It was so bad, I was almost hoping she’d suddenly start speaking in tongues. Anything to break up the cringefest. And yes, that would have been less embarrassing.
Published by Lisa Kansas September 12th, 2008 in A million ways to mortgage the future, Looks like someone needs an intervention, Remember November, The PalinatorYou know, people in other countries watch this shit and so do total misogynists. Then again, why worry about what people in other countries think about America’s choices for Supreme Leadership of our country? After eight years of Dubya, how could their opinion of our intelligence fall any further? And misogynists are quite capable of sneering at and grossly insulting the intelligence of women in general regardless of whether or not we shove corroborating evidence for their usually groundless beliefs on national TV. There, now I feel better. “Better” in the sense that I’ve convinced myself that there’s no real reason to feel “worse.” Well, not quite. There’s always that one little future terror…in the immortal words of Melissa McEwan of Shakesville: “Please, dear Cheesus, don’t let this person anywhere near Teh Button.”
I don’t need to strain myself for opinion bytes on Sarah Palin’s interview performance in the first of a series of three with ABC’s Charles Gibson; the rest of the media world has already done a thorough job for me. To wit:
Palin called the Russian incursion into Georgia last month “unprovoked,” a view at odds with that of U.S. officials who have reviewed events leading up to the military action.
Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the tiny country was part of NATO, Palin said: “Perhaps so.”
Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.” The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.
(Okay, that one wasn’t from the interview. Just more salt rubbed into the wound while I was torturing myself reading the media coverage.)
In an on-location-in-Alaska interview that consumed 11 or 12 minutes of the Thursday edition of World News Tonight and continues later tonight on Nightline and again tomorrow on World News Tonight and 20/20, Palin recited her answers as if reading from a Teleprompter inside her head. The extensive coaching she has received could not save her from embarrassment in this exchange.
Gibson: Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?
Palin: In what respect, Charlie?
Gibson: What do you interpret it to be?
Palin: His worldview?
Gibson: No, the Bush Doctrine, enunciated in September 2002, before the Iraq War.
Palin attempts to fake it for 25 seconds with a swirl of generalities before Gibson, showing all the gentleness of a remedial social studies teacher, interjects.
Gibson: The Bush Doctrine as I understand it is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense. That we have the right of a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?
Of course Palin agrees with the Bush Doctrine, but she can’t come out and say so, having just admitted that she doesn’t know it by name.
I haven’t decided if I’m going to inflict parts 2 and 3 on myself yet. While I’m deciding, here’s a nice video of Assembly-of-Goddites speaking in tongues.
I only read the wee transcript on the Beeb, but it contained this terrifying segment:
The interview was recorded in Fairbanks, Alaska, were Mrs Palin was attending an army ceremony to send her 19-year-old son Truck to serve in Iraq.
“I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a really easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer,” Mrs Palin said.
…Sooo, I guess she wants to reinstate the draft, then. I mean, given her other opinions regarding her children’s wonderful choices…
The Bush Doctrine is a little ambiguous so I wish he would have used a more common position like the “One Percent Doctrine” that would have been the nail in the coffin. I can see how the GOP will backpedal out of this by simply saying it isn’t a formal position the President has ever annunciated, but the “One Percent Doctrine” has been articulated very clearly by Cheney
“If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It’s not about our analysis … It’s about our response.”
From the video I think any honest person would have to say she clearly has no idea what he was talking about. I am no expert at reading people, but right before she says “In what respect Charlie?” and turns her head to the side, she blinks really hard. If we were playing poker, I could re-raise!
The media are too nice, I would have asked something like “During the year 2000 when we had documented meetings between Iraq intelligence and Bin Laden, would you have attacked against France?”
“Of course not, where would we get French fries from?”
Ok maybe she isn’t that bad, but CLOSE!
Oh, I get it now.
The plan isn’t for her to be vice president. The plan is to get her to say enough stupid, scary, inflammatory shit that Russia bombs Alaska, throwing the U.S. into yet another bloody war.
Which is about the only chance the Republicans have of keeping the White House. Palin can go back to Alaska to mourn while the nation hurries to elect the manly POW John McCain to protect them from the commie pinko ruskies.
Kinda brilliant, actually.