A note to Sarah Palin

The industrious Sarah Palin, having thankfully receded somewhat from front pages everywhere, has been all over cyberspace and the airwaves recently with her Tea Party appearances and her new Fox News job. There is cause for alarm.

Palin is a grand master — or perhaps mistress — of the art of Us v Them politics. Some of us who still hang onto the hope for an Us and Them America were dismayed by her rhetoric. Not that it has changed, just that it was so comfortably forgotten for a while. Palin seems unenthusiastic about letting anyone forget her for a while.

Political commentator Amy Walter suggested, on last night’s PBS NewsHour, that Palin and the Tea Party boosters are simply capitalizing on the general American frustration with the status quo. Politicians like Marco Rubio in Florida and Scott Brown in Massachusetts, she said, are “recognizing the mood” and adjusting their messages to fit.

The mood of the Us-and-Them Together  party is glum. One Tea Party conventioneer explained to NewsHour about Palin that “She speaks like we do, she thinks like we do.” God help us. Maybe someone else will join in the U&T Together Party”s effort to respond to Palin’s latest:

“How’s that hopey changey thing workin’ out for you?” — Well, not exactly as we’d wish, but better, we think, than those hopey changey things you are promoting.

And about that comment you made re running for President of the United States — I’ll just keep on doin’ a darn good job… Could we respectfully request you confine your darn good job to Fox News? The U&T Together Party is not feeling hopey changey about Fox News.