I watched The Tonight Show for the last time Monday night. The new host delivered a GE/NBC inspired tirade against Sarah Palin. The level of vitriol was simply amazing! Even more amazing was the applause from the audience. Such an emotional display must be based on something basic in human psychology.

Students of the Social Sciences will recognize Maslow and his “Hierarchy of Needs".

Maslow proposed that human have “needs.” He further proposed that some of these needs are more important to us than others. He arranged these needs into a hierarchy in order of importance. This hierarchy is typically shown as a five level pyramid: the lowest level contains physiological needs, while the highest level contains so called self-actualization needs (like identity and purpose) [See Wikipedia for the diagram]. Lower level needs must be met first. Failure to meet these needs drives the individual to focus exclusively on these lower level, unmet, needs. Once met the individual can move up the pyramid to needs of the next level. If a lower need is no longer met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize by focusing attention on the unfulfilled, lower level, needs.

Depending upon the distance or number of levels between the individuals current level and the unmet need and the temporal nature of this unmet need appearing, greater or lesser resources will be employed to meet the need. Sudden and distant needs receive considerably greater resource allocation than do the expected, or gradual, reappearance of a need.

Also important is any emotional relationship between the unmet need and prior experience with that need. For example, previous experience with food deprivation will invoke a stronger emotional response to the sudden loss of available food than it would if that individual had no experience with starvation. Similarly, a person engaged in meeting their esteem needs will be more emotionally affected by food loss than would an individual engaged in meeting their safety needs.

So, does this provide insight into the behavior of late night TV hosts and other liberal/fascist/socialists?

I believe it does. The rich, pampered, political class along with their socialist entertainment sycophants are threatened by Sarah. These egotistical, self righteous, individuals were busy working on their esteem needs. Suddenly, a bright, articulate, attractive, woman appears who embodies all the ideas and values they have rejected. They experience a sudden multilevel drop down the pyramid. The resulting emotion is fear.

This is why have they reacted so strongly to Sarah. This is why are they working so hard to destroy her.

They are afraid.

Deeply, fundamentally, afraid.