering questions, or when hearing that McCain had to explain away a statement she made about Pakistan that matched exactly the policy of Obama's that McCain criticized, or reading Fareed Zakaria writing about how terrible she is, or reading Kathleen Parker in the National Review writing about how terrible she is....

But here, I think, is the thing. I stare at this because, meanwhile, you've got terrorism directed at a mosque in Ohio, and you've got practically no one carrying the story nationally, and you've got the non-profit apolitical Clarion Fund just coincidentally distributing its DVD Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West in swing states last week, including Ohio...and it's the other kind of train wreck. The utterly sickening kind, the kind I just can't watch because it turns my stomach and makes me angry and sickened and I know that ignoring it won't make it go away but I just can't deal with it. It's much, much easier to watch Tina Fey's impression of Sarah Palin.