Off The Top: Let’s Pick Those Nits!

Click for More

Let’s pick those nits!

I don’t know how you feel about Sarah Palin, but you’ve got to admit she’s a tough cookie. Sort of like one of those blow-up clowns you used to see, she gets bopped repeatedly and perhaps even falls over occasionally, but she keeps bouncing right back up. With a grin on her face.

The latest attempt by the media to make her look foolish was to point out that she had what we used to call “crib notes” written in the palm of her hand during an address at a national Tea Party meeting. Unlike Obama, Palin never uses cue cards – or at least that’s what we’ve been told. She had obviously jotted a few words in her palm in order not to forget any of the things she meant to talk about.

The liberal media, as usual, took that as an excuse to tear into her, a nitpicking attack if I ever heard of one. Jotting a word or two in one’s palm seems to me to be much less obvious than using cue cards or a piece of paper. And who can be faulted for writing down things one doesn’t want to leave out of a talk or interview?

But Palin, as ever, came up grinning. And the next time she was photographed, she had inked the words, “Hi, Mom,” in the palm of her hand and displayed it so the media would be sure to note it. I loved it.

Palin’s obviously not stupid. And she has a wonderfully subtle way of thumbing her nose at these people. There’s no way anybody could take offense at the way she handles these kinds of situations, but her methods get her point across without question.

I will admit that, although I’ve been rather impressed by her since she came out of obscurity to be the Republican party’s vice-presidential candidate, I was a little bit leery about her ability to handle the highest office in the land. But given her gutsy-ness and her uncommon common sense (at least for someone in high office), I may be about to change my mind.

Even syndicated political columnist David Broder, whom I always considered to be not only a liberal, but one very nearly in the flaming category, sees Palin as a threat to what he calls the “more uptight” Republican aspirants and also to Obama as well.

“Those who want to stop her will need more ammunition than deriding her habit of writing on her hand,” he said. “The lady is good.”

But I didn’t start out to write this column about Sarah Palin. What hit me most about this whole incident was how and why we as a nation have evolved into such nitpickers over the past years.

I don’t mean we’re nitpicking over the big stuff – the John Edwardses, the Mark Sanfords, the Bill Clintons, the Tiger Woodses. They all goofed up big time and in public, and deserve all the attention as well as the criticism they’ve gotten. I can’t imagine a much more horrendous or humiliating situation than to be standing next to your public figure husband– or wife for that matter – with a game but sickly smile on your face while he or she admits their seedy escapades to the constituents and lamely tries to apologize.

And speaking of apologizes, I couldn’t help but get a kick out of the results of Tiger Woods’ televised effort. Somebody took a poll asking if the public thought he was sincere or just faking it. The vote was about evenly matched for yes and no – somewhere in the 20 to 25 percent area. But the majority of those polled – a whopping 52 percent – voted guess what? They didn’t care!! How refreshing!

But what’s not refreshing is how we zero in on every tiny detail of every public figure’s life. From Sarah Palin’s palm notes to Michelle Obama’s bare arms, we, aided by the television media, just pick, pick, pick. Palin, for example, has been criticized from one end of the country to another about her clothes, her hair style, her manner of speech and her children. And for a while there, it seemed that nobody in the country had ever seen a woman’s upper arms before.

And from the way paparazzi follow celebrities around, there are apparently some people who are insatiable when it comes to these folks’ private lives. Some I think, would truly love to be able to watch Britney Spears brush her teeth if somebody would just put a camera in her bathroom.

Some of us need to find a life of our own.