Sarah Palin and Oprah Winfrey are the two most talented female populists in America today. Theirs was a talk-show marriage made in ratings heaven.
"Do you think you were naive?" Oprah said yesterday. She was asking why Sarah was surprised by the media interest in daughter Bristol's pregnancy.
"I was naive to think that the media would leave my kids alone," said Sarah. She's got disingenuousness down pat. Although Barack Obama's family was off limits, " I wasn't given that privilege to protect my kids." She had no idea how "some of the haters" would "delve into our personal life."
You gotta love her. She never doubted for a second that she could do the job. But she was an innocent among the wolves. That perky, snotty Katie Couric. John McCain's evil campaign aides. Levi!!!
Oprah endorsed Barack Obama. Apart from that, Sarah and Oprah are practically soul sisters. Oprah became the world's biggest TV star because she knows how to connect with women in Grand Rapids who shop at Wal-Mart and are deeply suspicious of the political elites. They like her because she's strong and grounded, and had problems in her own life and people who've let her down. That's why they like Sarah, too.
Sarah's book Going Rogue, released today, isn't about boring old policy stuff. It's about getting even. It's about all those horrible people on the election campaign tour who told her what to say and not to say and how to dress and even what kind of diet she should be on. She went on Katie Couric because they told her Katie was depressed and had low self-esteem, and "it was supposed to be a light-hearted, kind of fun working-mom" piece. Then Katie ambushed her by asking her what kind of magazines she read and, boy, did she get mad, because Katie tried to make her sound like a hick, and then they strung together all the worst bits.
None of it was her fault. Her only mistake was taking bad advice.
In Vanity Fair, Levi Johnston, who fathered a child with Bristol, said Sarah's a lousy mother and hardly ever sees the kids, and that she and her husband, Todd, practically lived apart. On Oprah, Sarah spoke more in sorrow than in anger. It was "kind of heartbreaking to see the road he's on right now," she said, and muttered something about "aspiring porn." We saw lots of video of Sarah at home with the kids, especially that cute little Down syndrome one that her family wielded like a prop on the campaign tour. She is, too, a good mother!
You've got to admire Sarah Palin, because she's able to lie with a perfectly straight face. Did ambition play any role in her vice-presidential bid? Absolutely not! "Was it ambition? I didn't think so," she (or rather her ghostwriter) wrote. "Ambition drives; purpose beckons." And when she dumped her job as Alaska governor, so she could go on the speaking circuit and produce a book that got a $1.25-million advance and go on Oprah, that wasn't about ambition, either. It was about how she could most effectively serve the nation.
It's hard to parody Sarah Palin, because she's so absurd. But she's no joke. She gives the Republican elites an acute case of heartburn, especially the reformers who desperately hope the party can be wrenched back to its senses.
Fortunately for the future of civilization, polls say that even most Republicans think she's not qualified to be president. But no one can afford to ignore what she represents. According to a new poll, 59 per cent of Republicans say she shares the values of most Republican voters. When she rants about "death panels" or explains why she believes in creationism, an awful lot of Americans agree.
Oprah, of course, doesn't care about any of that stuff. What she cares about is ratings. And that's why the two of them were a match made in heaven.
Today's guest is Jenna Jameson, the most famous porn star in the world.