Ever wish you could travel back in time to see how our presidential and vice-presidential candidates were represented online—before they became household names? Well, thanks to Google, your wish has come true.
In celebration of its tenth year, the quintessential search engine now allows users to surf the Web like it’s January 2001. Plug in the individual names and you get the results circa 01/01. If this were golf, guess who’d be the big winner in terms of hits? Give up? It’s Sarah Palin.
By staying off the Internet from its inception through January 2001, Palin proved long ago that she’s a maverick extraordinaire. Googling “Sarah Palin” gives you literally no hits. McCain, however, is not so lucky maverick-wise. In that same time period, the hit count for “John McCain” is over 150,000.
It may seem odd that a mayor, like Palin was at the time, could elude Google. Her trick, though, was to cleverly have her name misspelled in a set of mayoral meeting minutes. Google “Sara Palin” and you are inundated with multiple results—two, to be exact.
According to said meeting minutes, Sara [sic] Palin lives in “urban” Wasilla and is married to a “native.” She acknowledges, as a result, that they both have “experienced racism” in the “‘us and them’ perception” due to the chasm of intolerance that separates rural Alaska and the ever-expanding shithole metropolis of Wasilla.
These new revelations raise an important question: did Palin have an “h” legally added to her name to seem more like a common person? To some intolerant Alaskans, “Sara” may be too modern.
Though the dearth of Google hits can’t be good for the ego, the meeting minutes betray the candidate’s image.* Governor Palin wants to come across as a folksy, gosh-darn, you-betcha’ rascal, but it appears that she’s little more than an elitist cosmopilitan urbanite.
Obama is the second most mavericky guy with 671 hits. Biden is third most mavericky, but more mavericky than you’d expect (especially compared to McCain), and has just over 3,200 hits.
Why does McCain have 98% more hits than Biden in 2001? The truth is, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because Mac was born in 1899, and has had several generations to build an online presence. Or, possibly, there are more John McCains out there than Joe Bidens. According to the Web site NameWiki, the Republican candidate’s name is more popular being the 1842nd most common surname in the United States versus Biden’s being the 114852nd.
I think we’ve finally found out who’s voting for Mr. McCain.
* The second online mention of “Sara Palin” appears to not be the Sarah we’re interested in, but the real Sara Palin. The URL indicates that the Web site is of Swedish origin. We all know that our Sarah’s area of expertise is Russia—unless she actually is a Swedish terrorist posing as an American in an effort to infiltrate the presidency. This could certainly explain her occasional inability to speak a regular English sentence. What else are you hiding, Sara[h]?