Categorical Aperitif

Roy Edroso's expeditions into Wingnuttia routinely produce all sorts of interesting ideological artifacts, but this one from Roger L. Simon really caught my eye:

It was the rebirth of Frank Capra for our times - Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington. This woman [Sarah Palin] is a star and a star of the American kind we have not seen for years. She really is born live from a Capra movie, from the days Hollywood told stories about the greatness of our country. I don’t agree with her about everything but so what? I don’t agree with anybody about everything except, luckily for me, my wife. But Sarah Palin is a force of nature. Like a Jimmy Stewart character channeled by Claudette Colbert.

??? More like a Sinclair Lewis character channeled by Stephen Colbert. Yeah, you can see how she's just like Mr. Smith—if Mr. Smith was, you know, a Bronze-Age tribalist hack willing to tell shameless lies in order to con people into supporting him. The resemblance is truly striking.

Ye gods, these people. To say such things about Sarah Palin and mean them, you have to be either ignorant (of her mounting record of mendacity and venality) or idiotic (and not in the nice Dostoevsky way). To say such things about Sarah Palin but not mean them, you have to be a shameless hack yourself. Ignorant, idiotic, or ignoble: Why does it so often come down to one of the above with these people?