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The pitbull, in lipstick, is back

For those living outside the US it is difficult to come to grips with someone like Sarah Palin. She appears to be shrill, make things up along the way and have a very limited intelligence level. BUT, she seems to have struck a cord with many, many Americans.

She made an appearance at the Tea Party Convention the other day. Joan Walsh, writing in Salon, was far from impressed, as she details here in a piece " The pitbull in lipstick is back!" in pretty robust language:

"Eric Hoffer didn't live to see Tea Party Nation, but I always think of his most famous quote when I'm forced to deal with it: ""Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

I'm not sure the Tea Party cause is a great one, but it's an influential one, and it degenerated into a racket lickety split, in less than a year. This weekend's gathering in Nashville splintered both the Tennessee and the national Tea Party movement, as local go-getter Judson Phillips set up the once-anticipated "convention" as his own for-profit business. We'll have a first-hand report from the racket that paid Sarah Palin more than $100,000 to speak Saturday night. But I can't help weighing in.

Wow. This was the Palin we saw at the 2008 Republican convention, the snarling pitbull in shimmery lipstick. I know journalists aren't supposed to use words like mean and dumb, but I can't help it. Palin is one of the meanest people on the public stage today. She wallows in it. She loves it! Also? Possibly one of the dumbest. But mean works, and so does dumb. And so do lies, and there were many mean, dumb lies in her speech."

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