Michelle Cottle Reads Sarah Palin’s Book So You Don’t Have To

Michelle Cottle at the Daily Beast did the dirty work, so we are now free. And isn’t freedom great?  Now you can spend the money you would have spent on the book on a gift for the ACLU, or to a homeless shelter so those without can have a better Christmas. A better one than they would have had by reading this book.

Don’t misunderstand. Palin’s book is neither well-written nor informative on either a political or a theological level. She does what plenty before her have done: scour the news for any cases of holiday-themed lawsuits or political scuffles, even ones where Christmas emerges triumphant, and whip them into a towering soufflé of proof that Jesus’s, and maybe even Santa’s, days are numbered. Her favorite conceit is to weave unconnected news snippets into over-the-top fantasy sequences—some set in the future! That allows her to mash up real-world episodes with more baroque scenarios sprung from the fever swamps of her imagination (like the lad docked points for using the word “Christmas” in a school essay), jack up the outrage factor with moralizing dialogue, and then proclaim: See, it’s all really happening!

But to focus on Palin’s narrative or polemic gifts is to miss the point. The book is not, as the subtitle maternally suggests, about “Protecting the Heart of Christmas.” As with pretty much everything the former governor does, this is all about Venting the Spleen of Sarah. And that’s what makes it so gosh darn refreshing. Screw those treacly holiday offerings aiming to melt your heart or lift your spirits. Dickens? Bah, humbug. It’s a Wonderful Life? Sentimental swill. That tear-jerking “Christmas Shoes” song so nakedly exploitative that it makes you want to take a blowtorch to your ears? ’Nuff said. Good Tidings and Great Joy gives the finger to all that, offering instead Palin at her toxic best: snippy, snarky, snide, and thoroughly pissed off.

From the first chapter, it is clear that, whatever her concerns about “a Christ-less Christmas,” Palin has found a convenient frame on which to hang her rage at pretty much everything: Obamacare, Obamaphones, Nancy Pelosi, the national debt, gay marriage, sexual sin, crony capitalism, the preferential treatment of Muslims (whoo-wee! does she get rolling on that one), the lamestream media, Chick-fil-A haters, abortion, Mitt Romney’s hair, and on and on. No liberal stereotype, from Birkenstocks to the French, vegans, and NPR, is too tired to sneer at. She goes so far as to close her first chapter helpfully with a rant against those who claim the entire war on Christmas “conversation” is “the result of hypersensitivity, intolerance, or—their favorite criticism for us ‘bitter clingers’—ignorance and fear of change. (See how I did that?

I just summarized 90 percent of the book reviews for my critics, so they don’t even have to read the rest. You betcha, I helped you out!)

Thanks, Michelle.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.