through another's eyes

i wish you guys could read danish (i can think of only one reader who can and another one who can probably read norwegian, which is really like badly spelled and properly pronounced according to how it's spelled danish). what i actually love about living in denmark during my 3rd american presidential election is reading the coverage of the election in the danish (quality) press.  i would love to link to a whole list of great articles i've read lately (and i no doubt will), but it does seem a bit overwhelming to translate them. so, i will offer a synopsis and share some of the thoughts these great articles have led me to.

berlingske, which is, in my opinion, by far the best danish newspaper (tho' a recent redesign has given it a disturbing feel of one of those free-on-the-train papers) in terms of the writing itself, has a particular reporter in the US. i think i've probably mentioned him before. his name is poul høi and he lives in santa fe. during the first two elections i was here, he was berlingske's man in DC. apparently now he's achieved sufficient seniority and cachet (due to his brilliant writing) to be allowed to do whatever articles strike his fancy and to live in santa fe. not a bad gig, it would seem to me.

in yesterday's paper, he published the first of two articles from wasilla, home of sarah palin. he went there to try to get to the bottom of who she is by seeing where she came from. as i've said before, i have an addiction to writing in the margins of books and this article was so good that i actually had to underline and scribble all over it.

høi's analysis of the country of my birth helps me see it with new eyes. he's lived there about as long as i've lived here, so he has both an inside and an outside perspective. his descriptions are apt and often poetic, setting the scene:

• characterizing a weather change as the sort that demands a wagner overture.
• and wasilla as a town with no city planning, built according to the lowest common denominator--by kiosk owners, for kiosk owners and ruled by kiosk owners.
• walking into the local "mug shot saloon" he felt like the children in the narnia books--as if he'd stepped through a wardrobe, back in time, to a place with nicotine-colored hessian on the wall, populated by people who have seen it all, done it all and given up.
• describing churches being built according to the principles of plastic silverware architecture (engangsbestik-arkitektur).

then, with historical perspective, he reminds us of the divide in the republican party between the goldwater-types and the wallace-types (tho' wallace was a so-called dixiecrat (democrat turned independent), he inspired an entire generation of right of the right republicans). the divide between intellectual and down home (we know this now as the real and the fake america). he talks about sarah palin's mediocre grades (sound familiar?) and her need to move from college to college in order to finally collect a degree in sports journalism. he talks about the teachers who had no recollection of her. he discusses her bizarre anti-intellectualism--if she couldn't be a leader among the educated, she would by god lead the uneducated against the educated. serving on the local city council was her way up the ladder, then she stomped on those who helped her in and ran against them, mobilizing the "wal-mart moms," which worked for her all the way to the governor's mansion (there are apparently a LOT of those in alaska).

in short, høj masterfully weaves together fifty years of history of american politics, cultural analysis and a feel for the present into the conclusion that sarah palin is in actuality a natural and even inevitable conclusion...once republicans admired people like abraham lincoln and winston churchill, today those on the pedestal are joe six-pack and joe the plumber. sarah palin is, like george w. bush before her, simply the embodiment of this zeitgeist.  as poul høj says in his blog entry this week, if you cross lipstick with a pitbull long enough, you eventually do get a pitbull with lipstick.

all of this makes me realize that those of us now fake americans--the ones who bothered to get higher education and a passport--simply must stage a revolt. we've sat back long enough, not really believing that this is where reality was headed and thinking these people were too moronic to bother arguing with.  it's so, so, so important to vote obama. our right to be intellectual or even just to be thinking and thoughtful in our decision-making depends on it. we must show this woman the way back to her wal-mart. if she's going to give back all that valentino anyway, she'll need some new, more affordable clothes.