Before she was the GOP Vice-Presidential candidate, before she was Governor of Alaska, and even before she was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin was quoted in the Anchorage Daily News, and this quote gives us an insight into her psychology and her desires.

According to the Anchorage Daily News, in April, 1996, Ivana Trump visited Anchorage, Alaska, and Sarah Palin was there to get Ms. Trump's autograph:

Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana.

And there, at J.C. Penney's cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist.

''We want to see Ivana,'' said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, ''because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.''

Imagine the reaction if someone from California or New York said this.  This would seem to be a knock at Alaskans (and, probably by extension, rural people everywhere), suggesting that they are neither glamorous enough nor cultured enough for Sarah Palin's tastes.  This is the same Sarah Palin who is now being positioned against "the cultural elite" of Washington, New York, and California--the very same cultural elite she appears to have been starstruck about twelve years ago.

Of course, her December, 2007 photoshoot in Vogue Magazine suggests the same thing: she wants to be part of the cultural elite that she criticizes.  She wants to be glamorous.

This is the same campaign that mocked Senator Obama, comparing him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as "celebrities".  Ivana Trump is a celebrity in much the same way Paris Hilton is--for her marriage and subsequent divorce from Donald Trump than anything else.  Both are famous for being famous, and not much more.

I get the feeling that Sarah Palin 1996 would have been as starstruck if Paris Hilton 2007 had visited as if Ivana Trump 1996 did.  Now wouldn't that make an interesting episode of "The Simple Life"?

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Forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere: the Obama campaign has responded to McCain's "Celeb" ad, and it's kind of awesome.

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Road to 60 candidate Ronnie Musgrove of Mississippi gets it.

"Even Paris Hilton has a better energy plan than Roger Wicker," Musgrove said in the statement. "Roger Wicker has been in Washington for 14 years, gas prices have gone up and he's done nothing until now, right before his election." [emphasis added]

That's not so hard. Yes, politics is about issues, yes it's about substance -- but it's also about imagery, and capturing the attention and imagination of voters. A whole lot of people have heard or seen Paris Hilton's smackdown of John McCain on energy (close to 6 million on the original site, plus countless more as the message was replayed on the cable nets), so there's no reason to pretend that it's not out there. Why not go ahead and use it to our advantage as Musgrove does here and call the Republicans out for stupidly demagoguing on the issue?

If you want to reward the good behavior, head over to Act Blue and make a $5.01 contribution today to let the Musgrove campaign, as well as other Democrats, know how you feel.

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Paris Hilton's stinging rebuke of McCain's "celebrity" ad -- all the more stinging because she expressed more coherence on energy policy in a few seconds than McCain has during the whole campaign -- has caused quite a stir. In under 2 days, the video has now racked up 4,317,326 views, the post over at Funny or Die has 1,468 comments and the McCain campaign felt compelled to respond to the very person they caricatured as so vacuuous just days before.

Via Matt Stoller:

Due to the extraordinary number of inquiries, please see our campaign's response to Paris Hilton's recently released video in which she puts forward her version of an energy plan:

"It sounds like Paris Hilton supports John McCain's 'all of the above' approach to America's energy crisis - including both alternatives and drilling.  Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan." ---Tucker Bounds, spokesman John McCain 2008  

Tucker Bounds

But as Matt says, McCain's concept of compromise -- this "all of the above" claptrap -- is not all of the above at all. For while Barack has said he would support some off-shore drilling as part of a comprehensive energy compromise, John McCain still won't budge on what to him appears to be the dealbreaker with the Gang of 10 compromise: raising taxes on oil companies.

dday elaborates:

But McCain has already gone on the record against the Gang of 10 compromise:

A spokesman for Sen. McCain said that while he "applauds the bipartisan effort," he wouldn't support the proposal because "he cannot and will not support legislation that raises taxes."

Which opens up a huge gap for Obama to exploit, when everybody figures out that making oil companies rich(er) is McCain's only objective.

So on both substance and politics, Paris Hilton, with some help from some refreshingly aggressive rhetoric and advertising from Barack Obama and a media that's itching for a fight, has knocked John McCain back on his heels.

From Chris Bowers:

They have gotten into a spat with Paris Hilton, which there is basically no way to win. Hilton has nothing to lose, and the back and forth just highlights the frivolic idiocy of McCain's recent attacks. [...]

McCain is going to be on the defensive now, even though he started the attack in the first place.

Umm, thanks, Paris.

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As a former Clinton die hard, well, actually, I am still, but I am over that, I was ready to go ahead, let bygones be bygones, vote for Obama.

My family wore me down, as well, and I always knew I could never vote for McCain and his dogged persistence in following bad policies to their illogical end.

But, lets be honest, the light has not been lit up with soaring rhetoric here lately, more reposturing in the middle for the general election, lots of fluff and nonsense and little memorable in the way of driving specific issues or proposals.

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