For pure schmaltz, you'd be hard-pressed to cook up a sweeter, fattier dish than the Thanksgiving-themed “Thank You, Sarah Palin” TV ad that just finished airing on cable in the Lower 48 (with extra airings in Alaska).
Listening to the adoring chorus singing the vice presidential candidate's praises – “As Americans sit down to their Thanksgiving dinner of turkey or moose, a grateful nation wishes to thank you for your passionate, hopeful and articulate advocacy of common-sense conservative values” – I found myself asking one question: Who are these people?
Who are these disciples assembled in a Sacramento studio saying things like, “Thank you for the grace and dignity you showed, even when some tried to smear and destroy you”?
Who spends a hundred grand to send a smarmy TV valentine to a politician who the majority of voting Americans, many of them Republicans, believed was a good reason not to vote for John McCain?
As I was mulling this question, a familiar, very familiar, North County face popped up on the screen, saying: “At a time when so many politicians seemed to have let us down, you've given us hope. We just wanted to say . . . ”
The ad then cuts to dozens of people on a stage shouting, “Thank you, Sarah Palin!”
Right in the middle of the group shot was that same well-known local mug.
Really, I shouldn't have been surprised.
Termed out of the state Assembly in 2000, Carlsbad's Howard Kaloogian is the Energizer Bunny of hot-button conservative causes.
Kaloogian helped jump-start the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis; led the pro-war protest against Cindy Sheehan's anti-Bush vigil in Crawford, Texas; organized the pro-military Move America Forward; and formed the Defend Reagan Committee that protested the broadcast of a TV movie about his hero. As an attorney, he recently has represented local members of the Minuteman Project in a legal dispute with Caltrans.
So it makes sense that Kaloogian would leap into the presidential race, serving as chairman of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which spent about $1.5 million attacking Sen. Barack Obama. Kaloogian's PAC produced arguably the toughest negative TV ads of the campaign, focusing on former domestic terrorist William Ayers and the fire-breathing Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The PAC also sponsored a “Stop Obama” bus tour in October.
After the election, Kaloogian was sitting around with other PAC officials, sharing outrage about the ongoing attacks on Palin, many from within the McCain campaign.
The GOP appeared lost in a tempest, and Palin was the lightning rod. Never McCain fans, Kaloogian & Co. decided to send a message.
“We wanted to thank Governor Palin for standing up for Middle America,” Kaloogian told me last week. “She inspired so many people.”
Kaloogian could think of no other instance when a losing candidate received this sort of TV thank-you gesture.
“I can't think of a time. I think it's a first,” he said. “There's a place for gratitude in politics.”
Kaloogian has never met Palin and, as of last week, hadn't received a “you're welcome” note from the Alaska governor. The PAC has no ulterior motive other than expressing gratitude and reassuring Palin-loving conservatives that they are not alone.
“I've been the receiver and the deliverer of negative ads,” Kaloogian said.
His PAC's tough anti-Obama ads notwithstanding, Kaloogian believes Palin was unfairly pilloried by the media and that she deserves thanks for leaving the friendly confines of Alaska and enduring the onslaught “with grace and style.”
Weeks after the election, Palin remains the comely face that launched a thousand late-night jokes.
The well-exposed TV footage of Palin the Pardoner blithely chatting to a reporter as turkeys are unceremoniously slaughtered in the background has inspired guffaws from Nome to Rome.
Even the “Thank You, Sarah Palin” ad has inspired a smirky YouTube parody in which young liberals offer their gratitude: “We're thankful that you were so awful that Indiana and Ohio voted for a black guy,” and “Thank you, Sarah, for setting the GOP back so far back that it may never recover.”
For PACs of wolves on both sides of the politico-cultural divide, Palin is a mother lode of emotion, positive and negative.
At the rate he's going, Kaloogian as right-wing provocateur may rival Joe Hill. You'll recall the classic ballad dedicated to the ghost of the IWW troubadour:
From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill
Where working men defend their rights,
It's there you'll find Joe Hill.
Only the final verse to “The Ballad of Howard K” might read like this:
From San Diego to Alaska,
In the middle of the fray
Where patriots defend the flag
It's there you'll find Howard K.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
