Palin Manipulates Self-Esteem of Audience Per Vanity Fair Article

A lot has been written about the new Vanity Fair piece up about Sarah Palin, so I won't go into it in depth, but one point was made towards the end of the article that I think was overlooked in much of the analysis that I have seen.

Much of the criticism has focused on the reporting of Palin's behavior and treatment towards others, particularly her family. I believe it comes as no surprise to those of us on the blogs who follow her that her children are (to her), little more than props, and everyone else is simply a tool. Tools are to be used as needed and discarded when their usefulness ends.

Palin supporters responded to the piece with anger, claiming that it was just more of the same, however, the additional information about her demands for more clothing ($3,000 worth of underwear paid for by the RNC? really?) and her treatment of service workers is so in line with everything else we have learned, that it is easy to believe and just adds to the base of information we have about her without doing anything to change opinion, pro or con. It is just confirmation of an existing belief that either 1) the left is out to get her, or 2) she is an evil, corrupt woman (my personal favorite).

But, what struck me, was this: [emphasis added]

"...she is also planting the idea with audiences that they might not be good enough, by telling them she thinks they’re plenty good, no matter what anybody else may say. (“They talk down to us… They think that if we were just smart enough … ”) To some, the message sounds like an affirmation. But is it really? Or does it seed self-doubt and rancor among her partisans, and encourage them to see everyone else as malign?

Absolutely correct. Reverse psychology at its most basic and so unexpected in this setting that no one would believe its use. Palin may be lacking in intelligence, but she is canny and manipulative, and has a highly developed ability to give people what they want - a characteristic of certain personality disorders. By injecting negativity into the conversation, she ensures that she adjusts the perspective of her followers so that they see themselves and others in that negative light and have to work to see anything in a positive light.

Palin has reportedly quite an anger management problem, with this author saying that she frequently throws things and can go off on others with minimal provocation. This behavior, coupled with her pathological lies, raises a lot of red flags. The ability to chip away at the self-esteem of her audience without their awareness is particularly troubling and I am pleased to see at least one member of the major media able to recognize her actions as such and to educate his readers.

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k

Journalist Undergoes Torture, but not Hannity

Last week, perhaps joking around, perhaps not, Sean Hannity told Charles Grodin, on air, that he would let himself be waterboarded for charity with the proceeds to benefit military families. The offer arose from a discussion of the danger to the military from taking waterboarding out of the arsenal of tools available in the fight against terrorism.

Hannity's long time nemesis, Keith Olbermann, immediately took him up on it and offered Hannity $1,000 for each second that he was able to endure the waterboarding and would double the amount if he would admit, on air, that waterboarding is in fact torture. Not surprisingly, neither Hannity nor Fox News has responded.

For those who think the challenge from Keith Olbermann to Sean Hannity is theater - which it is, but not just theater - and that waterboarding isn't really torture, you should read Christopher Hitchen's take on the process of waterboarding. As he says, quite emphatically, "The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered."

To better understand what everyone was talking about, Mr. Hitchens, a journalist, asked to be waterboarded. His story detailing his experience appeared in the August 2008 issue of Vanity Fair Magazine titled Believe Me, It's Torture

"...I had read that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, invariably referred to as the “mastermind” of the atrocities of September 11, 2001, had impressed his interrogators by holding out for upwards of two minutes before cracking. (By the way, this story is not confirmed. My North Carolina friends jeered at it. “Hell,” said one, “from what I heard they only washed his damn face before he babbled.”) But, hell, I thought in my turn, no Hitchens is going to do worse than that. Well, O.K., I admit I didn’t outdo him. And so then I said, with slightly more bravado than was justified, that I’d like to try it one more time."

Even knowing what to expect, even knowing before the first episode and even more so before the second, Mr. Hitchens said afterwards:

"...Steeling myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it."

We still don't know how long Mr. Hitchens endured the watering. We do know from his story, that from an experience that lasted for seconds, under controlled conditions, knowing that all times he was completely safe, he developed symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Do we want to stop terrorism? Then we need to stop being terrorists.

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k