Gross.
The former Deputy Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who apparently does a little photography on the side, has created a 2009 wall calendar featuring none other than America's Snow Queen Sweetheart Sarah Palin.
While this may not be what you or I had wanted waiting under our trees on Christmas morning it is, through some strange, unfathomable means, the second-most popular wall calendar on Amazon.com.
UPDATE: From The Wall Street Journal:
"A 2009 calendar of the former Republican vice-presidential candidate is currently the top item on the Web site’s list of "Office Products and Supplies." (Palin beat out "Fiskars DuraSharp DeskWorks Preferred Scissors" and "Brother PT-80 P-touch Electronic Labeling System" for the distinction.)"
And even more disturbing:
"According to a Gallup Poll released today, Palin is the second most admired woman in America, behind New York Sen. Hillary Clinton but ahead of media mogul and talk show host Oprah Winfrey."
If you'd like to order it direct from the "artist," click here.
I looked for a Hillary Clinton calendar, and couldn't find any sanctioned by the former first lady. But if I could, I would understand. Hillary is, and I say this as someone who supported Obama from day one of the primaries, a national treasure. No, I didn't vote for her. But as a woman, I have tremendous respect for her poise, her courage, her ambition. She has been a powerful advocate for health care, women's rights, and repairing the U.S.'s severely damaged reputation abroad. She is compassionate, she is brilliant. She is, to many American women, a hero.
Sarah Palin's calendar, the cover of which features the Governor slinging a shotgun over a shoulder and grinning with one eyebrow raised, seems to be a candidate-sanctioned caricature of herself. It says, "She's tough, but she's oh-so-sexy, and for $15.95, she can be yours!"
The Huffington Post and Washington Wire reported on the Palin 2009 calendar before the candidate had even been defeated, in late October.
"The 13-month calendar–the first of its kind–includes dozens of original portraits and candid shots of the Alaska governor on the job and with her family. July’s pictorial, for instance, features Palin wrapped in the American flag, with a sidebar of pictures of her and her children.
"'This flag photo was taken just days after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 in 2001. Sarah, like the rest of the nation, was trying to cope with the attacks on American soil and demonstrating her patriotism,' the caption reads." -Washington Wire
Sarah, the patriotic, pro-American gal from patriotic, pro-American small town Wasilla, was trying to cope with the attacks on "American soil," on the big cities she and her campaign would later dismiss, thinking somehow they could win an election without also winning the hearts and minds of non-rural, non-small town America. Even George W. Bush was more clever than that.
I'm bothered not so much by the existence of this ridiculous calendar, but that it is the second-most popular calendar on Amazon.com. I'm not sure how that figure was determined, because when I peruse Amazon's selection of calendars, I don't see a rating system, but if that figure is true, this calendar is more popular than Barack Obama's, Harry Potter's, Ansel Adams', and all sorts of cute, fuzzy little kittens, puppies, polar bears, penguins... you know, the kinds of things Palin hunts. That so many people are keeping alive this woman's delusions of grandeur--that they themselves buy into those delusions--are sickening. Or perhaps it's simply because she's "hot," in that forbidden "hot for teacher/naughty librarian" way I've heard her described by men of both political persuasions.
I don't know. What I do know is the women I admire most in American history didn't need to plaster their images on our walls to make an impact.
Oh, and don't miss CNN's "In Defense of Sarah Palin": http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/24/navarrette.palin.smalltown/index.html