GranolaBox

Remember Tonya Harding? She was the ever-so-talented figure skater who got her boyfriend to hire a guy named Jeff Giloolie to whack the kneecap of her arch enemy Nancy Kerrigan with a pipe. Tonya Harding was then allowed to continue in the competition, but ended up being a national disgrace. Since then she’s taken stabs at professional wrestling and hardcore porn.

I love it when our language generates verbs named after people. For example, no man feels comfortable at the thought of being “Lorena’d” or “Bobbitted.” Now, thanks to Tonya Harding, very few people would enjoy being “Gilloolied,” but, deep down in our heart of hearts we can all think of a few people who we’d like to “Gilloolie.”

I thought of all this when trying to find some kind of historical comparison for Sarah Palin in light of the released ethics report from the Alaska Attorney General’s office. You know….the one the McCain campaign has tried so desperately to stop?

The mistake the McPalinites made was trying to tell Alaska’s state government what it could and could not do. The ethics panel consisted of 8 Republicans and 4 Democrat. The McPalin team of lawyer’s tried desperately to stop the investigation and, failing that, have the report not released until November 4.

In short, the McPalin team tried to Gilloolie the Alaska State legislature, and failed miserably. The Republican party’s own spin-control team was derailed by a (dare I use the word?) “maverick” State Attorney General’s office.

Now let’s explore the parallels between Sarah Palin and Tonya Harding.

First, there’s the pit bull in lipstick card. Some people might actually have had a bit more respect for Tonya Harding if she’d tried to the pit bull in lipstick schtick. At least her publicists could have salvaged a little bit of their client’s self-respect.

There’s also the way Todd (The Snowmobile Guy) Palin tried so valiantly to take the bullet for his beloved Sarah the same way that Harding’s boyfriend arranged for Giloolie to “do the deed.” One wonders though, whether the two men were actually trying to take the bullets, or whether they were pushed in front of them. Thankfully, it didn’t work in either case.

Tonya Harding has had her fifteen minutes of ill-timed fame and so has Sarah Palin. Admittedly, Sarah Palin’s a bit classier than Tonya Harding, and the stakes were a hell of a lot higher. Tonya Harding ventured into the nearest den of public inequity she could find by dabbling in the lowest forms of proletarian entertainment. Sarah Palin deserves better… maybe a reality show or a regular 11:00 pm stint on some Christian Shopping network.

Can you imagine this viscious self-described pit bull in lipstick anywhere near the controls of our foreign policy apparatus? We’d be internationally “gilloolied” in no time. I can’t believe McCain’s introduced her to some of our allies. That would be like taking a hooker with a heart of gold home to meet Mummie. It’s probably why John’s never took Cindy to meet his adoptive parent’s, the Reagans.

Filed under: Politics on October 11th, 2008