For those of you who took me up on my bet: Bwahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!
First, there's Ken Morris---Wall Street whiz, trader-turned-financial-thriller-novelist, whose top bid exceeded $50,000 . . . What was he hoping if he won "the experience"? He explained it this way.
There exists an emotional divide in this country that I've not experienced since I attended the University of California near the end of the Vietnam War. As a protester who took to the streets post the bombings of Cambodia and being tear-gassed on three occasions and nearly arrested twice, I was part of the schism that ripped apart our generation. While leaving scars that thickened the hearts of many from that era, the ending of the war allowed for a healing to begin. Painful, but now mostly a distant memory.Today's rancor, however, troubles me more profoundly. Why? Maybe it's because I don't see a catalyst---like the end to a tragic war---that will magically lead us to end this political divide. Politically biased "news" channels, over-heated rhetoric by bloggers, and (in my view at least) the demise of investigative mainstream journalism and the role of Watergate-like Fourth Estate, are here to stay. This period has more the odor of the Civil Rights debate that ripped apart the South during the administrations of President Kennedy and Johnson. A rift that has never been bridged.
How, I'll ask Ms. Palin, can we work together (meaning not just her and me, but all people on both sides of the political fence) to begin to fix this? I'll ask her a few questions that might seem harsh, but aren't intended to offend---after all, we must be honest, no? Do your regret saying several hundred times that our president "palled around with terrorists"? Do you really believe that providing health insurance to all Americans is socialism or fascism or Nazism or that there are truly "death squads" in these proposals?
Bridging divides? Pallin' around with terrorists? Serious discussion about policy? Death panels? We can almost imagine Palin's handlers smacking down a big red rubber stamp on Ken Morris's application: REJECTED.
That brings us to our second candidate, dubbed c***i by the Ebay alias assignment team, and known to those in the outside world as Joe McGinniss. McGinniss, also an author by trade is best known for his books The Selling of the President about Richard Nixon, and Going to Extremes, about Alaska, oil and the 1970s pipeline boom. McGinniss is an outspoken critic of Palin, evidenced most recently by his article for Conde Nast's Portfolio entitled Pipe Dreams, which cast a critical eye on Palin's handling of the ever-elusive Alaska gasline. McGinniss is currently working on a book whose focus will be the ex-governor herself.
McGinniss, hoping to win the auction had the high bid at one point close to the end. The amount was a whopping $60,101.01, and he was willing to go higher. And then something interesting happened. The Alaska Dispatch came out with a story identifying McGinniss as one of the bidders. When the unsuspecting c***i went to place his next bid in the amount of $60,301.01, he was met with this message:
Despite his previous pre-approval, this dreams of sniping the auction were dashed. McGinniss was unapproved, with only an hour to go, and the brief and glorious career of c***i was cut off at the knees. Presumably this untimely freeze-out allowed the Palin camp to avoid future embarrassment.
Can anyone in the Palin camp feel any kind of emotion that even resembles embarrassment? I mean, that would actually entail having some kind of moral compass, wouldn't it?
---Vitelius
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