Please don’t watch the embedded video below yet. Please take this test first:

Are you a fan of Sarah Palin?
Are you a fan of C.S. Lewis?
Do you dislike the mainstream media?

If you answered yes to all three, you are going to have to approach the video below as you would a bottle of 20 year old scotch. Please do not watch it with Christmas music in the background, or on your laptop in front of your TV. Turn off the TV, take the phone off the hook, and sit down and prepare yourself for one of the most welcome and satisfying examples of the idiocy of the mainstream media you have ever seen.

OK, now watch the video.

A better demonstration of out-of-touch elites you could not write.

Chris Mathews, Richard Wolffe, and Jay Newton Small are so steeped in the progressive flippancy about all things Sarah Palin they do not realize the joke is on them. Wolffe, an Oxford grad no less (yes, Lewis’ own beloved Oxford) , beclowns himself spectacularly.  With an eagerness he can barely restrain, he giggles the shockingly uninformed assertion that it’s odd for Palin to read C.S. Lewis for inspiration.

Congratulations you three. We could not have scripted a better demonstration of the ignorance of the mainstream media on things of real importance to middle America. Wolffe says it. Mathews calls him on it–but only inasmuch as to beg off offending Lewis, the author of children’s books. Newton Small har hars along to ratify her ignorance. Oh, and let’s not forget the producer in the booth, the video switchers, the sound men and the others in the headset loop at MSNBC who did not know to whisper into Mathews’ earpiece that he’s serving up a succulent sweet softball of a lob that Sarah and Todd will soon smack back into his facebook.

The mirth displayed by Mathews, Wolffe and Newton Small fairly bubbles over they are so giddy to ridicule this bit of fluff who reads, did you hear her say it?, children’s books for inspiration! Mirth perhaps is the wrong word. Mirth suggests joy. Shared fun. Lightness. No, let’s let Lewis himself describe the behavior of these three who so accurately demonstrate the collective viewpoint of the mainstream media. (From The Screwtape Letters):

Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it.

There’s an energy to flippancy that I think MSNBC likes. They’re not the worst, though. National Public Radio’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” has made flippancy into their sole stock in trade. Jokes about conservatives no longer need to be made.  Just the mention of the name of a prominent conservative will prompt an unimaginative snark: “the less said about that the better” or perhaps “I’ll leave that one alone.”  I fully expect to tune in one afternoon on the way to Home Depot and hear Peter Sagal say one word sentences like “Cheney” and “Palin” as the audience falls out of their seats with joyless laughter.

Lewis continues:

…the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy [God] that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.

It’s that last bit–”no affection between those who practise it”–that is the linchpin of the advantage Sarah Palin has over team Obama. Does anyone imagine for a second that David Axelrod or Robert Gibbs would be at Barack Obama’s side if he were not a vehicle for increasing their wealth and position in the world? Did you hear President Obama as he let Bill Clinton take over his press conference last week? “Gibbs will call last question.” Such an endearing boss.

Contrast this with Sarah Palin’s team. Time magazine describes them thus:

But one clue to the Mystery of Sarah is that her circle of aides looks less like a campaign in the making than a quirky family business in which Palin is the chief product.

This is reassuring. If Time magazine after seeing them all close-up describes them in terms as benign and American as “quirky family business,” we can relax that the hysteria from the left that Sarah Palin is dangerous is exactly that, hysteria.

And let’s keep in mind it is very important that we choose wisely between team Obama and team Palin in 2012. Here is Lewis in Mere Christianity on what comes with power:

The better stuff a creature is made of—the cleverer and stronger and freer it is—then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong. A cow cannot be very good or very bad; a dog can be both better and worse; a child better and worse still; an ordinary man, still more so; a man of genius, still more so; a superhuman spirit best—or worst—of all.

We’ve already seen what can happen when the most powerful man in the world gets his fundamentals wrong. I for one would like to see what would happen if a C.S. Lewis fan were president.

Richard Wolffe has offered no apology to Sarah Palin on his web site.

p.s. If you prefer modern Christian authors you may be unfamiliar with Lewis’ work. But believe me, the authors you’ve been reading aren’t. Scott Johnson at PowerLine blog has the best rundown of Lewis’ influential works of Christian apologetics. (Also the most clever headline: “He Doesn’t Know Jack”–an inside joke to fans of Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis). But be warned: reading Lewis is dangerous work. His razor-sharp insight into human pettiness, arrogance, and self-deception will remind the honest reader that there is a quite a bit of work to be done right now on his soul and he’d best be getting to it.

See http://cslewis.drzeus.net/multimedia/audio.html for the longer, unedited audio.

UPDATE: Welcome readers of The Blaze and King B Live.  Summary of border problem: if growers couldn’t hire illegal immigrants, they would simply outsource to Mexico.  Read more (with video), including what C.S. Lewis said that is pertinent.