LITTLE ROCK — When Republican convention flacks released pull quotes from Mike Huckabee's speech earlier in the week - before he actually spoke, but without bothering to embargo them - they conspicuously left out the Madonna joke.
Straining for a metaphor for the Sarah Palin feeding frenzy that seemed to be, in terms of convention-wrecking, Gustav's second coming, Huckabee experienced an epiphany of the funny bone, as he does.
He padded his convention speech with an allusion between what he called the tacky reporting of Labor Day weekend to backstage costume changes at a Material Girl show, even though Madonna hasn't dressed all that outrageously since Bush the First. (Nope, nothing tacky about having "Redneck Woman" Gretchen Wilson caterwaul the national anthem; she wears camo and rides four-wheelers in her music videos.)
But Huckabee was right. In fact, Internet chatterers seemed to be struggling to write a collective thesis on Sarah Palin as the new Bill Clinton. She prefers hockey mom; they called her a snowbilly - shades of Clinton the hayseed. (As for pejorative labels, calling her McCain's "Trophy Vice," while clever, was the most Madonna-andthe-cone-bra.)
Democrats finally found a reason to spike "Troopergate" in the other direction. She's a relative unknown from an unknowable A-state. In that high school hockey player her daughter led around by the hand Wednesday night, she had her himbo eruption.
Armchair veep vetters would say it's all material, girl. But Huckabee had a point about the media, or at least the Fourth Estate's supply of the demands of Web trollers who found all those Photoshop jobs of Palin in kittenish high heels and microminiskirts so easy to believe. (Fashionistas, meanwhile, are looking at real pictures and dismissing her as a "Lenscrafter model.")
Even the camera operators on the convention floor seemed to have a sharper agenda than their peers a week earlier in Denver. They found the protester being scooted up the stairs by guys in riot gear.
The angle over Palin's shoulder that encompassed the teleprompter crawl seemed to bea sly jab at Republican calculation and prepackaging; Barack Obama was teleprompted, too, after all.
Once Todd, so-called "first dude," passed Trig off to Trig's sister, the cowlick smooth heard 'round the world was politically benign but irresistably instantreplay worthy. That reactionshot collector probably got a bonus check from CNN.
Not so benign: the cameraman who rooted out the "Hoosiers for the Hot Chick" lapel pin. And it's no secret Republicans have a cool-celebrity deficit. (Or that they've found a way to make hay from it, suggesting that Obama is as dismissable as Paris Hilton, who once decamped to the Arkansas hills to demonstrate that The Simple Life was worth dabbling at but not leading.) When the cameras found country singer Joe Nichols in the crowd, the thoughts came in this order: Hey - he's from Arkansas! Hey - remember how he sang at Anna NicoleSmith's funeral? (Or, as Huckabee might call it, requiem for the hot chick.)
Palin-Biden is the corollary we're supposed to draw, but, the woman-on-the-stage set piece is more engaging. Would Hillary ever call herself gal, or a pit bull in lipstick, as Palin did? Peggy Noonan doesn't think so: Once she was off-camera but still on-microphone last week, the speechwriter-turned-pundit derided Palin's candidacy as Republican pandering to the new American obsession: "political bull**** about narratives."
At least Noonan had the decorum to say "excuse me" beforeswearing. That's probably the most decorum we can expect until mid-November, as campaign-season proper devolves into the hedonistic dressing room of the overheated Huckabee imagination. Quick, can someone lick her hand, pat us on the head and wake us when it's over?
They said it Recent quotes of note "Go Go Cut Toe!" - message on marquee sign on Little Rock's Damgoode Pies, a phonetic cheer for Project Runway contestant and Mabelvale resident Korto Momolu, who helpfully provides a pronunciation guide to her name on a dryerase board in the contestants' shared living quarters on the Bravo show.
"Yeah, oh, obviously, yeah." - Glenwood native Clark Duke, answering the softball question "So, you're super-multitalented?" in a YouTube interview to promote his next movie, the teen road-trip comedy Sex Drive, opening in October. Clark describes his character as "overconfident." "Well, he's no Billy Bob." - Friday Night Lights actress Connie Britton, recalling her reaction to being cast opposite Kyle Chandler in the television version when Billy Bob Thornton had played her football-coaching husband in the movie version, in a special-features interview on the new second-season DVD set of the NBC series.
High Profile, Pages 47, 50 on 09/07/2008