January 23, 2011

Allegory of the Cave of the Mama Grizzly

By Clarice Feldman
It was my online friend narciso, the pen name of a brilliant commenter on the day's events, who first summed up this week's folderol over Sarah Palin.  "One is struck," he noted,  " by how much Plato's 'Tale of the Cave' seems to fit this paradigm ... Those that only follow the networks, or the Times or USA Today, even, are always 'unexpectedly surprised,' when reality doesn't match the paradigm they've assimilated by osmosis."There was a lot of sage stuff online trying to explain what happened and why to Sarah Palin this week, and although I'll mention some of the best analysis I found, my own belief is that the vicious treatment of her stems as much as anything from the discordant feelings she inspires as she takes media prisoners out of their mental cave and into the bright sun and exposes the puppeteers as fools and knaves.I'm sure you all studied at one time in your lives Plato's Allegory of the Cave, but to refresh your memory: prisoners in a dark...(Read Full Article)