More Rage From PDS Baltimore Sun Columnist

Attention Baltimore area paramedics! Please monitor the poll returns on election day in November. If the McCain/Palin team turn out to be victorious, you will have to make an emergency trip to the home of Baltimore Sun columnist, Susan Reimer. As chronicled a few weeks ago by your humble correspondent, Reimer is in the throes of extreme PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome). Here is but one example of her deranged rantings at the beginning of September:

You want to look good to the evangelicals? Choose a running mate with a Down syndrome child.

Such foulness of thought earned Reimer well deserved castigation from normal people which, in turn, caused her to loudly whine about the complaints in the form of over 8200 angry comments, 700 e-mails, and 50 phone calls. Break out your hankies as you read the self-pity that oozed out of Reimer last month:

A handful of people wrote to say that I had captured exactly their reaction to the Palin nomination. But the rest of the responses were vehement or venomous... And more than 316,000 people viewed the column on The Baltimore Sun Web site. That number - more than 100 times the attention I normally receive - actually frightened me.

...The things that were said about me, my personal appearance and my children - as well as Barack Obama - were beyond the bounds of decency, and many were said in language that might only be seen in a bathroom stall.

Generally, the comments were not made behind the veil of anonymity the Internet can provide. The writers signed their names. And they revealed what I think has become the bare-knuckles nature of our national conversation.

So much pent-up anger, so much barely concealed hate was released in those e-mails and those postings. I wonder where next they will find a vent.

It is still two months until the presidential election. Things could get really rough out there.

Boo-hoo! Anyway, Reimer seemed somewhat chastened after that experience as she put her PDS mostly on hold and posted a series of comparatively innocuous columns on such topics as whether infidelity is genetic and wedding preparations. However, boiling just below the surface all this time was Reimer's irrational rage against Palin and it has finally exploded in her latest column:

We are cringing because one of our sisters is dying like a bad comic on open-mike night, and we can barely stand to look.

We are watching one of our own under the klieg lights, and that overwrought sense of empathy that is a woman's gift and curse is causing our mouths to go dry and our stomachs to tighten.

Whatever your politics, you are rooting for Sarah Palin not to, as Queen Latifah said on Saturday Night Live, "cry, faint, run out of the room or vomit."

SARAH PALIN!!!

I watched Sarah Palin debate Joe Biden and I had to remind myself to breathe. I kept waiting for the screeching tires and the busting glass.

Seventy million television viewers - 20 million more than watched the first presidential debate - tuned in, and it wasn't to hear her thoughts on Wall Street oversight. Like NASCAR fans, they were waiting for the car to slam into the wall.

Before the debate was over, I felt like I was watching Legally Blonde III: The Campaign, during which spunkiness triumphs over substance again.

SLOOOOOWLY I TURNED...

Palin likes to play the Joe Sixpack Everyman card, and there is no doubt this multi-tasking mother of five knows more about what is going on in the average American family than any of the men on either ticket. She gets it because she lives it.

Women are saying this is the reason they like her. She is one of us.

But I don't want anybody like me to be vice president.

Don't worry, Susan. Someone completely unlike you will be vice president.

I want an Ivy League education. Maybe a Rhodes scholarship. How about a law degree or an MBA or a divinity degree? I want military service or a career in corporate or government leadership or in the diplomatic corps.

These are really scary times, and I want leaders with solid-gold resumes. I want intellectual heft. I want somebody way smarter than me.

Good news! You got somebody way smarter than you.

I am not elitist, I am nervous. And I don't want as vice president a car-pooling mom who runs a state like a part-time job and who can't find her way from a subject to a predicate.

Not elitist? You're sure doing a great impression of one.

I want somebody who can do more than find 50 ways to use maverick in a sentence. I want somebody who can actually pitch in and help the next president find his way out of wars on two fronts, a recession and a health care crisis - just for starters.

STEP BY STEP...

Her chirpy meandering through the issues reminds me of Cher in the classroom debate on television violence in the movie Clueless.

INCH BY INCH... And remember, paramedics, please bring a leather strap for her to bite down on and restraining ropes to tie poor Susan down to the stretcher as you transport her on the way to the rubber room.

Bonus feature...Here are a few of the many comments on Susan Reimer's apparently incurable PDS:

Your jealous, envy deep hatred toward Governor Palen has now become pathological. You need help and the bosses at the "paper" need to give you some time off BEFORE you hurt some one or something seriosly. How low will a declining so called newspaper go before it realizes it is moribund and try to meet the needs of the community it "serves.'

Susan,Susan, Susan! I realize that this column is an attempt to generate more buzz for the Sun, but you really need to think for yourself. The only reason you reject Sarah is that she isn't a liberal democrat.

I really get tired of the liberal/socialists and their constant whining. Have you listened to Biden? Not only is he out of touch (hey Joe the diner closed 18 years ago), and makes dozens of errors (lies?) but he used this exact statement to discribe Obama less than a year ago (no experience, no voting record, lots of 'strange' friends). Susan, I'm sure you could have paraleled the two, except Palin has run a government and Obama has run acorn.

I've always wished that Susan Reimer had more education, too, and work and life experience to be a more well-rounded columnist. But as it is, she has just enough to be the perfect liberal ultra-feminist, one-trick-pony hack that cannot see beyond the cup of Kool Aid she's been drinking--and spewing at Sun readers--for many years.

And if McCain/Palin is victorious in November, you will have to serve Reimer that cup of Kool Aid through the slot of her personal rubber room.

SLOOOOWLY I TURNED...