Pretty, Pretty, Pretty!

What a pretty speech Ms. Palin gave last night! Pretty Lady is veritably tongue-tied. She can't think of anything at all to say.

Her colleague Deborah can, though:

Sarah Palin delivered a speech last night that was as emotionally powerful as it was chockablock with lies. And I am not [talking] just garden-variety, Lied-To-Get-To-An-Emotional-Truth lies that have been a staple of politics forever. I am talking specific lies that matter in individual bottom lines all over this country. One example about taxes lifted from the AP:

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

Palin just straight-up lied to the American people about their taxes. And her speechwriter felt confident because in this case the lying is being done by someone who mispronounces the word "nuclear" and is otherwise able to flash "not elitist" cred.

First of all, this is a somewhat Baudrillardian confection. It's the substitution for the appearance of something for the thing itself. Instead of an actual, qualified politician, you have a person in glasses and a suit standing in front of a podium and giving a speech.

But it's more pernicious than a straightforward simulacra, because the whole point is that she's "not a politician," and "not elitist."

What Pretty Lady noticed, as she undertook to concentrate upon the flow of confident mendacities issuing forcefully from the podium, was the tone of the undertaking. Underlying the cheerleader enthusiasm, the wholesome hominess, and the lie upon lie upon filthy stinking unbelievable lie, was a palpable spite; a certain vicious malice, if you will. A snideness, exposing a facile, fatuous contempt for the persons and subjects she was so seamlessly lying about.

Pretty Lady has noticed this sort of thing before.

She has noticed that among persons of rigid habits of moral reasoning--those who adhere to the letter but not the spirit of the law--that such spite appears to be absolutely equated with morality. It is as if these persons are unable to access an internal compass of right and wrong without first determining what is Bad, and attacking it. Their sense of evil is an utterly external one; Evil is defined as What Is Over There, What Does Not Look Like Me, and righteously blown away.

Pretty Lady would just like to point out that nowhere in the Ten Commandments can she find the words, "Thou shalt be spiteful." Or even, "Thou shalt obviate compassion, empathy, and the sincere attempt at understanding in all thy worldly interactions, instead viciously assaulting any perceived enemy with jeers, contempt, and lie upon lie upon lie, in order to make thyself feel morally superior."

In fact, she finds the words, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

So tell me, darlings, what is this about? Pretty Lady really wants to know.