I think the "can Sarah be president?" question misses the mark with her. That's not what she's really about.

Like Glenn Beck she serves as a focal point for right wing anger. Why are we out power? Because they, our own party's intellectual elites, abandoned us. They turned their backs on the real spine of the party. They cost us by not being Republican enough and by Republican we mean the real red state variety of gun lovers and heterosexual marry-ers.

Remember when HW Bush lost to Clinton? The Republicans blamed HW for not being Republican enough. He raised taxes, they said, and created an opening for Ross Perot and Clinton stole the election. You see the same thing now. They say that W "wasn't a conservative -- why just look at all the government spending he did!"

A Palin or a Beck could never win a national election because, in their role as rilers of the base they have to say crazy things. But they can make a lot of money and do a lot of damage from the fringe and that's all that matters.

But we shouldn't dismiss populists from either the right or the left. Trust is, both parties do have elites who often ignore the masses. Witness what Democrats have done with health care reform which has largely been in direct defiance of the party's base. Or witness how the Democratic establishment failed to stand up to Joe Lieberman when he ran for office after losing his party's primary.

The two parties definitely create the conditions for populists on both sides to flourish. That they will always be too radical to win elections doesn't hurt them any, their adherents take that fact as confirmation of what they already believe: that the establishment will never allow anyone who speaks for them to get into a position of power anyway.

Shorter Ruth Rosen:

"Here's why I hate Sarah Palin"

That this was going to be a hit-piece that doesn't even pretend to be serious was clear after the first two sentences.

"Celebrity, inarticulate beauty queen, body" - just in the first paragraph.

But then Ms Rosen, "a pioneering historian of gender and society", knows the audience she's writing for and I'm sure all of them agree that Sarah Palin would never have a place in a brave new world that got split open by a modern women's movement. She don't fit the stereotype Ms Rosen has in mind.

A far more interesting phenomenon about Sarah Palin is not what she inspires in her followers (that's not new, look at the obsessed Obamabots for inspiration) - it is what she unleashes in the left-wingers, and that thing is nasty, unsavory, mean-spirited and has all the hallmarks of the golden age of Hillary the Nutcracker.

The fascination with Sarah Palin is exactly the same as the fascination with Obama in 2008. The way you describe Palin, nothing below the alluring exterior, is also a perfect description of Obama. Both are neophyte politicians who rely exclusively on charisma and biography, as opposed to actual accomplishments. I am sure you had no problem with Americans' fascination with Obama, why then with Palin...aside from the fact that she is not a liberal Democrat?

To be fair, Ms. Palin did not pick the semi- cheescakey cover photo for Newsweek. But she did pose for it for I believe Sports Illustrated.
And to Nudnik, it's true. Obama's star power did seem a bit ahead of his accompishments.
However, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004 (without for instance quitting halfway through any of the three terms). Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. During the campaign, several events brought him to national attention, such as his victory in the March 2004 Democratic primary election for the United States Senator from Illinois as well as his prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in November 2004. He wrote two books (without ghost writers), none of which contain lots of episodes and claims disputed by others in a position to know. Palin, on the other hand.....

There's something off in the logic here. A post about Sarah Palin that asks about itself. Not fascinating. Just convoluted.

The meteoric ascent of Barack Obama as a celebrity puzzles many Americans. Why, his detractors ask, did Democrats choose an inexperienced and inarticulate former community organizer who never had governed anything.

If the rest of the world finds this bizarre celebrity puzzling, so do many Americans who know there is little beneath his alluring exterior. This week, Barack Obama is everywhere, quite frankly,he's a huge embarrassment to many people in this country.

Who ca say when it was really born, but the Pop Culture is the reason someone like Palin can parley a political moment into a lifetime in Pop Culture.

Pop culture is the reason Michael Jackson sold more records than the Beatle, it is the reaons Bono could reverse Palin's trajectory by turning his Pop Culture life into a political influence. Pop Culture, and the internet that is such a huge part of it all, is the reason a garage band in Omaha can go viral and become world famous and unbelievably wealthy in short order.

And it is a GOOD THING! Pop Culture is the true international community, it lives in every corner of the globe, and is the essence of what the Taliban wants to purge from their own victims.

When you consider that now China has of late added over a billion new consumers to that Pop Culture, there is literally nothing short of world disaster that can replace is as the closest thing to international solidarity.

Anyone who saw "Slumdog Mill'naire" saw the effect on India's people,

It was born

palins appeal to her supporters is that she is a hater.
I dismiss any argument about what she believes in because she only believes one thing, that she can fool enough people to fulfill her ambition.
She has never felt the need to learn anything and has no intention to ever learn anything.

And make no mistake about it, she is very good at fooling people.
But, she can't fool enough to ever come close to national office.
And she wouldn't get the money to run under any circumstances because she creates many enemies with her deceit.

You think the "inside" people of the republican party like this woman?
They all despise her.
She is bizarre even at their low standards and who among them with ambition are willing to step aside for her?
None.

The media has found its newest distraction.
The fascination of palin is what she exposes of the people that "love" her.

palin has no intention of going away and she is vindictive and petty because she sees herself as beyond critique.
The mindless fools she gives identity to wont go quietly into the night either.

Future circumstances impossible to foresee will dictate palins actions.
I believe she is a train wreck in progress.

The only question is how will she try to take as many people with her as she can.

Your question makes an obvious mistaken presumption.
Americans are not fascinated by Sarah Palin; American media is fascinated by Sarah Palin.

Put simply, Sarah Palin is the product of a fickle and revenue-driven media. The reason the media covers her is the same reason the media only covers young, blond, female, and Caucasian kidnapping victims. Ratings, not true newsworthiness, is what drives the business.

Sarah Palin's great advantage to the Republican Party is as far-Right stalking horse - she epitomizes the bizarre extreme of the party's fringe element. Anyone else running looks moderate by comparison, even if he or she supports chaining women in kitchens and legalizing labor-camp sweatshops. She's the perfect diversion, and that's why America's media - Rightwing in wraps - won't stop shoving her down our throats.

And as far as American anger at cultural elites rather than financial greed, where is the line drawn? Americans are angry at a system that has looted them and holds them openly in contempt, be it "vampire banks" or the intellectual/cultural establishment. How much does one complement the other? The big foundations - Ford, Carnegie - are enthralled with their clueless, wine-bar radicalism; you'll see few conservative projects funded by them. Yet they follow the ebb and flow of the markets as closely as any Wall Street titan, utterly blind to their own hypocrisy.

This elite hates the idea of populism because it entails the active participation of this nation's much-maligned, viciously put-upon peasantry. It will take someone far more gifted to speak their language, turn their anger to action. There's a thin line between a raving mob and a revolutionary army.