Credit: All Hat No Cattle
“Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic and carnivalesque in a vibrant democratic public culture. We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible. Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.
Sarah Palin is seen as an icon to many people. But why is she an icon? Is it because she was the Governor of Alaska who claimed she could see Russia from her window, or because she was the Vice Presidential candidate who lacked many qualities that Americans would like to see evoked in a candidate and perhaps cost her running mate the race? I believe she has become an icon because of her ditsy personality and lack of knowledge on general topics. The public thrives on these sorts of personalities (Britney Spears, Paris Hilton) and the irony that Palin was a government official just adds to the countless factors in which we can poke fun. I would finally like to relate Palin to the term kitsch in which we define something as aesthetically unpleasant but remains popular because it is viewed as bad taste. Palin will stand the test of time based solely on how others perceive her which is of bad taste.
I first would like to look at this posting about Palin and the way she is portrayed. They show her with this kind of smirk on her face that would make anyone look stupid and or devilish as I believe they are going for, and then to top it off there is bold heading saying GOING ROUGE. With the heading and the smirk together they are trying to say something about her that in my opinion is completely false. Everyone it seems right now is giving this woman a hard time for something, and especially calling her unqualified at what she is going for. I think people are not giving Palin enough credit honestly. She has done a number of things that have benefited Alaska, and honestly she would not be where she is today if she did not know what she was talking about. People can tell when someone is lying and false about what they know, and if you genuinely listen to what Palin has to say, you will find that she does know what she is talking about. Take for example George W. Bush our former president, he wasn’t the brightest of presidents, he could not articulate his sentences well, and I did not think he knew what he was talking about half the time especially if it wern’t for his note card keeping him on track. So if people could trust someone like him, it should be just s easy to give someone a chance like Palin without all the slander and ragging on.
This picture is hilarious. The look on Sarah Palin’s face is classic and captures the essence of her reputation. She is in a position where Americans should praise her and look up to her as an idol, but unfortunately she is just not qualified enough to be in charge of the entire country, or a state for that matter. She is known as the former Miss America queen, which can be very impressive if your running for an election for the next step, which for Palin would be Miss Universe. Beauty Pageant contestants carry a certain aura about them, they walk with a certain swag, they are always smiling, they are very selective about what they do or say in a social setting, and personal appearance is very important to them. It is not everyday that you see a contestant like that run for the presidency. She gave herself a bad name from the beginning when she made comments that were bazaar and lacked insight. This image portrays her as a political representative because she looks almost confused about what is going on, and the text that goes along with it only expands that more by saying she doenst have a clue about politics. Her reputation of lacking knowledge and her ditzyness was made by comments that Palin has made herself in the media, or by images such as this that represent her in a negative way.