Hardly a Rhino

Thick skinned?

She keeps using those words. I do not think they mean what she thinks they mean.

Sarah Palin, of course, who remembers every slight, no matter how small (or at least no matter how small it started -- she generally has never met a slight she couldn't embellish and exaggerate).

Yeah, I know, we all know this stuff, but why not, one more time. After all, she's still some sort of major political figure.

The occasion for it this time is an unusually open but typically self-pitying interview with the BBC. As usual, she is quick to point out how thick-skinned she is...followed by a recitation of grievances, although to be fair she was prompted and, really, egged on by the reporter. The "Africa is a continent" thing. The "censored books when she was mayor" thing. And she's quick to go to the "Trig isn't my son" thing, although no mainstream politician nor anyone in the mainstream press actually says that (yes, Andrew Sullivan has raised issues about Trig's birth repeatedly, and in my view for no good reason -- but he's never actually claimed anything beyond that he thinks there's something odd about her story). The best thing is that the question is really a softball, asking about "criticism about...the ability to get your head around foreign policy." The obvious answer a thick-skinned politician would give begins with saying that she doesn't pay attention to that stuff, and then moves to some boilerplate about Libya, or Egypt, or Afghanistan, or whatever. To Palin, however, it's just a chance to drag out the personal criticisms again.

And you know what? She's wrong, too, about being unusually maligned. Barack Obama is regularly accused of hating the United States and deliberately trying to ruin it, among other things. Palin is accused of stupidity? No more than George W. Bush or Dan Quayle were. John McCain and John Kerry were both war heroes who were accused of cowardice or worse in battle. Bush was accused -- only by a fringe, but still that's a lot of people, some of whom are treated as if they were respectable -- of deliberately allowing the September 11 attacks, or worse. Bill Clinton was a murderer and a drug dealer. Al Gore was a liar. Ronald Reagan was a dunce and a warmonger. Hillary Clinton was...I don't even know how to get into it.

Yes, Sarah Palin has taken a lot of personal attacks, but that's par for the course if you want to be a national politician (or, for that matter, a national celebrity).

Of course, Palin's extraordinary sensitivity to insult could be all an act; one never knows with politicians. But...well, you know...I don't suspect she's hanging out with anyone from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendor.

(BBC interview was via Sullivan. Kipling here)