Jennifer Harper: Mean and Meaner

*
From Jennifer Harper's "Inside the Beltway" column in Tuesday's edition of The Washington Times:

She's got breast implants. Her eye color was altered. She's airbrushed. Look at that tacky flag pin. Her political endorsement is the kiss of death, she's illiterate - and so on, and so forth. The bashing just gets more petty, as evidenced by the shrill outpouring after publisher Harper/Collins offered a sneak peek at the cover of Sarah Palin's upcoming book, "America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag."

Wait a minute. Mrs. Palin's portrait is not provocative. She wears a gray sweater, and is tastefully made up. She's friendly, and yes, there's evidence of - OMG - shocking patriotic jewelry. The book won't be out until Nov. 23. Still, she remains a target for churlish criticism. Why?

"Oh, that's easy enough. We basically like people who are similar to us. And to her critics, Sarah Palin is not similar. She is not Ivy League, she is not an intellectual, she is not a product of Northeastern establishment schools, she is everything that her critics are not, and as a result, they attack," says Manhattan marketing analyst John Tantillo.

"And Palin's critics don't understand that her appeal is to the general public. Not to them, not to the elite. And they are not trustful of that, they are not comfortable with that. They want someone who can write 10,000 weighty words on global warming, rather than give five terse and pithy talking points on why we should drill in ANWR," Mr. Tantillo adds.

- JP