Sarah's Got A Gun

Disclaimer: I have not watched Sarah Palin's Alaska. I don't have cable, for one, and for another, I really don't like reality tv. I'm more a fan of police procedurals and adult cartoons. It's just a general preference of mine.

That being out of the way, I'm fascinated by this article regarding Palin's hunting expedition on her last episode. Palin has expressed in the past her love of hunting and eating tasty animals. It's really been a fair-sized chunk of how she represents her background....and yet:

Among the basic items of protocol blithely ignored by Palin as she set off into the wilderness in a Rambo-style headband was her failure to take practice shots, or check the sights of the rifle, which duly turned out to be off-kilter. She failed to carry her own weapon, relying on her elderly father and his companion, Steve, to lug it around. When a beast eventually wandered into range, Ms Palin left Chuck Snr to load the rifle, and discharge spent bullet casings.

"What a joke," wrote one viewer on Palin's Facebook page. "I was a fan before the show. No one who is a true hunter lets others carry their rifle or can't load their own shells. Sarah, you are a phony."

I'm a city girl, so I can't comment on hunting, and you won't get any criticisms about killing for food from me, either. My husband is a meat cutter, and our country cousins raise and slaughter their own livestock. I think "canned hunts" and killing solely for sport are inhumane, but I'm under no illusions about where meat comes from. I don't have an issue with her hunting as such--

I do have an issue with using hunting as a way of signifying her cultural bona fides if it isn't really her thing, though. It's like she used the caribou to do a little stage-piece about how she, too, could kill big things, and didn't think experienced hunters would notice how she was doing it.

It's like a metaphor for how she creates her image. She sets her crooked sights on a large thing, takes bad aim with a borrowed rifle, and misses a few times. And then....the criticism comes, the part she never really seems to anticipate.