Palin's Mrs. Oswald Moment

The dots connect between Sarah Palin's self-absorbed interview on the Tuscon shootings and the response of Lee Harvey Oswald's mother after the death of her son who killed JFK and was gunned down two days later.

In Washington to testify before the Warren Commission investigating the assassination, Mrs. Oswald told reporters she was miffed about not being invited to the White House by Lady Bird Johnson.

"After all," Mrs. Oswald reasoned, "her husband became President and my son died in the same incident."

Now Palin tells Fox News, “Peaceful dissent and discussion about ideas, that is what makes America exceptional. We won’t allow that to be stifled by a tragic event in Arizona.”

All this is a kind of eerie reversion to the gruesome old joke, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?"

Mrs. Oswald's "incident" and Palin's "tragic event" come from the same egomaniacal cloth in situations where shamed silence might have been more appropriate. Or as Conservative commentator Joe Scarborough puts it:

"We get it, Sarah Palin. You’re not morally culpable for the tragic shooting in Tucson, Ariz....even if we were stunned that you would whine about yourself on Facebook as a shattered family prepared to bury their 9-year-old girl."

But Palin is having none of that. "I am not going to sit down," she says. "I am not going to shut up."

In the name of sweet reason, let's hope she keeps that promise. Mother Oswald would have been proud, and the rest of us will be pleased to see Palin upholding her tradition.

Update: "Palin Shoots Herself in the Foot," say pollsters: "So with a strong majority of Americans thinking that Palin had no responsibility for the shootings and almost half of them thinking the media mistreats her, she was in a more sympathetic position with voters across the country last week than she had found herself in a long time. And then she made the video..."