Lies of Palin: Haven't we seen this before?

The blurring of Private and Public entities- on all levels. We're seeing it EVERYWHERE: Palin pregnancy scandals, political lies, government stepping in with the economy, not to mention our sick history with reality TV and celebrealities. Sometimes it's easy to tell what has meaning, and what doesn't.

That's because there is a dynamic between the private and public that parallels the dynamic between surface and depth. Circumstantially, we should be able to parallel each pair, and make sense of our priorities in doing so. What we give weight to might not always deserve it, and this throws off the balance between Private/Public and Surface/Depth, resulting in a paradox where nothing can mean anything. Yes yes, this sounds vague, but we can apply it to something: I respond to Drew's blog Lies of Palin.

In terms of a politician, I want the private issues to be known but not exploited, and the public issues to be addressed. In this circumstance, I give private the surface value, and public the depth value. What a politician did in the past, and in their previous experiences, will weigh more to me than whether or not they got oral in the oval office (per say.)

However, the media, and the Palin campaign has told me the opposite: that I'm expected to give weight and depth to Palin's personal issues. I'm supposed to weigh in, and hop aboard the waiting list on a pair of red pumps? I'm supposed to invest emotional time in yet another unwed and underage pregnant teen? I don't think so. Furthermore, as Drew mentioned in his post Lies of Palin, the issues that SHOULD have been made public weren't, and continue to go unaddressed.

Therefore, in my eyes, Palin has flipped the dynamic, that I expect and value, between private/public and surface/depth. And in doing so, created a paradox; how can I possibly care about "Tina Faye glasses"? So we don't care: and in Palin terms, this just means the Republican party can ignore the facts and keep on keeping-on.

"Wait!" you may be shouting, "Haven't we seen this before?!"

Why yes, we have. A flip in the natural and expected relationships between the private/public and surface/depth happens a lot in literature. We can see some disgusting results of it as well:

Welcome to Jacobean tragedy, folks.... our heroes and villains are set. We see lies and deception everywhere. We are told one thing, and expected to feel intuitively different about it. And in true style, we're seeing the brooding of bad blood get exaggerated, but intercepted, only by the carnage-to-be.

But the best part: we all came to see the bloodshed.