So, imagine you are Sarah Palin and in a distracted moment you kinda torture the Paul Revere story in front of a pesky reporter despite your attending six or 12 colleges. The next thing you know, Margaret Thatcher, former Head Babe of the Free World, refuses to have anything to do with you.
That's right. Margaret Thatcher, of all people, a woman you profess to adore and admire and want to meet, treats you, ironically, as if you have Frank Murkowski cooties. Bugger off, she says.
In fact, not only does the Baroness Thatcher see you as akin to a dose of political smallpox or a nasty rash, but an aide tells a snooty London newspaper that chatting you up as you wing your way to the Sudan -- and you're going only because you can see it from your new house -- would be belittling to the old girl and, besides, you are a frivolous nit and quite nuts. Quite nuts, do you hear? Ouch!
Your heart is broken. Why would Thatcher -- a conservative's conservative, the Iron Lady who won our hearts when she cowed the Commie Menace and roughed up trade unions and kicked a patoot or two in the Falklands -- or her friends think that sort of thing? Frivolous? Nuts? Unworthy? Could it have been the Paul Revere thingy or was that just the last straw?
All you said about Revere was: "He who warned uh, the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh by ringing those bells, and um, makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."
It was not all that bad. It was cogent, if a person were to close one eye and squint. On target, at least partly, in a peripheral, accidental sort of way. It was in English, mostly, if in no particular order. Sure, you may have meandered and made it a trifle confusing with the ricochet sentences but it certainly should not have been enough to tick off the Head Babe, unless she is a closet Revere freak. Anything is possible with the English. You know how they are.
Thatcher's friends say the 86-year-old first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom will make a rare public appearance to attend the July 4 unveiling of a Ronald Reagan statue at the American Embassy in London. A Thatcher chum told Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times, "That is her level." Her level? Indeed. If you are Palin, you have to be asking, "So what am I, chopped liver?"
Imagine the disappointment, the hurt. You have been dismissed by perhaps the most recognizable woman of any import in recent history. Here you are, toast of the tea party movement and chum of Donald Trump, and you have been summarily dismissed. You so badly had wanted to cash in on photos of yourself with a smiling, beneficent Thatcher, Reagan's dearest pal on the tumultuous world stage, a woman who would stand her ground while lesser men quaked. Foreign policy creds? Pundits would have gushed: Hey, if Thatcher likes Palin, she must be the real deal.
Pictures like that would have been priceless, the kind that make folks sit up and take notice, that help you proclaim to the world, "Hey, this old geezer was somebody but now it's me, and the Constitution and freedom and our soldiers fighting for better mountains and highways and pastel water fountains."
Those hopes are in the dust bin of history unless somebody gets busy with PhotoShop. Now, if you're Palin, you're just somebody with a garishly painted bus, a knack for drawing cameras like flies and the political instincts of Attila the Hun.
Maybe in a quiet moment you pause to reflect on all the people you have stuck it to in your career, the pettiness, the revenge, the disdain, the meanness. Maybe you wonder what you could have done differently in your political life; how you came to be someone Margaret Thatcher would not bother with; how you came to be No. 1 to only yourself and hangers-on.
But, of course, all of that would require a measure of self-awareness. In your world, it's somebody else's fault and you move on.
Politics, you tell yourself, is a tough gig.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com.
PAUL JENKINS
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