Monday, September 22, 2008

The Sheltering of Palin



Palin should be laughed right off the ticket (and Hannity should be laughed right off of cable. And radio.) She's had one legitimate interview, one infomercial, and zero press conferences. They wrote the rules of the VP debates so that she won't even have to debate, just prettily recite the talking points.

The election's in less than a month. This is ridiculous.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Operating under somewhat of a disadvantage as your link is being blocked by my browser at the moment, but a couple of thoughts anyway -

1) "They wrote the rules of the VP debates so that she won't even have to debate"

The Democrats agreed to the rules because if anything they're even more worried about Biden. They want to reduce to a minimum his opportunities to say something embarrassing that would raise questions about the judgment of the guy who put him on the ticket (favorite so far - telling a wheelchair bound paraplegic at a campaign rally to get up and wave to the crowd - hint to Joe, the Messiah is on the top of your ticket, not the bottom). The difference is Palin is new at this game and already shows great promise for the future (state governors do not get 83% approval ratings by being clueless bimbos), whereas Biden has been around for decades and this is as good as he's ever going to be.

2)"She's had one legitimate interview, one infomercial, and zero press conferences."

In the few weeks since she was announced Palin has to stand by and watch while the media spread unfounded smears about the parentage of her newest child, accuse her (again without any evidence whatsoever) of an extra-marital affair, and engage in an outrageous amount of coverage - much of it mocking - of her 17 year old daughter's pregnancy (the latter was such an important story apparently that it wiped out coverage of the handover of Anbar province - previously the most violent in Iraq - to civil control in one of the most significant signs of progress in the war). Not to mention telling straighforward lies about her record (presenting a tripling of funding for a programme for homeless teenagers as a cut for example, or presenting a harmless prayer for divine guidance as a theocratic call to arms). When the media is behaving this outrageously and irresponsibly, why should she do them any favours at all?

If a Democrat was being treated like this by Fox news or talk radio, you would be quite rightly outraged and calling on them to show some integrity. Yet when it happens to a Republican, you call for her to be "laughed right off the ticket". Why the double standard?

jewish philosopher said...

I don't think McCain can possibly make it. Bush was just too bad, this is not going to work.

asher said...

You gotta hand it to Jon Stewart..he can make anything droll.

Can't wait till he does a parody on Rev. Wright....could get some good laughs at that. Maybe make him into one of those Sunday morning preachers who raises money for themselves.

Last Joe Biden foot in mouth comment: On Katie Couric he compared how bad this administration is compared with what FDR did when the stock market tanked..."He went on television and told the people he was going to take care of things". Can't he at least copy his comments correctly. Well, nothing to worry about this man becoming VP.

Tigerboy said...

Sam Harris has an opinion piece about Palin in this week's Newsweek:

www.newsweek.com/id/160080

As always, he's outstanding.

Anonymous said...

Asher,

As Reason's Jesse Walker put it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'"

There was an even better moment in the same interview though when he denounced the Obama campaign for running the ad about McCain being too doddery to use a computer:

""I thought that was terrible, by the way," Biden said.

Asked why it was done, he said: "I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we'd have never done it.""

(I actually think better of Biden for this, but there's no denying it's a gaffe in the sense that it's hardly helpful for the campaign for the guy at the bottom of the ticket to be heard questioning the ethics of the guy at the top.)

And this is the guy who the Democrats tell us is ready to lead, only a heartbeat away, etc., whilst mocking Palin as hopelessly unfit for saying things like you can see Russia from Alaska? (which is at least true, unlike Biden's howlers...

Tigerboy,

Can I thank you for drawing our attention to that excellent Sam Harris article and ask you to continue with the good work in publicising it as widely as possible please? It deserves a much wider audience, many thanks.

Comrade Kevin said...

People criticize Obama for being little more than cotton-candy instead of actual substance.

Palin really IS cotton-candy. The more she hides from scrutiny and refuses to take direct questioning, the more suspect she is.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of gaffes ... the election is in MORE than a month, isn't it? I mean, either I or Jewish Atheist just made a pretty good gaffe....