The news media have chosen to focus on Sarah Palin’s appeal as a pop icon without any discussion of her competence — or lack thereof — as a politician. This ‘Entertainment Tonight’-ing of politicians is an astonishing and laughable disservice to the American people, irrespective of their political affiliation.

However insidious they have been, I have to hand it to the members of her team for establishing this ingenious interim niche between her loss in 2008 and the foregone conclusion that is her 2012 campaign for the big seat. Have no illusions, Palin is a politician, politicking daily. She’s simply starting her campaign early. Yet most people’s appreciation for her did not stem from her negligible work — output as governor. They appreciate her because she sells obtuse political perspectives that are easy to understand and make everyone a hero. We’re going to get that pesky government out of your life, cut spending, reduce taxes, eliminate corporate oversight and let YOU save America. Yet, of course, she never mentions her unpopular plan to expand policies that concentrate an outrageous portion of America’s wealth with the wealthiest 1 percent.

Why the hell isn’t the mainstream media tearing her apart for promising the impossible? Entertain this analog’s circumstance: If your significant other cheats on you and omits this truth by never mentioning that he or she cheated, this person isn’t lying to you, but he or she might as well have. The damage is the same. Palin is omitting extremely important large-scale objectives in her agenda and getting away with all of it because nobody in the media is treating her like a politician.

I resolve: Palin’s new reality television show, ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska,’ should be canceled on the grounds that it dangerously derails from and is entirely irrelevant to, ideologically speaking, her role as a politician.

Maxwell Bay

Senior in the College of Arts and Sciences