Like I’m emotionally healthy enough for that.
Anyway, I mean I don’t want to have sex when I’m angry.
As bad as she is, it’s clear her handlers DIDN’T make her any better. Nobody who can drive a car can be as stupid as she sounded with Katie Couric. I don’t think she’s Einstein by any means, but nor is she Corky.
As bad as she sound extemporaneously, I think her handlers made her worse. I suspect that they probably drilled a preset list of talking points into her with the instructions not to stray from them, they’ll tear you apart if you say anything honest, stick only to Line 1 through 47, and it made her look stupid because, of course, Katie Couric (or any other smart journalist) is going to figure out what question to ask that isn’t covered by your List Of Approved Sound Bites.
Whatever your thoughts are of Sarah Palin - and I wouldn’t vote her to be my town councillor, and I freely admit that any person whose politics are that motivated by their religion will not get my vote if I can possibly avoid it - consider her position honestly. She pulled a remarkable beat-your-own-party move to become governor of a state. Then suddenly the GOP calls and says “Hey, wanna be VP?” Of course she’s not going to say no, she says yes. If you’re Sarah Palin your expectation, reasonable held I think, is that the folks you meet in Minneapolis are going to be political campaigners extraordinaire, people WAY smarter than you. So she shows up, John McCain smiles and shakes her hand, and then for 19 hours a day she’s likely being coached, dressed, grilled, drilled, and briefed by more campaign staffers than populate Alaska, and she reasonably thinks, “I’d better do what these people say. This is way past what I’m used to. They must know what they’re talking about.”
Then she hits the trail, such as she did, and the coaching she was given is total bullshit. It’s not working. She can’t stick to the talking points, and they didn’t coach her on anything else. John McCain’s voting record… fuck, they drilled me for eight hours and that NEVER came up. What the hell do I say? They told me to stick to talking points. I’ll call him a maverick again, theyt said to do that a lot. When the interviewer is skeptical and goes beyond what the Washington genuises told her to say, she’s screwed. All of a sudden she’s a laughingstock.
So what do you do if you’re Sarah Palin? I’m sure she knows the campaign’s on fire and plunging towards the ground but she has to fight it out… so do you stick with what the handlers told you, which didn’t work? Of do you say “fuck it” and play the game the way you did when you were winning elections in Alaska? You’ve got to go with Option 2, right? It may not work, but it’s damn sure Option 1 is guaranteed not to work, so why not give it a go?
I put everything in baseball metaphors so I may as well do it here; imagine a kid from college, 20 years old, get drafted by the Yankees. He’s ready to report to the Shittsburgh Assholes or whatever low-minors team they start kids out in but the Yankees call you up and say “Get to the airport and get to New York. We need you up here, everyone’s hurt, you’re pitching tomorrow.” So he gets there and is terrified and the pitching coach tells him “Okay, Smith. I know in college you were getting them out with that fastball of yours. But that’ll never work here. Don’t throw any fastballs. And don’t throw any changeups. Throw nothing but curveballs, curveballs, curveballs, and nothing else. That will work, trust me.” So out he goes, and holy shit it’s the Rays, aren’t they in first place? And he starts throwing curveballs, just like they told him, and nine minutes later it’s 7-0 Tampa Bay, some gigantic motherfucker just hit a home run further than the kid thought it possible for a human to hit a baseball, and he’s out of the game.
So five days later he’s in Toronto - Christ, before this week he’d never been out of Buttwipe Junction, and now in five days he’s been to two cities with more people than his whole home state - and the coach says “Nothing but curveballs. Those fastballs and changeups you used in college, they don’t work. Nothing but curveballs,” and next thing you know the Jays are hitting balls so hard the fans in the outfield seats are jumping out of the way of the ball. The kid loses again.
Five days later they’re in Chicago and the coach says “Now, don’t worry about the Rays and the Jays. Stick with the curveballs. Don’t throw that fastball-changeup shit you throw in college.” He’s doubtful, but shit, the coach a major leaguer, right? He must know. So he throws the first pitch and the guy hits it twenty rows into the left field seats.
And then the kid realizes, “I don’t care what that guy says. Curveballs aren’t working. If these idiots knew what they were doing, why’d they call me up here, anyway? Well, maybe I’ll try the fastball. God knows things can’t get any worse.”
That’s Sarah Palin.
Wow, you ARE strange! 
Or maybe she just thinks the whole maverick thing is tainted now. She’s mavericked her little heart out but Johnny Mac pretty much made a political career out of mavericking and look where it’s gotten him. Besides, it raised a lot of laughs when Tina Fey used it.
But rogue, now that’s a word with punch, worthy of a rugged outsider. Hey, she went through Entrenched Republican Powers like a dose of salts in Alaska and that played out really well. For her. So being a rogue is like, a really good thing to be.
Your suspicions aside, it isn’t clear her handlers COULD make her any better. I haven’t heard anything significantly better since, even yesterday in her speech about special needs kids. She ridiculed fruit fly research, which has provided tons of information useful in human applications.
Only if we get to see the headline
Palin Snaps Tether, Kills Coolie
Like that’s news.
Jim, can you give me a pointer to that interview? I’d like to read (or watch) it.
What’s junior modding about my comment? It’s childish and self-indulgent. But I suppose there is no reason to expect more than childishness and self-indulgence from you, so never mind.
It wasn’t an interview – it was her first policy speech. You can both read it and watch it here.
I will look, but it wasn’t an interview. It was a speech, billed as her first major policy address, about an increased commitment to helping the parents of special needs kids under a McCain Palin administration. I saw outtakes of it on Olberman’s MSNBC show last night.
Oops, – I see I was beaten to the punch.
I will say, though, that reading it doesn’t give you the opportunity to see and hear the scorn in her voice, as well as hear the extemporaneous comments she made that aren’t in the prepared speech.
In fact, if you want to avoid the whole speech and just get to the part about the fruit flies, you can watch just that part here.
Here is the extra stupid piece:
Turns out fruit fly research has been useful in studying autism in children, among other things.
Thank you for the link. Upon reflection I’ve decided not to bother; I’ve already voted, and it would only vex me.
In the past week or so, I’ve started a thread on driving etiquette, one on Tolkien, a couple on literature, one on being Turkish baths, and so forth. Care to explain how all those are childish?
Do you like movies about Roman gladiators?
Sorry…
That was quite a defensive post.
You know, it’s possible that Palin simply isn’t that book-smart. And it’s possible that her handlers gave her a ton of information - which she learned by rote without truly absorbing the material.
Look, Palin is world-class in terms of presentation. And she’s good at ducking questions. But she is horrible on substantive followup. I’ve yet to hear her say anything other than pure talking points.
Now my take may be wrong. But I see nothing in the public record that contradicts it. I see a bright future for Sarah Palin in Hollywood and on the lecture circuit. But I doubt whether she will ever exhibit any policy chops.
Maybe she’s a Denis Leary republican.
No need to apologize; I’m not the homophobic Rhymer brother! The fact that I think girls are much cuter than guys does not change the fact that I think some guys are cute.
I’m not sure where I was going with this, actually.
Oh, c’mon guys, can’t we all just get along and happily share our contempt for McCain-Palin and the GOP?
Is it okay if I do just half of that?
I don’t think Senator McCain is contemptible, and I hope the GOP is redeemable.
Well, if you wanna nitpick…
Actualy, I should have specified the campaign as contemptible, though McCain’s performance and decisions as the candidate have been as well. I did respect him before – I haven’t decided yet whether my respect was misplaced, or whether his determination to be president at any cost has corrupted him.
I’m sure the GOP is redeemable too, if the entire current leadership is swept out in a period of reckoning and replaced with honorable people.