Ridiculous extravagance: Sarah Palin and her wardrobe

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sarah Palin just can't understand why spending $150,000 on clothes and accessories, even if they're not hers to keep, is such a big deal, calling the story "ridiculous" yesterday at an event in Tampa. She agreed with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, The View's resident dimwit Republican, who introduced her, that those who question the shopping spree are "fixated on her wardrobe" and "deliberately sexist."

Right. Whatever. (When John Edwards was ridiculed over an expensive haircut, were his critics being "sexist"? Not in the way Hasselbeck means it. In Edwards's case, his critics were constantly trying to feminize him, which is what they often do to Democrats, suggesting that he was just a pretty boy.) Neither Palin nor Hasselbeck gets it. There is no fixation and there is no deliberate sexism. Indeed, Palin's opponents aren't the only ones who find the shopping spree appalling. Republicans do, too. And with good reason. It's the outrageous cost, stupid.

The point, as I put it last week, is this: Palin has been portraying herself as a regular gal from the "real" America, one who claims to speaks for the people against the anti-American elites who supposedly dismiss them. Yet she has proven to be, despite her admittedly hickish Wasilla background, a massive fraud.

She may want to present herself as, at her core, a beer-guzzling hockey mom, and she may very well be that, at her core, but what she really seems to be -- and this has been revealed during the campaign, as we have learned more and more about her, much to her detriment in the polls -- is an arrogant, egotistical, bullying, power-crazed careerist politician who likes her high-priced designer labels.

It's hardly "ridiculous" to question such extravagance -- and to uncover the real Sarah Palin.