Authenticity, not audacity

Stanley Fish goes rogue in a NY bookstore:

When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life." She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.

He finds, as have so many others, that Sarah Palin is for real:

I find the voice undeniably authentic (yes, I know the book was written “with the help” of Lynn Vincent, but many books, including my most recent one, are put together by an editor). It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety. It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustain us?

Many of us do. And we share her brand of hope, which is also for real:

“We’ve been through amazing days, and really, there wasn’t one thing to complain about. I feel such freedom, such hope, such thankfulness for our country, a place where nothing is hopeless."

One of the greatest and bitterest ironies of Obama, and they could fill a book, is that our self-appointed Prophet of Hope trades on, and must cultivate, the hopelessness of those most in need of genuine hope, not the "hope" that only the government can save them.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin, who called attention to Fish's piece in her account of her own meeting with Sarah and family.

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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