Bill Scannell has suffered many Alaskan indignities for Wonkette since the ridiculous rise of snowbilly grifter Sarah Palin, but Saturday night's rip-off 9/11-palooza was, as he reports, a total fraud.
What. The. Fuck.
It was a classic case of bait and switch. The Palin/Beck NineEleven™ Porno Deathfest was a LIE. They promised masturbatory delights beyond the wildest dreams of even the most ardent exurban WTC pr0n junkie. Instead, the close to 4,000 attendees were served up something far more profitable in the long term to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin: a Messiah myth.
This white, aged crowd thirsting for the Word was treated to the sights and sounds of Glenn the Baptist appearing in Alaska and singing out "Prepare Ye the Way of the Palin" -- just like in the revised Mormon Jesus version of Godspell .
The evening began with a feedbag full of word salad tossed by none other than the Goddess of Grift herself, Sarah Palin. She was positively exuberant with her "Don'tcha love yer freedom?" and "Veterans, raise your hands!" and the crowd cheering along with her until that little catwheel in her head clicked over and she thought, "Willikers, it's NineEleven," and so in a weirdo transition reminiscent of bad local news, she dropped her voice an octave and softly said, "Err ... such a solemn day ... moment of silence ... wakka wakka."
After the requisite pause, she reminded the congregation (for the atmosphere had taken the air of a Cash-Bar Revival) that "Glenn Beck will teach us to keep our freedom" and "Glenn chose Alaska to celebrate NineEleven" and "we'd be nothing without Fox News."
She also related that one of the sons that emerged from her vagina many decades ago has a tattoo of the Statue of Liberty on one of his biceps; and that the Statue was a warning gift telling us that we need to stay different (white trash) and not become a brutal leftist socialist regime (educated people with all their teeth). After quoting Reagan and talking about how she's proud to be A’merkin, "shoot, proud of A’merka's finest" (amen), she introduced Beck, a "man whose message is one of faith, hope, and charity."
For the next 20 minutes, Beck and Palin did their shtick, chastely fondling the aura of one another's genitals and bantering on about Alaska and how Grifter Girl has caribou blood under her salon fingernails and the Spirit of Alaska must renew A'murka until finally, FINALLY they got to The Point. Glenn Beck announced that he will not run for public office while Sarah Palin thrice refused (hear that Christian dog whistle?) to say whether or not she would run for President in 2012.
Oops! They forgot it was NineEleven, again! They'd rather be talking about 8/28, when a half million patriots were on the Mall in DC riding Hoveround Scooters in unison. So just before the mandatory 20-minute booze break, they asked each other where they were on NineEleven. In Wasilla, sleeping. In Tampa, shaving. Bye for now Sarah: booze break.
Sweet Mormon Angel Moroni, I needed a drink, but all I got with was a photo of Astroturf Joe Miller looking worse for wear, his naturally red eyes barely offset by the demilitarized zone that separates his chest hair from his facial growth. I also ran into a parent who has a kid in the same school class as my son. When I asked him why the parent was there, he replied, "This is who we are."
And we're back to our seats.
Glenn Beck, eyes a-rollin', says the U.S. Constitution has a secret code embedded within, and that the phrase "We the People" is itself code -- the William S. Burroughs theory of "Word as Virus." It's The Government vs.You , and You are the A'merkin Way. And then Beck slips into Glenn the Baptist mode, again: "It is not my job to lead, it is my job is to remind you who you are."
And who are they, this audience of old people in a shoddy convention hall drinking $5 draft beer from plastic cups on a Saturday night? Stupid? Gullible? Scared? Never to see another full-time job with benefits, and now with a fresh $100 charge on the nearly maxed-out Discover card for a ticket to this third-rate tent revival?
That is who they are. And they need Sarah Palin because she truly understands that all of this -- whatever they do or mostly don't, is "for the children." (Or, when the children reach bombing age, "for the troops.")
Sarah Palin has, like nearly every other dumb animal on Earth that lives to reproduction age, pooped out a baby or ten. And this makes her uniquely able to lead the way. "Women are leading the way because they don't avoid the truth like men," says this habitual liar and serial deceiver.
"We will have found our North Star," he says, referencing Palin's own grandiose code name used at luxury hotels across the Lower 48, "if we only have a firm reliance in Divine Providence."
And don't forget to tithe (to both Palin and her lackey God), because if you don't give it away, "they" will spend it for you.
Glenn Beck may have made seventeen separate references to his own insanity during the course of the evening, but he is no nut job. This wily huckster, this greasy purveyor of shallow dreams and crocodile tears, set the pick tonight on what will be his biggest score yet: a years-long never-consummated and congenitally impotent dry hump on a ghost candidate. For at least another several years, we will all have to watch these two grifters roll.
Bill Scannell is a "simple country journalist and P.R. man" in the strip-mall suburban wildlands of Alaska.
It appears that if either of the Twin Pillars of New Moralism attain high public office we may avoid the <i>auto da f&eacute;</i> by cash payment, just as in the days of old.
If Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wasn&#039;t already dead, this would&#039;ve killed him.