Sarah the throw-way-back

I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out who Sarah reminds me of with that spending spree. I mean, it's on a completely different plain than most of us occupy in modern America. Even the very wealthy these days don't drop that kind of dough on clothing. Or if they do, they keep quiet about it. Conspicuous consumption on that scale is considered gauche these days.

The 150K, it's old school. Let me see who is a match for this sort of nonsense.

No, not 1950s Donna Reed mopping the floor in heels and pearls. She was sensible by comparison.

Was it Imelda Marcos and her thousands of shoes? Close, but not really. Imelda was a trophy wife and didn't pretend to be anything else.

Think older.

Roaring 1920s gun moll buying minks and ermines with the latest bank loot?

Nope, older.

Civil war bride waiting for her man to come home from the war while trying to hide the family silver?

Nah, that's not it.

Let me adjust the wide field lens on my telescope on the past.

Ah yes. Here she is. I can see all the way back to Regency France to find a comparable degree of spendthriftyness.

Sarah Palin, meet Josephine Bonaparte.

Josephine was used to a kind of genteel poverty, her family having lost their Martinique plantation to the 1766 hurricane season. Josephine and her first husband, Beauharnais, were imprisoned during the Reign of Terror. He was guillotined, but she was released three months later when Robespierre was assassinated, ending the regime.

While she was able to recover some of her former husband's family wealth, Josephine set her sights higher. Josephine frequented a coterie of famous men in order to keep body and soul together. Allegedly, one of her suitors, vicomte de Barras, introduced Josephine and Napoleon, in part because he wanted to dump her and her debts on someone else.

But we know the rest of that story, Josephine and Bonaparte loved each other madly, at times destructively. She was indifferent at first, not replying to his passionate and angry letters. Only the intervention of her children by her first marriage stopped them from divorcing then. Napoleon even agreed to pay her massive debts. Ah, romance in the 19th Century! In the end, they divorced reluctantly, not for want of love, but because he needed heirs.

Here's the thing. It's fairly easy to excuse Josephine because she took advantage of what was available to women at the time. She didn't have a choice about having a job of her own, however small, however meager a wage. Depending on the good favors of men was a woman's lot in life then.

This is what is so infuriating about Sarah Palin. She spent that 150,000 like it was a drop in the bucket. And, it's now revealed not just for her, it was for her children and possibly husband too. Excuse me, when did they decide to run for office? She's treating John McCain and the RNC like her personal piggy bank. "She needed clothes." he said. Right. Since when did hockey moms not have to know the value of a dollar? Hockey is an expensive hobby; skates and pads ain't cheap. Lots of families scrimp and save to have their kids compete in sports.

Sarah Palin somehow got herself elected Governor of Alaska. She and Todd made a quarter of a million dollars last year. She can very well afford her own business clothes for public appearances. She doesn't have to depend on a sugar daddy to pay her debts buy her clothes. Yet that seems to be her expectation. Keep me in a style to which I aspire, she seems to be saying. Wow, not since the days of Josephine and Bonaparte have we seen this kind of consumption at the State's expense.

All hail Sarah, empress of the religious right.

Sarah, you are running for vice president of a democratic republic, not empress of a reconstituted ad hoc monarchy. Here's an original thought: Buy your own damn clothes.

Why the Joe the Plumbers, the few of the brainless that still think she's Christian and a good choice, don't dismiss her for suddenly going all NYC in her clothing style I'll never understand.

Except, of course, that the Joe the Plumbers are ignorant fucking morons.

anti elite?

Who are they kidding? Their base, I guess. :-(

I think Sarah has a serious case of keeping up with the McCains. She seems to want to be the one with the eight houses.

:dem: