Another reason you may have missed it is that Lobohan was considerably more vocal in his request for a good faith answer about the Obama teleprompter question than he has been since he got it.
My apologies, Chicagojeff. I overlooked your post earlier. I think my subsequent post to FILB answers most of the points you raise.
Stewart believed Obama spoke to kids with teleprompters; I believed Obama spoke to kids with teleprompters. He is funny and you love him; I am full of fail and confirmation bias.
Telling.
So in other words, rather than answer honestly he decided to lie and pretend he’d seen a movie that he obviously hasn’t seen more than a clip of and couldn’t even remember the name of.
You may have noticed that I haven’t been speaking to this issue one way or the other. I am challenging the allegation that she is stupid and that having a brief outline on her hand is proof of it.
She was being asked questions deliberately designed to make her look bad and she was pressed on her answers over and over until Couric succeeded in making her look bad. The media routinely lets Democratic politicans slide with answers that have absolutely nothing to do with the question they asked. They do it all the time. Hell, Hillary Clinton practically made it a touchstone in her debates with Obama. Yet any time Clinton appeared on The Today Show, you’d find Couric leaning forward, grinning, and practically drooling on herself out of admiration for Clinton and letting whatever she said pass by unchallenged.
Biden’s 15 seconds of stammering, on the other hand, was the result of nothing more probing than whether or not he gets to see any movies and who he thought might win an Oscar.
And besides, when’s the last time you saw a major network anchor cheerfully and collegially ask any Republican politican if he has enough free time to enjoy any movies and who he’d pick for an Academy Award? A perfect example of the media bias the right is always complaining about: make the Dem look like a good guy but be stern, skeptical and demanding (and in Palin’s case, tricky) with the Pubbies.
The relevance is that Jon Stewart, a guy much beloved around here, did an entire bit on Obama’s using a teleprompter when speaking to a classroom of elementary school kids. I got my information from the same source he did. So I wanted to find out what FILB thought of Stewart so I could ask if he would find Stewart as full of fail and confirmation bias as he did me for believing the exact same thing…you know, given that we undoubtedly got it from the same media sources and all. In other words, I wanted to know why it was okay for Stewart to believe those reports but it was proof of partisan stupidity on my part to believe the same thing.
The less intelligence you have, the more likely you are to view intelligence as some sort of pretentious, book-ish trait, rather than a general trait that people can use to solve problems. People who really are smart (in the sense that their brains work quickly, they have good memory, and so forth) aren’t considered by those much less intelligent than them to have anything special.
Why is this? Because nobody can really imagine what it’s like to be much smarter than they are. They can try to imagine, but they can’t really do it. I could try to imagine what it is like to have the mind of Terence Tao, but it’s a fruitless endeavor.
Why bring this fact up? Because the less-than-bright people who admire Palin think that they don’t need a leader who is really that smart. They just need a leader who gets it. Getting it is truthiness in verb form: the knowledge that a certain view of life is just right, and that’s that.
Palin, not merely despite but also because she does not seem very smart, projects the “rightness” of certain fundamental conservative views. She’s just a Christian mother who is against abortion and don’t know too much 'bout histery.
Some might call my characterization unegalitarian or elitist, but unegalitarian views are sometimes right. Palin supporters are the kind of people who say “book smarts aren’t what matter, it’s people smarts that matter”.
I think it’s all well and good to say that we all use notes when we speak.
On the other hand, if I asked you, “On what three topics you would expect to hear mindless talking points from Sarah Palin?” wouldn’t you predict something like taxes, budget and energy? If you thought really mindless pablum, you’d probably predict something like “lift American spirits.”
Why the hell would any Republican need to be reminded about these topics? I could probably rattle off a five minute answer using their talking points on these topics.
It’s also a bit too tidy that these seem to match the question she was asked by the moderator. “What three things do you think need to be done when we have control of the house and senate?” So, it appears to be a set-up, but she seems to have needed help remembering what she was prepared to say.
She’s an idiot, and so are the people who paid $350-$550 to hear her speak.
He did not an “entire bit”. It was one joke. One. A day or two after it happened. And he hasn’t revisited it again. And his point was that Obama was above such things–that he and everyone else knows Obama doesn’t actually need them, that they’re an unnecessary crutch.
You, on the other hand, are trying to use this non-event (weeks after its occurrence) as proof that there’s little that actually separates Obama from Palin, that it’s evidence that means something significant. And as debate points go, it’s the thinnest of gruel. And that’s why it’s partisan hackery when you cite it, because the weight you assign it (and your intentions behind such disproportionate attention).
That’s an acceptable excuse for your grandmother, your boss, your bartender, or your landlord. They don’t have to know anything about international politics or economics. That’s not their job.
But Palin ran for Vice President. Which means she feels she’s qualified to be President. International politics and economics is a subject she feels is her strength. She must be even dumber at everything else.
If you’re a cop or a math teacher or a banker and you don’t know what a thyroid gland is, it’s not a big deal. But if you’re a doctor and you don’t know what a thyroid gland is, then it’s a sign you really are dumb.
People like Palin because they know she won’t say the truth. You aren’t ‘gonna’ hear her say that tax cuts have caused the deficit, the Democrats are just as committed to fighting terrorism as the Republican, tax rates are lower now than they were under Reagan, Iraq is a mistake, chances are pretty good that estate taxes aren’t going to apply to you, etc. She’s like McDonalds. It might no be great food, but you know what you are going to get.
People smarter than Palin aren’t reliable. They might change their minds in the presence of facts or changing conditions. Imagine what would happen if a conservative said something like: “You know, I don’t like high taxes, but in addition to cutting spending we need to raise taxes to pay down the deficit. Maybe we can lower them again once we have dug ourselves out of our present hole”.
Of course we won’t hear a liberal take on unions for insisting that their medical benefits remain untaxed, or that tenure for teachers needs to be eliminated, or that maybe late term abortions done for other than medical reasons should be scrutinized.
Do you know what Jon Stewart really did an entire bit on? The president’s Q & A with the Republicans. His description of Obama’s performance, and particularly about Obama’s line that he could stay for more questions because he was having fun: “Why would I leave? I’m dunking on you, and you cannot stop me.”
He schooled a roomful of Republican congressmen without a teleprompter, notes scribbled in his hand or even a weird shape in the back of his suit coat.
No, I’m not! For crying out loud, I’ve already explained why in this very thread. What I’m doing is pointing out that nearly everyone who delivers speeches refers to some sort of written information to keep them on track – even Obama – and that the fact that Palin has a few talking points written on her hand is in no way an indication of stupidity.
Fair enough. At first, I thought he was admitting to be wrong, but pointing to Stewart to bolster his position. I’ll go with an admission on his part if he doesn’t tell me I’m wrong to read it that way.
To paraphrase someone from another thread, I’d be seeing Palin, but thinking Tina Fey.
Well, there are a couple reasons for that that I can think of.
Stewart is a comedian, and he found a cheap joke to tell, which he hasn’t revisited. You are on a message board devoted to fighting ignorance, and it’s taken multiple replies, with cites, to multiple references by you in multiple threads over the course of weeks, if not months, for you to admit it was an incorrect statement - a kind of half-assed admission, but one nonetheless.
The world has a liberal bias, and we’re all out to attack the truthiness of Starving Artist.
With that admission in post 40, can we now safely assume we’re past that, and that folks won’t have to explain that to you again?
Lobohan asked if I would in good faith acknowledge that I was wrong. I investigated and discovered that I was. I replied to his question as to whether I’d admit I was wrong by saying “Soitenly”, which, as you may or may not be aware, is a playful way of saying “Certainly”. I’m at a loss to see why there’s any confusion over whether I acknowledged the error or not. The entire Jon Stewart reference is based on it.
You’re right (and I apologize for misstating your argument)–by itself, no it doesn’t mean she’s stupid (just like Biden’s hopeless response does either).
But you’re willing to argue that Joe’s answer is indicative of a larger pattern of hopeless behavior, so it’s not unreasonable to argue, similarly, that Palin has such a deplorable track record of fielding questions that her cheat sheet is yet another example of how she’s a complete failure as a candidate/persona in her ability to convince that she’s informed, knowledgable, or remotely clued in to pretty simple political topics. For someone who believes that she’s actually prepared to be POTUS (let alone deserving), this borders on the negligent in its idiocy.
Because you said Stewart had proved you wrong, and in fact, Stewart had made the teleprompter joke about Obama. You said one thing, but I thought you were citing Stewart as a way to say the opposite.
Now here’s something I would like you to read. Wrong. I was wrong. Above, I accused you of continually bringing up the ‘Obama teleprompter’ meme. I appear to have confused you with another poster, or perhaps a combination of several other posters. As near as my search-fu can tell, you have not done this on multiple occasions. I apologize. In the future, I’ll do the research first and not depend on my memory for such things.
Thank you. I appreciate the apology. I started to point out earlier that to the best of my recollection this is the first time I’d brought the teleprompter issue up, but decided not to expand the discussion further. Kudos to you for taking the trouble to look it up and to acknowledge your error vis-a-vis me and the other poster.
After electing George W Bush twice, you’re still surprised that voters would choose a candidate based on the candidate’s traits of being ‘an average Joe’ instead of intellect, education, knowledge of history and diplomancy? This surprises you? Really?
It’s not clear to me that Biden hadn’t seen the movie. Nor am I confused by him calling it a “program.” My grandparents called movies “programs” often. There was no downside to Biden saying “I haven’t seen any movies lately.” No one would have thought less of him. I assume he saw Avatar and simply forgot the title for a second. All public figures look like idiots from time to time, but this Biden clip isn’t one of those times.
I don’t think she’s an idiot, exactly. FWIW I’m going with a test-your-IQ banner ad I saw once saying hers is 112. It’s probably as accurate a figure as we’ll get anywhere. No, she’s not dumber than a bag of hammers. But she is a plumb spang ordinary citizen with no special gifts. She comes off stupid in the arena of national politics, because nearly everyone else, of every political stripe, has so much more knowledge and insight at their command. They can inspire confidence not by demonstrating their next-door ordinariness, but by their ability to address complex issues in ways that do more than appeal to just emotions. William Bennett is an example of a social conservative whom I respect greatly, because he does this. I don’t agree with him most of the time, but I will listen to him.
I’m with the OP here, and not just because I’m a liberal Democrat.
