HUM 341-E1WW
Vivian Martin
Sarah Palin A Pop Culture Phenomenon
Sarah Palin is a pop culture American politician, author, speaker, political news commentator, and first woman governor of Alaska. She has been a subject of interest since 2009, when she was Senator John McCain’s presidential running mate.
Sarah Palin is somewhat of a phenomenon some might say, in the fact that she remains the center of the GOP Political Party, sparks people’s interest, creates controversy, from some of her comments, and has a huge following of the people who believe in her, and criticize the media of being unfair in their judgment and comments about her, making her somewhat of a celebrity. Others say “Not So Much”, when it comes to her meeting their standards and viewpoints.
Sarah Palin, for some represents our culture’s need to believe and identify with something or someone who shares the same ideas and viewpoints as they do, and for those individuals, she represents them. She is also popular with her own Republican Party even though some of them do not necessarily agree with everything she comments on, nevertheless they uphold her and she is favored by some Democrats as well.
The remarks of the media of her, at times depicts, the negative side of our culture and how we concentrate and blow other’s lives out of proportion and the need to have a “Truman Show” ritual display of everyone and anyone’s life at any given time and no one, it seems, is immune.
In a recent Politics Daily article by Matt Lewis, titled “In Blaming Sarah Palin, We Give Our Violent Culture A Pass”, (January 10, 2011). The columnist stated that we are a culture that fetishizes on violence and that it can be seen everywhere, in our language, our sports, entertainment and political rhetoric. He stated that the underlying violence is more important than the political rhetoric.
This statement was made in reference to the media buzz that Sarah Palin and the Tea Party was indirectly responsible for the Arizona shooting of Congress Woman Gifford and 19 others.
The columnist went on to say that, “Political speech is and ought to remain, the most protected speech and that the shooting was an attack on democracy itself and Sarah Palin had no connection to or responsibility for it.
The point that I agree with most regarding this article is that the columnist states that a person has to decide if they want their life’s work to be a force for good or evil in this world, and that “Culture is in fact more important than politics when we are searching for a reason to explain such madness” and I myself would add that searching for a reason for violent actions in our society should not involve unwarranted blame of others.
References
Lewis, M. (2010) “In Blaming Sarah Palin, We Give Our Violent Culture A Pass”,
Retrieved January 20, 2011, from Politics Daily,
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