You’ve probably heard the audio by now, but here is a link to the transcript:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/11/sarah_palin_pranked_by_sarkozy.html?hpid=topnews
The bottom line is that anyone applying to be a potential POTUS should not be that easy to whoosh. I guarantee any of the other three principles in this race would have twigged that it was a bogus Sarkozy in about 1 second. For one thing, they’re probably all aware that Sarkozy does not speak fluent English, but even if they’d been handed the phone, they would have all known instantly that they were talking to some jack-off doing a fake accent. McCain and Biden would both probably say hello, then 3 seconds later swear and throw the phone at a staffer. Obama would probably be calmer – just quietly hand the phone back to the staffer and walk away – but none of them would need to hear more than a sentence to figure out they were being pranked.
Oh, dear Og. Now that I’ve actually listened to it and heard how atrocious his accent was… words fail me.
For all those claiming the accents are fake : these guys are native French-speakers.
They were hamming up the accent, though. Let’s be real.
Was this the same people who tried this same trick with Queen Elizabeth a couple of years back? They were pretending to be Quebec politicians. The joke backfired when the Queen demonstrated that not only was she aware of Canadian political issues but able to speak fluent French. In an interview the next day, one of the pranksters admitted that “somebody ended up looking like a fool yesterday but it wasn’t Her Majesty.”
Thus I assumed his accent would have been believable, before I listened to the actual audio. Then I realized he was obviously making it sound fake.
No, he was trying to imitate a Frenchman speaking English.
The unfortunate thing for the Palin campaign is that they have no way of making this argument – they’ve blown their credibility by repeatedly pretending that perfectly legitimate questioning was an unfair “gotcha” dirty trick, thus putting them in the position of the boy who cried wolf too often when they find themselves on the receiving end of an actual unfair “gotcha” dirty trick.
So, in a way it’s the karma bill collector coming round for his payment.
Since Bruni has been a model in fashion mags, Palin probably knows a lot more about her than Sarkozy.
I suspect that it wouldn’t be too difficult for the pranksters to route the call via France so that even the Secret Service’s equipment said it was coming from France. I’m sure they would have taken notice if it appeared to come from Canada. They probably don’t check the exact number. Aren’t they primarily concerned with personal safety? Screening phone calls probably isn’t a big deal, especially for a VP candidate. I doubt if they’d get through to an elected president.
France – Canada – what’s the difference? Furriners with accents, all of them.
It depends upon how they reached her. If she was talking on a cellphone, then the SS should be highly concerned about the matter, because even if the phone has the GPS features turned off, you can still get a pretty good bead on someone’s location.
If you have to rely on comparing signal strengths at multiple cell sites to figure out the location then you’ll need pretty good connections with someone at the phone company willing to break all sort of rules to give you the data and even then I’m not sure if you’d really pinpoint it much closer than simply reading their public schedule of where they’re going to be when.
That’s a maybe, I’ve read from some semi-reliable sources that its apparently easier to geo-locate a cell signal than commonly believed and one doesn’t necessarily have to be working for the cellphone company to do this. Additionally, Palin’s public schedule would not contain information about where she was staying or what route she was taking to or from an event.
Oh, come on, that’s low. Sarkozy is a model for American conservatives–he actually got elected to the highest position in France, of all places, as a righty. I’ve heard Sarkozy cited by commentators as a major influence on the McCain/Palin campaign. It was clear throughout the interview that Sarkozy is Palin’s idol. She even knew about his wife. Come on.
That has shit-all to do with it. I’m a native English speaker, but I can ham up an American accent in a Spanish-language conversation easily. Didn’t you hear how massively and suddenly the accent changed when they told Palin she’d been pranked? They seemed to balk for a second at whether to talk naturally or go back to the fake-Sarkozy accent, too.
He may be a righty by French standards, but his actual policy positions are almost the archetypal centrist Democrat platform planks.
Anyway, apparently she isn’t that into him, or she’d have known that he doesn’t speak English very well.
When the prankster gave a false name for Canada’s Prime Minister, Palin replied: “Well, you know, he’s doing fine too.”
As a Canadian, I would hope that any candidate for USA President or Vice-president would know who Canada’s Prime Minster is.
Well, to be fair, the Jean Poutine isn’t the PM anymore…
The Justiciers have quite a history - and their prank call to Chirac is still on the BBC’s list of the top 30 moments in all of radio history. These guys are fearless and, well, freakin’ hilarious.
It took some balls, to be sure, and 5 days to clear the interview with the secret service and other officials. The fact that they still managed to get Palin the way they did is what I find truly amazing.
As for the Queen, I believe they did try to prank her a few years back, but she caught on quickly and dished it right back. The old broad is sharp as a tack 
and was a really good sport about it all.