Ana Marie Cox takes on the Sarah Palin pro-Duggar family tirade.

Now I am not sure how many of you know this, but I am a big fan of Ana Marie Cox.

I started to follow her back when she started Wonkette, and I have kept up with her various TV appearances and written contributions ever since.

So when I saw that she was weighing in on the Palin debacle I knew I would need to share it with all of you.

Here is a portion of a much longer article:  

By now you may have read Sarah Palin’s florid attack on Lena Dunham. She and her daughter Bristol both attempted the same pathetic sleight-of-hand to distract from the ongoing grotesquerie of the Duggar family values. Go take a look, if you have time and can get past the all-caps intro. The caps-lock key is the Palin family's rhetorical open-carry, deployed in the mistaken belief that it makes the bearer seem more formidable, when really it underscores the weakness of the case. 

Sarah’s tirade in particular radiates schoolyard smugness, the smirk of a lunchroom bully who thinks she’s scored a sick burn on the class nerd—she doesn’t just think she’s made a devastating point, she’s already figuratively turning around to accept high-fives from her pals.

Yeah Ana Marie does not pull any punches here. 

Cox goes onto differentiate between what Josh Duggar did to his sisters and the more innocent, and far more common, exploration that Dunham did when she was a young child.

But then Cox expands her piece to address the fact that it seems some conservatives are now making outlandish statements in an attempt to attract media attention, and that it seems they find their credibility among their own through a shared sense of victimhood.

A victimization by the way that they perceive as coming from the very "liberal" media sources whose attention they are so desperate to attract.

To illustrate that point further Cox turns back to Palin: 

What does Sarah Palin’s own fame stand on now these days, anyway? A caps-lock key and a sense of grievance. It’s not much, but these days, it’s all any conservative celebrity needs. Ironically, it’s their grievance that makes them worthy of attention from the mainstream media as well. The Duggars’ and Palins’ off-the-map political and world views are what draw attention. Outsiders want to stare at the spectacle.

It is not a new observation, we have made it here on IM ourselves several times in fact, but one has to admit that as the public and media tire of the spectacle, people like Sarah Palin become ever more willing to say and do things simply to shock with no recognition of the damage that it does to what is left of their brand.

Sarah Palin FINALLY reveals her true self on @VanityFair's new cover. @SarahPalinUSA @Caitlyn_Jenner #CaitlynJenner pic.twitter.com/AUE8mvyQHX

— Pin Head (@TomAdelsbach) June 6, 2015

Back in 2009 we used to entertain ourselves by imagining what the end of Sarah Palin's career might look like. Back then it was all just fun and games, but seeing it today in stark reality is actually a little sickening.

Sarah Palin has not simply diminished herself into becoming a punchline on late night TV. She is now the punchline that the host can barely bring himself to share.

And what is even more disturbing is that she has somehow led many of her fellow conservatives down the very same path.