Sarah Palin, Fox News, and the synergy of perfection

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sarah Palin, as you may have heard, has signed a multi-year deal to be a Fox News contributor:

I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News. It's wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.

I'm not clear what Palin will contribute other than her usual nonsensical, hysterical, and profoundly egotistical blather, but I'm sure we'll get a lot of such nonsense. Fox News -- a place that "values fair and balanced news"? Er. Whatever.

It's a match made in right-wing heaven, to be sure, or at least in the paranoid mind of Roger Ailes.

Steve Benen -- and we often seem to think along the same lines -- has the best headline: "Unemployed Half-Term Governor Hired By Fox News." He writes:

Palin's deal makes considerable sense. It's awful for the public discourse, but it's great for the relevant players -- Palin wants money and a platform; the Republican network wants a politician its partisan audience loves. It's a match made in... well, somewhere unpleasant.

In some ways, the former half-term governor's new role will be exceedingly similar to the one she's maintained since leaving office. Instead of sharing her fact-free "thoughts" on a social-networking website, Palin can share her ideas on a cable network without any pushback at all.

Good times.

Palin's moving her special brand of idiocy from Facebook to Fox News, where she'll be able to spew that idiocy without any opposition, and with ga-ga cheerleaders all around, and public discourse, political life, and American civilization generally will suffer accordingly. (I'd say it's a Sign of the Apocalypse, but the move was all-too-predictable, and all part of a much larger problem both in politics and in the media.)

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John Amato notes that Palin will fit in well:

She's in good company, with many other Fox Newsers having similarly checkered pasts. All is forgiven if you're a conservative. Oliver North sold weapons to Iran, Dick Morris has an affinity towards hookers and toe-sucking and other bizarre notions. Mark Furhman destroyed the first O.J. case and was hired on. Karl Rove, with subpoenas and investigations into his role in the U.S. Attorneys scandal lingering, gets a fat contract. The list goes on and on.

Palin, who quit her job as Governor of Alaska, fits right in to the right wing stable of wingnuts Roger Ailes has assembled. I wonder why it took so long.

You can't rush perfection.