Defending Sarah Palin

I'm guessing that if I looked out the window I'd see pigs looping the loop in the air, because I'm about to do something that I never thought I'd do and makes me faintly nauseous. I'm going to defend the crass Sarah Palin.

Defend her in a limited way, of course. Defend her against the recent allegations that are perhaps best summed up in this paragraph:

As for these disclosures, McGinniss claims that Palin snorted cocaine off an overturned 55-gallon drum during a snowmobile excursion, slept with college (and later NBA) basketball star Glenn Rice when she was an unmarried 23-year-old sports reporter (McGinniss talked to Rice for the book and he confirmed the relationship) and had an affair with Brad Hanson, Todd Palin's business partner, apparently as payback for her husband's infidelities. (Both Palin and Hanson, he notes, have denied the affair.)

Now I have no problems with these sort of allegations. The fact that Palin has snorted coke and slept around a bit is her own business, frankly. I don't even care if she has been having affairs behind her husband's back - that is between him and her. None of these reflects on her ability to be president. What does - and the reason why I think she is horrifically unqualified for high office - is her almost all-encompassing ignorance combined with the fact that she perfectly represents the empty and dangerous politics of style rather than substance. The problem is what she does in public, not what she has done in private. The problem, to put it in a much more profane way, is not who she has apparently been fucking, but the fact that she is a fucking idiot.

So there it is - a defence of Palin from someone who cannot stand her. But it is utterly depressing that what will probably finish the Palin show once and for all is not the fact that she has time and time again paraded her stupidity in public, but the utter irrelevancies of what she may have done in her private life.