The nature of the questions she gets asked, like “What newspapers do you read?” or “What did you learn today?” are condescending and intended to portray her in a negative light no matter what the answer. They may as well be asking her what 2+2 is. The nature of the questions themselves serve to portray her as a dunce. It’s would be like asking Obama “What’s the capital of Utah?” Even if he knew the correct answer, the question itself would imply that he was a dunce. But he doesn’t get questions like that does he? Media bias in action folks. It’s one thing to report something a politician does that calls his or her intelligence and education into question. It’s another entirely to formulate questions designed to make that politican look bad whether they know the correct answer or not.
Horseballs.
Asking a glad-handing politician how her day was is in no way a gotcha question, except in Palinland. And apparently StarvingArtististville.
[QUOTE=NBC News]
BRIAN WILLIAMS: And finally, I’m hoping to find you in a reflective mood on a cloudy day. We’re the first to speak to you coming off your summer vacation. How does it recharge you? What do you think about? What do you see? What do you read about? How are you thinking about your job these days?
[/QUOTE]
I have no doubt I can find a cite for something very akin got “What did you learn today” as well if you’d like.
Cite: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38907780/ns/nightly_news/
There is absolutely nothing biased about asking a politician what they read or what they did today. It is not the questions that make Palin look idiotic - it is the answers.
“It’s four. Is that the best question you can ask me?” would be a good response to that one, but hers would be “Gee, there are so many good answers to that question, and I learned in school that our freedoms are protected by giving all of the good answers, so I’ll just have to go with ‘Six’ as one possible answer, but another good one might be ‘Hands off our guns’ or ‘Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour’ or, oh, it’s hard to be precise, numbers are just so wonderful, and I love helping my kids with their math homework, too, up there in Alaska where we can all read and write and cipher a lot better than you suppose…”
And you’d be in here, arguing that her answer is actually more accurate in Base Chowder or on planet Whatthefuck? than “four” is…
And if someone gets asked what 2+2 is, and seriously answers 5, what are we to think?
Palin was a nobody from a state as far away from the center of American politics as you could get. The newspaper question was a nice one to let her show that she was up on what was going on in Washington through consumption of the better papers. I’m sure Couric was expecting her to say she read the WSJ, the Times, the Post, and the other places where you get the full story. Palin showed instead that she did not have a clue about national politics, which has been amply demonstrated time and again.
“What did you learn today” is indeed the kind of question you would ask a 5-year-old, since the lamestream media seems to not want to embarrass her in this supposedly non-political context. But she couldn’t even handle that, could she?
The simple questions would end if she ever got any of them right.
I understand that the GRE today is adaptive, in that it gives you easier or harder questions depending on how you have done so far. In the GRE of American politics, Palin is down to the “please spell cat” level.
So, Starving Artist, what you’re saying is that she’d give better answers to questions like “What qualifications do you have for dealing with matters of foreign policy?”? Because the media tried asking her those questions, and they didn’t work.
Beautiful quote from Alaska Sen. Mark Begich today. Palin has criticized him for not doing more to support ANWR drilling (he supports it completely, as does Murkowski, and always has). When asked for comment, Begich said:
Oh, snap!
The point is that I can’t recall any other candidate ever being asked similar questions no matter what their previous experience, or lack of it. For example, no one ever questioned Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy expertise despite the fact that he had only been a peanut farmer and governor of Georgia, nor Bill Clinton’s foreign policy expertise despite the fact that his experience had been limited to being governor of Arkansas. The media was in love with Obama and determined to get him into the White House, so they used every trick they could think of to cast McCain as GWB II and Palin as stupid.
Ah, that media trickery. That Katie Couric is some combination of ninja/houdini/joseph goebbels, somehow tricking Palin into looking stupid. Masterful job, that must’ve taken a lot of work.
Watch her interview conservative candidates or administration officials vs. liberal ones sometime and you won’t be able to escape her bias. She’s mostly stern, skeptical and businesslike with the Pubbies, but full of crooked grins, good humor and sparkly eyes with the Dems.
I didn’t say she was unbiased, I’m saying the idea that it takes this media trickery to make Palin look like an idiot is absurd. The woman has had years of exposure with plenty of chances to prove herself to be good at something and has failed every time.
I mean, even look at her resignation speech - she had all the time she needed to write it, and it was a prepared speech that was given on her terms, she didn’t have to field any questions - and yet it’s still baffling and stupid. Was the lamestream media taking her out of context somehow by showing her entire nonsensical resignation speech?
Glad it’s not my idea then. I never said it “takes” media bias to make Palin look bad. I merely said they used every opportunity to make her look bad, and in ways they never did with others of whom the same questions could have been asked and for the same reasons. They chose to make her look bad by picking on her for areas of vulnerabilty that were no different than those shared by any number of previous presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
I think you’re conflating reporters with pundits. The reporters asked relevant questions, for the most part, and reported her answers, which were largely an embarrassment for the McCain campaign. It was Palin, not the media, who tried to pass off being near Russia as foreign policy experience. You can’t possibly believe that Obama would have answered that sort of question with the same bumbling ineptitude. The pundits were quick to jump on every gaffe, even if it was just a slip of the tongue; but they do that for pretty much any politician.
The woman did not have then, nor does she have now, the slightest interest in educating herself on the most basic issues of the day, preferring instead to repeat the same cliches and buzz words over and over again, regardless of relevance to the topic. She was clueless as mayor of Wasilla, as governor of Alaska, as a VP candidate, and continues to be clueless as a citizen. Her work ethic is non-existent unless there is money in it for her. She’s like a dog that’s never been taught only to bark at intruders, and mindlessly yaps away at anything that moves.
Your arguments are without merit, IMO, based on parroting Palin herself and the knotheads on Fox & Friends, rather than giving any analytical thought to what she has actually said in reply to even the simplest of questions.
The crux of this ‘gotcha question’ bullshit is that no one asked her about Paul Revere. She was asked what she saw and learned about that day. Period … er, question mark. She volunteered the fact that she didn’t have a fucking clue what she was talking about.
I’d bet the thought process was something like this: ‘What did I see and learn in Boston … Boston … I’ll say something about revolutionary heroes … how about Paul Revere and the midnight ride … yeah, that’s a good one … and he was in the militia so I can throw in some 2nd amendment pandering … oh, man, I’m going to look like a genius!’
And the we got bells and warning shots.
She’s in over her fucking head.
Over her head for what? So far as I know she isn’t running for anything to be over her head in.
And even if she was, what she does or doesn’t know about Paul Revere doesn’t mean a thing in terms of running the country. As evidence, we have a vice-president now who says more dumb things in a month than Palin has in her entire career, and yet somehow the country survives.
You guys are grasping at straws if this kind of stuff is the best you can come up with to criticize her for.
Look, we don’t have to do a thing to critisize Palin. We only have to wait for her to open her mouth. Note to self:
When Palin begins winking, she is confused. Remember the Biden debates? 
“What’s your favorite magazine?” isn’t a vulnerability for most people. Couric was throwing softballs to Palin and she still couldn’t hit them.
And Palin was running for Vice President. Reporting that she was an idiot was newsworthy because there actually is a substantial number of Americans who feel intelligence is a good attribute in a potential President.
Nefarious trickery such as quoting Palin when they knew that was her weakness.
It would appear that reading comprehension is not your strong suit.
You might try reading some newspapers from any time in the last three years. Or, y’know, maybe read all of them.
I’m baffled, though, why you’ve even heard of Palin herself, if you’ve never heard of her running for anything.