Sarah Palin just learned a valuable lesson about starting your own web channel: make sure to buy up any similar domain names, such as, say, one that simply puts "The" in front of your URL.
On Tuesday, after taking a look at Palin's new project, SarahPalinChannel.com, "a safe space where like-minded folks can hear things they already agree with from someone whose opinion they already know," Colbert gleefully announced that he had purchased TheSarahPalinChannel.com earlier that day.
So far, the channel is sparse on content, featuring only a photo of the former half-term Alaska governor-turned-grifter and a description: "The only Sarah Palin Channel on the internet with a definite article in the address!"
The page also links to an older segment of "The Report" in which Colbert roundly mocked Palin's "ringin' those bells" description of Paul Revere's famous ride.
Perhaps most importantly, TheSarahPalinChannel.com is free, whereas SarahPalinChannel.com costs a whopping $9.95 a month. But, as Colbert explained, Palin's channel is worth every penny: "Sure, that's more than Netflix, but it's just as good as 'House Of Cards,' with even more threatening monologues into camera."
"The Colbert Report" airs Monday through Thursday at 11:30 p.m. ET on Comedy Central.
@Debra Law,
You're right. What was I thinking (well, not expecting much after the first spurts), but I forgot the value of such a comedy source. Also, future tinfoil shares are apt to be going up, and up some more.
Wow. Why won't she just go away. I guess she believes there are enough wackos out there that believes in her never ending bull. For her, unfiltered means she can lie about anything and everything.
@Real Music,
Quote:Why won't she just go away.
I think she needs the money RM, and has run out of options. Think Paula Deen.
@CoastalRat,
CoastalRat wrote:
I wouldn't pay to subscribe to ANY politician's online channel. Good heavens, why would I want to pay to listen to their propaganda/lies?
I give it a few months before it bombs out.
I don't think she can be characterized as a "politician" anymore. She doesn't hold office nor is she vying to run for any office. She appears very self involved and unable to tolerate public scrutiny that inevitably falls upon a political candidate. From her history thus far, it may be reasonable to infer that she wants to be a rich celebrity who is loved and admired by drooling idiots. So long as maintaining an online channel feeds both her pocketbook and her sense of self-worth, I think it will continue ...
@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Quote:[Palin] is disappearing of the national radar
. . . . She's following a successful model. . . .
. . . . She is a paradigmatic representative of a very old right wing version of "populism" that is marked by anti-intellectualism, rejection of science and empiricism, faith in the common man's superiority over the expert and educated "elites" ("common sense" falls off her tongue in nearly every speech or comment) and the over-arching sensibility that she and her followers are being regularly victimized. For a significant portion of the American population, it is precisely these features of Palin's person, ideology and rhetoric which establish her credibility.
This is so very true and so very sad.
@ossobuco,
ossobuco wrote:
You're right. What was I thinking (well, not expecting much after the first spurts), but I forgot the value of such a comedy source. Also, future tinfoil shares are apt to be going up, and up some more.
She's a gift that keeps on giving. I still laugh when I think of Tina Fey's portrayal of the vice-presidential wannabe.
@Real Music,
Real Music wrote:
Wow. Why won't she just go away. I guess she believes there are enough wackos out there that believes in her never ending bull. For her, unfiltered means she can lie about anything and everything.
But . . . but, if she thinks something in her head and it feels like the truth in her gut, then how can we characterize her truthiness as a lie?
From Wiki:
Truthiness
Quote:Truthiness is a quality characterizing a "truth" that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.[1]
American television comedian Stephen Colbert coined the word in this meaning[2] as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd" during the pilot episode of his political satire program The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005.
....
Colbert chose the word truthiness just moments before taping the premiere episode of The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005, after deciding that the originally scripted word – "truth" – was not absolutely ridiculous enough. "We're not talking about truth, we're talking about something that seems like truth – the truth we want to exist", he explained.[11][12] He introduced his definition in the first segment of the episode, saying: "Now I'm sure some of the 'word police', the 'wordinistas' over at Webster's are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word'. Well, anybody who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true. Or what did or didn't happen."[4]
....
[Colbert] "Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word…
It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty."
....
In 2014, the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court co-authored by humorist P.J. O'Rourke and legal scholar Ilya Shapiro in the Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus free speech case. The brief included an extended discussion of the role of truthiness in American political discourse:[60]
Quote:In modern times, "truthiness" — a "truth" asserted "from the gut" or because it "feels right," without regard to evidence or logic — is also a key part of political discourse. It is difficult to imagine life without it, and our political discourse is weakened by Orwellian laws that try to prohibit it.
After all, where would we be without the knowledge that Democrats are pinko-communist flag-burners who want to tax churches and use the money to fund abortions so they can use the fetal stem cells to create pot-smoking lesbian ATF agents who will steal all the guns and invite the UN to take over America? Voters have to decide whether we'd be better off electing Republicans, those hateful, assault-weapon-wielding maniacs who believe that George Washington and Jesus Christ incorporated the nation after a Gettysburg reenactment and that the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that it isn't administered quickly enough to secular-humanist professors of Chicano studies.
Maybe Colbert got it wrong; maybe "truthiness" isn't tearing our country apart ... maybe its the drooling idiots who embrace truthiness rather than facts (and logical discourse) who are responsible for tearing our country apart. We need to spend more public money on public education .... but the politicians who are in charge of our public budgets don't really want an educated electorate ....
@Debra Law,
Yesterday, I watched the much hyped SYFY movie (Sharknado 2 the Second One). This movie was PURPOSELY full of over the top disbeliefs scenes. That's the reason it was such a big hit. People new what they were getting when they watched this movie. The more disbelief and unreal the scenes were, the more fun and enjoyment you had watching the movie. The movie is meant to be a joke. This is fine for movie that was made purely for fun, but not for a politician. If Sarah Palin were to say that all of the scenes in the movie Sharknado were real because she truly believes that in her mind, would you perceive her to be a liar or dumb? NO ACTUAL EVIDENCE to back up her claim that Sharknado is completely real. Well, when Sarah Palin makes political statements and comments, she reminds me of the movie Sharknado. Over the top disbeliefs, with no ACTUAL EVIDENCE to back up her bull.
Poor Sarah, America's male-dominated politics squeezed her out and now she's having to launch her own channel to cut through their lies about her.
America's women stabbed her in the back too by refusing to put her in the White House by voting for her and Johnny McCain.
What a great landmark victory that'd have been for women everywhere; from a torture cell to the White House!
@Real Music,
Real Music wrote:
Yesterday, I watched the much hyped SYFY movie (Sharknado 2 the Second One). This movie was PURPOSELY full of over the top disbeliefs scenes. That's the reason it was such a big hit. People new what they were getting when they watched this movie. The more disbelief and unreal the scenes were, the more fun and enjoyment you had watching the movie. The movie is meant to be a joke. This is fine for movie that was made purely for fun, but not for a politician. If Sarah Palin were to say that all of the scenes in the movie Sharknado were real because she truly believes that in her mind, would you perceive her to be a liar or dumb? NO ACTUAL EVIDENCE to back up her claim that Sharknado is completely real. Well, when Sarah Palin makes political statements and comments, she reminds me of the movie Sharknado. Over the top disbeliefs, with no ACTUAL EVIDENCE to back up her bull.
Ha Ha. I was making a joke about "truthiness", which has nothing to do with truth.
@Debra Law,
Can't get to this right now but in a bit I'll make a defense (kinda) for truthiness, Sarah Palin and movement conservatism, three phenomena which I deeply despise. An attempt, really, to try and get at what is going on here (past the con aspect I noted earlier that runs through movement conservatism).
Sarah would make a great President, she's made of the same stuff as 'Iron Lady' Maggie Thatcher..
@Romeo Fabulini,
You mean, Thatcher too was made of ****?
When the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano put to sea to attack the British Falklands task force, Maggie's response was immediate--
"It's threatening our boys. Sink it"..
@Romeo Fabulini,
Quote:Sarah Palin equals Maggie Thatcher
No question that Sarah could sit down for an extended conversation over dinner and sherry with Isaiah Berlin. I'm sure you'll agree but tell me why.
Apparently, Mr Fabulini has no frigging idea as regards what I just wrote which comes as no surprise at all.
So let me try this thing of a "defense" of movement conservatism and of Sarah Palin.
Earlier, Deborah referenced Colbert's wonderful term "truthiness". Let's define that as an attempt to give the impression that what you are saying is truthful or accurate or honest through the use of tropes which suggest research, consensus of experts, self-evident axioms, sincerity, etc. The actual truth of the statement or assertion (its correspondence to real states of affairs) and its epistemic grounding are completely irrelevant - the thing merely has to arrive dressed up like it is truthful and sound. The precedents for this sort of thing are propaganda and marketing; "More doctors smoke Salem cigarettes".
But then there's the very interesting question of why people, often large populations of them, get suckered so easily by these tricks. Selling cars or cigarettes is one thing but selling a particular understanding of the "truths" about your country and culture is my focus here. And I think we get a really valuable insight via Richard Hofstadter's definition of myth...
"By myth..., I do not mean an idea that is simply false, but rather one that so effectively embodies men's values that it profoundly influences their way of perceiving reality and hence their behavior."
In this light, consider the truthy claims re "American exceptionalism" or "America is a Christian nation" or "homosexuality is unnatural" or "most reporters vote Democrat" or "liberal elites have corrupted the soul of America and turned self-sufficiency into entitlement-hunger", etc. It's really not so difficult to understand how such myth structures resonate with large segments of the American population. Movement conservatism (the marketing of it) has been built this way.
Sarah, as I suggested earlier, is a paradigmatic example of a very old aspect to American culture - anti-elite, anti-expert, anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-empiricism and anti-reason. "Common sense" is her lodestone buttressed by a pretty much wholesale rejection of Enlightenment notions and values.
But there's something in that for which one can have some sympathy. It seems to me a fundamental grounding of what we could call "the American project" from its founding was a rejection and casting off of the class and power and epistemological structures that held sway in the places settlers came from. Early Christian movements provide a very clear example, where the trappings and traditions and protocols of worship and a person's relationships to the divine were rejected and replaced by an independent-minded "I will find God through my own relationship with Him" set of notions.
And there's something noble in this, I think. We can pretty easily see how and why this all came about and we can certainly, now, see the seriously negative consequences of it, but we probably also ought to understand the gravitational pull of this mindset.
Perhaps some people don't like Sarah because they just don't like girls..
What a great President she'd make, here she visits USS Stennis in 2009-
SARAH- "I want to hit that big red button to launch an airstrike against a moose herd on the Alaskan coast"
CAPTAIN- "Why ma'am?"
SARAH- "Because they might be commie mooses that have swum across the Bering Strait from Russia"
