How Sarah Palin’s Moose Murdering Is Killing America

The Quitter And The Caribou

Sarah Palin killed a moose. Well, to be accurate, Sarah Palin, her father, some other guy, a TV film crew, several rifles, and, after five misses, a sixth shot killed a moose. But really, the American people killed the Caribou.

I know, I know, you’re probably screaming right now, “Not me, I had nothing to do with it!” Well, sorry to say, Dear Reader, you did. Metaphorically, that is, so you’re off the hook, but just a tad.

There are many who enjoy the “sport” of hunting, but watch this highly-edited video below, and tell me where the sport is in this? Three people, several rifles, hushed voices, and a moose standing still atop a hill. That’s not sport, that’s slaughter.

And it’s disgusting.

So is the sport Palin is plying: politics. As Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times Wednesday, “The poor caribou in the Arctic Circle, a cousin to Santa’s reindeer, had to die so Palin could show off her toughness to voters and try to boost ratings on her show that have slipped since its premiere.”

Palin, whose previous slaughter, not counting her own 2008 vice presidential bid, involved advocating the torturous killing of wolves from helicopters, has much to answer for. She, along with the support she’s received from John McCain, the GOP, the Tea Party, and, sadly, so many others, have turned this nation on its ear and we are all the worse for it.

But despite her worship of the “real America,” which, in her mind includes her positions against same-sex marriage and abortion, even Republican voters don’t want a President Palin. Last month, Palin’s unfavorable rating, continuing its upward trend, hit 52%. That’s right, more than half the country views the Quitter from Wasilla as unfavorable. And it gets worse for the soccer mom turned political princess. Only 16% of Republicans would support a Palin run for the presidency. Gallup tells us, “Her 40% favorable rating ties her lowest favorable score, recorded just over a year ago.” Hell, even Barack Obama has a higher favorable rating and a lower unfavorable rating.

So why all the fuss about a moose?

Well, it’s really quite simple. It was a living creature, and Palin had no problem pulling the trigger (well, she did have a problem, but that’s because she’s not as familiar with guns as she pretends,) to snuff out a living animal, for “sport.”

(Palin’s unfamiliarity with guns is as evident as her unfamiliarity with, say, the newspapers and magazines she regularly reads. In the video, she has to ask her father about the rifle, “Hey, Dad, does it kick?” And then she even has to ask her father if she should pull the trigger: “Hey, Dad, should I get him now?” Palin doesn’t even reload her own rifle. How’s that for a Commander in Chief wannabe?)

Maureen Dowd put it this way: “Sarah checked her freezer at home before she flew 600 miles to the Arctic, trying to justify her contention that she needs to hunt to eat. Wasn’t it already stocked with those halibuts she clubbed and gutted in an earlier show?”

Palin is the queen of playing politics, and using defenseless animals (and, sometimes, sadly, the president is included in that category,) as pawns. She is weaving a false blanket of Americana that doesn’t exist, never did exist, and doesn’t represent her or us. She’s like the Ralph Lauren of American politics, creating a heritage that never was, an ancestry we never had, replete with framed photos of (role) models airbrushed on Madison Avenue — only with Palin, they’re from Facebook.

Calling her a “phony pioneer girl,” Aaron Sorkin (you know him as the creator, appropriately, of The West Wing,) told Palin in the Huffington Post, “That was the first moose ever murdered for political gain. You knew there’d be a protest from PETA and you knew that would be an opportunity to hate on some people, you witless bully. What a uniter you’d be — bringing the right together with the far right.”

He’s right.

On Facebook, Palin wrote, “Tonight’s hunting episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska “controversial”?  Really? Unless you’ve never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather couch or  eaten a piece of meat, save your condemnation of tonight’s episode. I  remain proudly intolerant of anti-hunting hypocrisy. :)”

(What president would ever use emoticons?…)

To which Sorkin responds, “You’re right, Sarah, we’ll all just go fuck ourselves now.”

“I’m able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don’t watch snuff films and you make them. You weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I’m able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.”

(P.S. Political activist, law professor, and Internet academic Lawrence Lessig’s response to Sorkin’s response? “Man, I wish I could write like this.”)

Sorkin has it down pat. Day after day after day, Sarah Palin has told the American people to go fuck ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but I’m way over the Quitter from Wasilla telling the American people that if we don’t like her view of the world (not to mention the view from her house,) we can go fuck ourselves.

Maureen Dowd says, “Sarah’s view of America is primitive. You’re either a pointy-headed graduate of Harvard Law School or you’re eviscerating animals for fun, which she presents as somehow more authentic.”

It’s not more authentic.

Neither, Dear Reader, is Sarah Palin.

I said in the beginning, “the American people killed the Caribou.”

Well, we did, by allowing Palin the notoriety and fame that she has taken. And it’s killing America. It’s time to take our country back.