Faux-thenticity.

Pssst. Want to know something? I heard directly from someone in the know here that Sarah Palin’s trademark eyeglasses are not actually prescription but just for show. Yep, the specs are a prop, a sham, an accessory – in other words, FAKE. I wasn’t all that surprised; it’s just the kind of little lie I would expect a politician to use to curry a favorable public image.

And yet, today, while engaging in my current favorite activity – clicking fiendishly on link after link about the upcoming election until my eyeballs rupture – I happened upon this blog supporting Sarah Palin. Here is the blogger’s logic as to why Sarah would make a fab President, in a nutshell (emphasis on NUT):

Authenticity

According to this awestruck fan, Palin has that indefinable quality known as “authenticity”; she’s warm, genuine, and above all, not too smart or educated for her own good or ours. In the blogger’s words, she’s someone that “We the People can relate to!” (For instance, she leaves prepositions at the end of sentences, just like us!) It doesn’t hurt that she comes in a pretty package, either, as can be seen from some of the admiring comments accompanying her photos. There’s more: check out the link to an article on a British website claiming Sarah is the Princess American Di. And finally, the crowning glory of her credentials: “she is not a Lawyer!”

*insert mandatory shark-related lawyer joke here*

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. I’m a lawyer, and you know what I do for a living? I help old people, the most vulnerable and unprotected of our society. Sometimes, because they are too frail or frightened to drive to my office, I go to their houses, where I pick up their newspaper or feed their cat or eat things I never knew about like ox-tail soup, which no Hindu person should ever consume, so I can hear about their legal problems – their husband’s mental deterioration from Alzheimer’s, their son taking money out of their bank account, the mortgage they can no longer pay, the seemingly inevitable nursing home placement – and hopefully try to make it all better.

And for THAT – for being someone who spent NINETEEN YEARS of her life bothering to get an education in the hopes of making this a better world, my “elite” profession is maligned and scoffed at by some of the most curmudgeonly, mean-spirited, narrow-minded people imaginable. I’m too educated, too brown, too progressive; I’m a threat, a scourge, an affliction.

People like me, the oldest child of immigrant parents, TOO educated? I could go to school for the rest of my life and not feel I had learned enough about all the things I’d like to know. Theology, philosophy, psychology… I wouldn’t mind understanding organic chemistry either; all I ever managed to do was make jewelry out of my plastic molecule set.

And yet there are all these people out there who have NO intellectual curiousity or desire to know more about the world, and these people somehow consider themselves not only to know enough, but enough to RUN THE COUNTRY. Because Sarah Palin is ‘just like them”, and apparently she knows enough to be President. Here’s how one proud Sarah supporter described it: Sarah represents The People because there are way more parents of pregnant teenagers than parents of children with Harvard degrees.

That is sad on so many levels it would give Einstein a migraine thinking about it. My father begged and pleaded for me to apply to Harvard; why else did he come to this country with nothing but the clothes on his back, weighing 84 pounds, swimming and walking to get here from India, and work his fingers to the bone? At the time I refused to apply; I wanted to go to college outside of Boston. That I WOULD go to college, though, was never in question. Is that something to scorn in this new era of The People?

In fact, the whole attitude is really a remarkable display of overinflated self-esteem. I read about a study showing the more incompetent someone was as judged by their peers, the more likely that person was to view themselves as highly competent. In other words, one of the main traits of incompetent people is lack of judgment as to their own incompentency.

Well, the whole “dumb is the new smart” thing is getting really old and tired, folks. Want some plain talk? Here you go: wake up and smell the dog shit, as We the People say in Alaska. Sarah Palin is not “authentic”, any more than Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or any politician is “authentic.” Check it out: “authenticity” can be bought, for a price; it’s a marketing tool, for fuck’s sake.

What Palin IS doing is feeding an enormous desire of certain folks in this country to feel somehow in control in a time when the world appears to be spiraling out of our control. By putting someone “like us” in the White House, we’d be taking back our government! Showing them who’s boss! Rah rah rah. Meanwhile, she’s sold Alaskans down the river, leaving the McCain people to rampage and wreak further havoc in the mess of subpoenas and investigations she’s left us.

Just as lofty speech and an aristocratic pedigree isn’t a fool-proof indication of intelligence, neither is plain talk and a folksy manner a sure sign of being “one of us”. As I recall, people lauded the current White House occupant for his plain speech and down-to-earth manner. Too bad it turned out that he was really just dumb as a block of ice. Maybe dumber.

Politicians of all people should be judged on their merit, not on their ability to appear to have merit. And if Americans can’t see that, maybe it’s time for some new prescription glasses.