Sarah ("GILF") Palin: Pinochet in Pumps

If Matt Taibi isn't the wittiest writer trolling the political seas, he's in the top "zero point zero zero zero five" percent of them. In this week's cover story in the 'Stone, he flenses the carcass of the McCain campaign right down to the mascara on the viscera.:

McCain's shtick wasn't exactly that, but it was close. He was a war hero who married an heiress to a beer distributorship and had been in the Senate since the Mesozoic Era. His greatest strength as a politician had up until this year been his ability to "reach across the aisle," a quality that in the modern Republican Party was normally about as popular as open bisexuality. His presence atop the ticket this year was evidence of profound anxiety within the party about its chances in the general election. After eight disastrous years of Bush, they thought they had lost the middle — so they picked a middling guy to get it back.

Which made sense, right up until the moment when they stuck him with Pinochet in heels for a running mate. Sarah Palin would have been a brilliant choice as a presidential nominee — and she will be, in 2012, when she leads the inevitable Republican counter-revolution against Obama's presidency. She's a classic divide-and-conquer politician, an unapologetic Witch Hunter and True Believer with a gift for whipping up the mob against the infidel. In a way that even George W. Bush never was, she is Karl Rove's wet dream, the Osama bin Laden of soccer moms, crusading against germs, communism, atheism and other such unclean elements strictly banned by American law.

Thar she bloats!

Well to consider in this context too, the warning of another of the shrewdest commentators on the passing debacle, Naomi Wolf, who espied Palin during the campaign for the Murikkkan Right's aspiring Evita. She's not going to go easily away, that one. She could prosper under a rubric of "Even retards deserve a voice!"

I concur with Silent Ppatriot on the C&L blog that you owe it to yourself to read the whole Taibbi piece. Perhaps the intro, reeking of schadenfreude, and rollicking with relief will provide a tempting taste:

Election night at the Biltmore in Arizona is a hilariously dismal scene, like a funeral for a family member nobody liked, who died owing everyone money. The rats here are already bailing off the ship with lightning speed, like L.A. Dodgers fans leaving a playoff game to catch the latest episode of Entourage. The exodus, in fact, begins about eight seconds into John McCain's concession speech, which incidentally starts off on the classiest of notes: with the remaining crowd cursing the name of the new president.

"A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama," McCain begins.

"Boooooo!" bellows the crowd. Outside the hotel, a wine-drunk young woman in a fluffy white ball gown probably last worn at a Liberty University frat mixer angrily flings a would-be celebratory pompom she has been clutching into my face. "I can't listen to this shit!" she yells, scooting away.

I peel the plastic pompom bits off my face and stick them in my bag, where they are soon joined by a McCain-Palin "Victory 2008" Election Night T-shirt — bought for gloating purposes at a rapidly plummeting discount. Republican-souvenir prices haven't been this low since Watergate.

By the time McCain finishes his short, commendably gracious speech a few minutes later, almost all the Republican revelers have begun to flee the premises. The few who stick around are trying to suck the last value out of the meals and cocktails they so willingly overpaid for earlier in the night, when there was still a chance they'd end up with something to celebrate. At the hotel exit, a pair of Arizona State students are grumbling about the food.

"We paid, like, 10 bucks for a burger," says 18-year-old Emily Zizzo.

"We were outraged," agrees her 20-year-old friend Dori Jaffess.

I ask them why they think McCain lost. Dori says a big reason is that "a lot of big movie stars came out for Obama." I ask her which ones.

"Um, Puff Daddy?" she says. "Although I don't know if Puff Daddy came out for Obama."

"There's Oprah," adds Emily.

"Yeah, Oprah," says Dor

Yeah, Oprah...That's the ticket...

That's about as close as you're gonna get to the epitome of schadenfreudian snark, that is, right there, folks. Go read the rest...