Clarice Feldman: Cave of the Mama Grizzly

Her very life is dragging them into the sunshine
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And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer, "Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?" - Socrates

Here's another must-read, this time from Clarice Feldman at American Thinker. It's the Allegory of the Cave of the Mama Grizzly:

It was my online friend narciso, the pen name of a brilliant commenter on the day's events, who first summed up this week's folderol over Sarah Palin. "One is struck," he noted, " by how much Plato's 'Tale of the Cave' seems to fit this paradigm ... Those that only follow the networks, or the Times or USA Today, even, are always 'unexpectedly surprised,' when reality doesn't match the paradigm they've assimilated by osmosis."

There was a lot of sage stuff online trying to explain what happened and why to Sarah Palin this week, and although I'll mention some of the best analysis I found, my own belief is that the vicious treatment of her stems as much as anything from the discordant feelings she inspires as she takes media prisoners out of their mental cave and into the bright sun and exposes the puppeteers as fools and knaves.

I'm sure you all studied at one time in your lives Plato's Allegory of the Cave, but to refresh your memory: prisoners in a dark cave are forced by their bindings to look only straight ahead to the wall in front of them, on which puppeteers project images of things and people. These projections form the only reality the prisoners know. Only when a prisoner is released from his bonds does he see the sleight of hand -- the puppeteers and all their paraphernalia. As he climbs out of the cave into the bright sunlight he is temporarily blinded, his eyes having for so long been accustomed to the dark. The ex-prisoner is understandably frightened and bewildered by this new world. And he must learn to see what is around him without the puppeteers' filtering. But it is only then, after this uncomfortable journey into the bright and unfamiliar world around him, that the prisoner finally can think and understand, that he can appreciate what is real and true from that which is artificial and contrived.

In my view, the media tarring of Sarah Palin respecting the Tucson tragedy is an event which -- perhaps not this week, but soon enough -- will be remembered for having exposed the political class and cultural elites as the puppeteers projecting their own ignorance and violent hatred of Sarah onto her. Those who uncritically followed the media will come to see that they have spent too much time in the cave and need to get out into the sunshine and face some realities...

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- JP