POR QUÉ LA GUERRA contra Sarah Palin continúa:

In this context, since the moment of the Tucson shootings we have witnessed not just a campaign to smear Sarah Palin with the charge that she, or what she supposedly represents, is responsible for the mayhem, but that her rebuttals themselves are more proof that she is culpable.

Op-ed writers all the time employ the metaphor “crosshairs.” Democrats use targets to highlight their plans to unseat congressional Republicans. “Blood libel” long ago became a generic charge far more than a specific one reflecting its anti-Semitic roots. No matter — if Palin can be tied to any of that, then she alone is guilty of all that. So what is it that so bugs the media elite about Sarah Palin?

Didn’t She Say All That?

Is the problem with Palin that she uses inflammatory language far too loosely given her position of responsibility? Of course, evocation of “enemies, punishing, kicking ass, relegation to backseat, knives, guns, getting angry, getting in their face, hostage takers, trigger fingers, and tearing up” does not suit a national public figure and former vice presidential candidate. Oops, those allusions were Barack Obama’s, not Sarah Palin’s.

Well, then, confess it — Palin has a disturbing tendency to blurt out dumb, even wacky things — a sort of window into her Wasilla vacuity that daily reminds us why she simply is unfit for higher office. Remember when she claimed that the images of Berlin’s Victory Column were photo-shopped phallic symbols? Didn’t she muse about a radio talk show host being blown up “Mr. Big”-style with a CO2 pellet to the head? Sorry again, that was the New York Times’ esteemed columnist Bob Herbert and CNN’s Chris Matthews.

Fine, but she thought people in Austria speak some weird language called “Austrian” and she pronounces “corpsmen” “corpse-men” as if soldiers were some sort of walking dead, and she thinks there are 57 states, and she … sorry, all that and much more was Barack Obama’s, and they were slips after a weary day’s work, not “deep” reflections of reality.

Leedlo entero. Palin dice tonterías y se equivoca, pero no es ni mucho menos la única, y sin embargo los otros se libran de la burla mientras que ella concentra cada vez más los ataques de sus adversarios. ¿Miedo a su tirón mediático y, por extensión, al Tea Party como movimiento pujante en contra de los privilegios de la casta político-mediática? Sin duda. Personalmente opino que Palin no tiene el perfil adecuado --ni ahora ni posiblemente nunca-- para estar en la Casa Blanca, pero eso no quita que el character assassination constante roce lo vomitivo.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Mucho más, por James Taranto.