Karl Klockars

"How much does it pay? I'm listening..."

While I hesitate to count any particular chickens before they hatch, at this point it’s a safe assumption that Sarah Palin is going to have to go back to her day job in the Great White Wastes of Alaska.  And while I’m sure it’s a fantastic gig up there (fire whoever you want!  no one will pay attention, unless you get tapped to be veep!), after the shine and magic of the national stage, I don’t think Ms. Palin is going to see the benefit to fighting the good fight in the Governor’s Office.

It’s going to be like batting 6th in the order for a minor league team when you spent a few months as the 2nd-ranked Designated Hitter in the American League.  Not only is it going to be a huge demotion, but it’s easy to think of it as an insult.  Do you really think that Sarah Palin is going to want to spend her life cutting ribbons for salmon canning plants and legislating caribou-hunting rules?  (Legislating caribou no.  Eating caribou, oh you betcha.)

So what’s she going to do?  She’s going to have to find something to match the glamour and majesty of the campaign, where people meet her every need and cater to her every whim.  I’m not saying that any new gig will spot her $150k for a new wardrobe for her and her family, but I do know of one thing that she’d be absolutely perfect for – Conservative Talk Radio.

Here’s why:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed these things, but I have.  The way she constantly berates the Mainstream Media is so professional, I’m surprised that she hasn’t already been on the radio airwaves.  (Her time spent sportscasting doesn’t count, by the way.)  She has a mindset of an America that doesn’t exist – one where the Mainstream Media is like some Politburo Propaganda machine, with a Tokyo Rose on every station broadcasting hatred toward all things right-wing.  When she looks at the media landscape, it’s not just that she sees everything in terms of liberal bias.  It’s that she doesn’t know how not to.  It’s hardwired in – and it’s perfect for a broadcasting career.

She throws around that term like a seasoned radio pro.  I would not be surprised if she has Rush and Hannity pre-programmed on her office radio to help her craft her policy arguments vs. those nasty Alaskan progressives.  (Which, no offense to our leftist friends from the North, I find strangely funny.)  And one has to wonder what drew her to that eventual journalism degree – maybe she just wanted to see how those goofy liberals think and how that news stuff works.

"We'll protect you, Alaska! Stay away, liberal media!"

It’s as though they don’t allow the Mainstream Media north of the 55th parallel and it’s all Inuit Public Access and Fire and Brimstone preachers on the airwaves up there.  As though Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow get scrambled by friendly citizens of British Columbia (when they’re not too busy gloating over their socialized medicine and low crime rates).

Also, Palin’s use of the term “elites” is ready-made for her to fit right into the right-wing media landscape.  Everyone knows by now that Palin is a Kraft Mac N’ Cheese makin’, Campbell’s Soup eatin’, Walmart shoppin’, dozen kid havin’, redneck marryin’, regular gal.  Ain’t no elitism here!  No, sir, bet yer fur she ain’t.  “Elites” rolls off her tongue as less than a descriptor as it is an attack – she lives to make those fancypants liberals choke on that caviar and drown in their French (!) champagne.

Palin lives in a world where those know-it-all fancypants in the contiguous 48 states try to tell everyone what to do.  And her constituency of oil rig workers, modern day pirates and general ne’er do wells of Alaska all respond to that because Alaska hasn’t known an “elite” since that Rob guy moved to whatever town Northern Exposure was supposed to take place in.  To be in Alaska is to be un-elite and proud of it.  What makes a person want to live on the edge of existence disconnected from everything except by seaplanes and oil pipelines?  Sarah was born to attack the elites because they represent everything that she’s not.  Elitism isn’t just someone being snooty or getting too much book-learnin’ to her – it’s an insult to everything she’s ever known.  And getting down on those elites is a surefire way to ratings gold.

And what was a terrible hinderance on the campaign trail will be nothing but a positive for Sarah’s new gig in talk radio – the ability to blither for minutes at a stretch about something that you don’t know jack shit about.  It happens in radio more than you’d like to imagine – a new issue or a breaking news story that you don’t know a thing about and you have to tap dance around the details and not come off like a complete incompetent.  In front of 300 million voters?  It’s hard to pull off – and Palin didn’t.  But for an audience of a few hundred thousand at a time?  Absolutely.  And when you wrap it in a wolf-fur-lined cloak of folksy non sequiturs, it’s a gold mine.

Update, October 28th: In the past few days Ms. Palin has been taking another cue from the Conservative Radio Playbook, and it confirms to me even more that she’d really like a 3-hour shift on some Talk Radio Network somewhere.  The defining of conservatives as “real Americans” or “pro-Americans” is a classic move, and one that you have to hang your hat on as a talker in order to generate the bile and anger you need to yell at half the country for hours at a time.

More importantly, I believe this is entirely a solo Palin move.  What with the stories floating around about Palin “going Rogue” (what a fantastically espionage-y term) and taking her talking points from her own terminology, this only proves more that she’s learned well from the Hannity/Rush vocabulary.

It also just goes to show that there’s a reason why the Glenn Becks and the Bill O’Reilly’s of the world appreciate Sarah Palin – she’s one of them, born and raised.  They’re getting to see their world reflected in a candidate who can regurgitate all of their segments in her own charming, folksy winking way.  As one Conservative Talker I know has said, “McCain in ’08 and Palin in ’09.”

Okay – back to our regularly scheduled blithering.

"Randy in Juneau, you're on WPLN!"

The only downside I can imagine is that you’d want to have a good lookin’ lady like her on the television as opposed to the radio.  (It pays better, too.)  I suppose there’s a kind of precedent set with the Huckabee program that Fox News (surprise!) has on the air now, but would a Palin/Huckabee program kill?  I don’t know.  But to spend 3 hours a day behind a microphone, getting to talk to the little people about those hot-button topics like gay rights, abortion and states rights and having the listening audience fawn over you slavishly?  Instead of “Long time listener first time caller” it’d be “Love you love your heavily armed Pentecostal show.”  It’s right up her alley, I think.

And the few random liberals who would call up and try to baffle her conservative little brain?  Well, that’d be a concern, but a solid producer making $12 an hour can do some quick internet research while she tells a story about knitting socks for one of her 83 kids, and she’ll BS her way out of it.  It’s not like going head-to-head with Katie Couric, for pete’s sake!  WPLN, Sarah Radio, could be On the Air!  Think about it, Sarah.  You’ll have plenty of time to consider your next move – this could be it.