note
I gotta say.
Sarah Palin gave her first, and so far only, interview to ABC’s Charles Gibson earlier this week. it’s being released in excerpts, so ABC can milk it for everything it’s worth. fair enough. as far as I know, Palin hasn’t agreed to — let alone given — any other interviews as of this writing.
much has been made of this sitdown. in the first released segment, Gibson asked Palin a bunch of foreign policy questions. the big gaffes that the media have made note of are: she suggested war might be necessary with Russia if it were in defense of a fellow NATO country, and she didn’t know what the Bush doctrine was.
on the way home from work tonight, I listened to about five minutes of the Diane Rehm show on the radio, where they interviewed a bunch of political pundits who said it was various degrees of incompetent and passing.
but they’re missing the point.
don’t worry, I know what it is. but I gotta go meet this guy for a drink right about now, so I’ll save the rest of this for when I come home and I’m probably drunk.
… I found mustard on the television remote when I woke up this morning …
okay, it’s been about 13 hours.
everyone is dancing around the issue with Sarah Palin on foreign affairs. it has been widely acknowledged that she’s been getting frantic policy lessons from her GOP handlers. even her supporters, when “analyzing” the Gibson interview, readily admit that. her detractors spend time mulling over the nuances in this performance, but what they should be talking about is that she simply doesn’t know.
she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. say that again.
what, is she studying for a fucking high school government exam? she’s cramming on foreign policy, for christ’s sake. she doesn’t have an opinion on any of that shit, she’s just demonstrating that she can memorize talking points. that interview with Gibson was unnecessary before it even began because Sarah Palin doesn’t know what she’s talking about. the interview just confirmed it.
“yeah,” her defenders say, “but there’s a lot of different definitions of the Bush doctrine.”
okay, I’ll acknowledge that. fine. that doesn’t change the more-important truth: that she doesn’t know what any of those definitions are. because, again, she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. look, here’s an analogy. I once read the first twenty pages of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” I can tell you what happened. but that doesn’t mean I have any idea what the hell was actually going on. Sarah Palin has proven she’s now familiar with John McCain’s worldview. great. we’ve confirmed she knows what John McCain thinks about the Georgian conflict. we still have no idea what she thinks about it. why? because she hasn’t thought about it ever, for all we know.
so who cares what she has to say? she’s no great mind on these issues, and her nationally televised display of rote memorization just confirms that. she’s just — unfortunately, I might add — a major party candidate. if McCain wins the election and then inevitably dies from old age, we’re all fucked, because this clown from Alaska will suddenly be in charge of everything. goddamned Republicans. they’ve got no problem putting an amazingly incompetent asshole in office, just as long as that asshole belongs to them.
well said