Garcia Media Life

There’s some kind of life lesson here but I’m still trying to figure out what it is. But I do believe Dancing with the Stars has just edged out Iowa as the first contest in the 2012 Presidential election season.

Four times in a row now, Bristol Palin has finished last in the dance competition in the view of the judges. Three of those times, “fan” voting by phone, texting and particularly via the internet, has kept her alive and moving into the next round. Now she’s in the finals.

The august polling organization run by the Washington Post and ABC News has officially weighed in on how the American public believes Bristol’s populist miracle is happening. Some 54% think Bristol is the beneficiary of large-scale voting by viewers who support her mother- author, cable TV star, commentator, public speaker, and potential Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. Only 14% think she’s gotten to the finals on her own dancing merits. The sane people, of course, are the 20% who have no opinion and hung up on the interviewer.

There are a few conservative bloggers/talk show hosts who claim, unashamedly, that, yes they are urging people to vote and vote often, like Chicago. In fact, one of them, says this is all Republican payback for years of Democratic shenanigans at the polls.

Meantime this has become an actual “cause” for the Palin family. Bristol, in a snippet that aired on last night’s show, says “It sucks people still don’t think I deserve to be here. There are a lot of haters out there just waiting for me to fail. This just gives me that much more motivation to prove them wrong.”

And Momma Grizzly, is, predictably, fighting fiercely for her bear cub. Appearing on Sean Hannity’s cable show on Fox News, Sarah put it this way-

For me, it’s, ‘You’re right, honey, you might as well dance and fly and soar and surf and speak about issues that are important to this country.’ We might as well do it, and we’ll take that criticism, because we know that, at the end of the day, truly, being committed to a cause is worth it.

I’m not sure what statement it makes “about issues that are important to this country” when Bristol Palin dances a “jive” in a gorilla suit, but I’m sure it’s significant on some level.

So as for life lessons to be learned from this experience:

1) It’s difficult to get out of a famous parent’s long shadow.
2) It pays to have your mom have over 300,000 friends on Facebook.
3) Who cares what people think as long as you’re having fun dancing, flying, soaring and surfing.
4) This is all great training for the nation’s next hit TV competition- “America’s Prom Queen.”

It’s now official. There is nothing in this world that is immune from the taint of politics. And short of the inexplicable ending of the Mayan calendar in 2012, this is all the next closest sign that the apocalypse is approaching.