This is just about my favorite story from the whole campaign, so kudos to Jeanne Cummings of the Politico for breaking it yesterday.
It's both ghastly and hilarious, $150,000 on clothes and make up in less than a month -- the same month the American economy collapsed, by the bye. Or, as Sam Stein of HuffPo put it:
During a week in which the Republican ticket is trying to highlight its connection to the working class - and, by extension, promoting its newest campaign tool, Joe the Plumber - it was revealed that Palin's fashion budget for several weeks was more than four times the median salary of an American plumber ($37,514). To put it another way: Palin received more valuable clothes in one month than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. A Democrat put it in even blunter terms: her clothes were the cost of health care for 15 or so people.
I sometimes don't like hypothetical comparative, but this is one of those times when you can truly say: just imagine if Hillary and the DNC had done this.
This woman is not merely stupid but sick, pathologically unmoored in some way I can't identify. What sort of person, running for public office and giving speeches about how she's just a regular Joe/Joan who understands what regular families go through, accepts $3,500 jackets? This is way beyond my comprehension.
As Stein notes, the real effect of this story, I think, will be to demoralize/se Republicans. Letterman and Leno et alia, take it away! You've just had the rest of your week handed to you.
