Sarah Palin reminds me of Picket Fences' Mayor Rachel Harris

Governor Palin has been called many things. Caribou Barbie. A Tina Fey lookalike. A Peggy Hill lookalike. A Chief Marge Gunderson soundalike. Bush in drag. Dan Quayle with an updo. "Mom" from Futurama. Lonesome Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd. Charo to Biden's Johnny Carson.

I once compared her grasp of foreign policy to Miss Teen South Carolina's grasp of the English language. I'd like to add another two cents to the "Palin is like..." game and compare her to someone really obscure: Picket Fences character Rachel Harris, the lingerie store owner who was hastily thrust into the job of mayor of Rome, Wisconsin despite her lack of qualifications.

Leigh Taylor-Young won an Emmy in 1995 for her role as Mayor Harris, a cougar long before the term became popular (she was an early example of Picket Fences creator David E. Kelley's obsession with cougars, which was most memorably and disgustingly depicted through Fish's wattle fetish on Ally McBeal). The mayor slept with the much younger Deputy Kenny (but he pined for Deputy Max, played by Lauren Holly).

Palin's beauty pageant past isn't as lurid or hot as Mayor Harris' porn star past, but their policies and knee-jerk, out-of-control responses to issues are similar. The former Wasilla, Alaska mayor's attempt to ban books from the local library reminds me of the Picket Fences episode in which Mayor Harris ordered MTV to be removed from the local cable company's channel roster because she thought Beavis and Butt-head influenced the youth in Rome to be violent to each other (a grade schooler was on trial for shooting one of Sheriff Jimmy Brock's sons as payback for injuring his older brother during a prank-gone-bad). Mayor Harris continued to piss off the town by enforcing weapon searches on motorists and the fingerprinting of every Rome citizen.

That's what I fear will happen if Palin wins the VP seat. Like the citizens of Rome, we'll be treated to lots of bullshit enforced by someone who plays on people's fears and uses her looks or faux-folksy demeanor to distract the public from how underqualified she is for the job and how stupid and underwhelming her policies are.

"Uppity" is the new "n----r"

I wish Senator Obama or his followers came up with an angrier response to that redneck asshole who called the senator and his wife "uppity" last week. As John Ridley recently said on The Huffington Post, Obama should have "hit 'em where they live."

I wonder how Mays or Mitch Gilliam would have handled Westmoreland.

Probably like that. So wrong, yet so right.

The fact that it's 2008 and a white Congressman still throws around the term "uppity"--plus McCain's use of the word "gook" and the possibility that Palin* once called Obama "Sambo"**--are just some of the many reasons why I'll never vote Republican.

* "They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska" is this year's "Our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us."

** To borrow a Letterman joke, Palin comes across like the mayor of a small town that's banned dancing, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Around the Internets: 09/04/07

- G4's Attack of the Show pokes fun at Miss Teen South Carolina's concern for us U.S. Americans and our map shortage by inviting viewers to send their own maps to the Maps for Us site to help South Africa, the U.S., the Iraq and the Asian countries.

- Former Cheers writer Ken Levine and his readers rant about lousy movie theater behavior. My solutions to this never-ending problem of annoying theatergoers: either go during a matinee showing on a weekday afternoon (barely anybody shows up) or wait for the movie to come out on Netflix. Simple as that. As one commenter on Levine's blog says, "Thank goodness for Netflix."



- "The Batmobile: What a Pain in the Ass": The Dave's Long Box blog wonders how Batman has managed to keep a low profile all these years despite driving around in a car that attracts attention wherever it goes.