Caribou Barbie
It was with great anticipation that I awaited the much-touted appearance of Gov. Sarah Palin on the news the other night, being interviewed by Charlie Gibson.
Now, Gibson, though I like him, is by no means my idea of a hard-hitting journalist, and I fretted that he would let her off with creampuff pitches right down the middle of the plate, stuff that a myopic baby could connect with. Nothing but junk.
I needn't have worried. The questions weren't the roughest, but he did ask them, and he was insistent about them, and the answers she gave...oh deary deary me.
She looked like a moose trapped in headlights when he asked her what her opinion was of the Bush doctrine. When he mentioned foreign policy, she blurted back her stock answer that you could see Russia, yes you could, from an island, yes, an island in Alaska!
She thinks that Georgia should be allowed into NATO and that we should then go to war if Russia gets all shirty about it and reinvades.
She appears to have a profound disconnect (read: SHE'S PROGRAMMED LIKE A BORG!) between the things she's asked and the answers she gives. You can see the panic on her worried little face, and the mental finger running down the checklist on the back of her eyelids for the rote response, and the relief when she finds it. And the answer NEVER EVER is to the question she was asked; it's just a rephrasing of a stock response.
She's a parrot. A Borg parrot.
But let's hear Maureen Dowd tell it (even though I haven't been liking her very much of late...), from today's NYTimes:
The really scary part of the Palin interview was how much she seemed like W. in 2000, and not just the way she pronounced nu-cue-lar. She had the same flimsy but tenacious adeptness at saying nothing, the same generalities and platitudes, the same restrained resentment at being pressed to be specific, as though specific is the province of silly eggheads, not people who clear brush at the ranch or shoot moose on the tundra.
Just as W. once could not name the General-General running Pakistan, so Palin took a position on Pakistan that McCain had derided as naïve when Obama took it.
“We must not, Charlie, blink, Charlie, because, Charlie, as I’ve said, Charlie, before, John McCain has said, Charlie, that — and remember here, Charlie, we’re talking about John McCain, Charlie, who, Charlie, is John McCain and I won’t be blinking, Charlie.”
She tried to finesse her previous church comments about Iraq, asking worshipers to pray “that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.” Earnestly repeating after her tutors, she said she had meant to echo Abraham Lincoln, that in war we must pray that we are on God’s side rather than that he is on ours. But her original comments sounded more W. than Abe — taking your policy and ideology and giving it the hallowed mantle of a mission from God.
Sarah has single-handedly ushered out the “Sex and the City” era, and made the sexy new model for America a retro one — the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible.
Her explosion onto the scene made Obama seem even more like a windy, wispy egghead. Like W., Sarah has the power of positive unthinking. But now we may want to think about where ignorance and pride and no self-doubt has gotten us. Being quick on the trigger might be good in moose hunting, but in dealing with Putin, a little knowledge might come in handy.
Dear God (and I mean that in the pan-deist sense, any god who'll hear me), spare us from this utter nincompoop. (Palin, not Dowd. Well, sometimes Dowd too.)
Oh, and I loved Tina Fey's spot-on impersonation on Saturday Night Live last night. Indeed, the hair and makeup job was so perfect I thought for a second or two that it WAS Palin.
Then she started to speak, and the words were coherent, so I knew it wasn't.
Now, Gibson, though I like him, is by no means my idea of a hard-hitting journalist, and I fretted that he would let her off with creampuff pitches right down the middle of the plate, stuff that a myopic baby could connect with. Nothing but junk.
I needn't have worried. The questions weren't the roughest, but he did ask them, and he was insistent about them, and the answers she gave...oh deary deary me.
She looked like a moose trapped in headlights when he asked her what her opinion was of the Bush doctrine. When he mentioned foreign policy, she blurted back her stock answer that you could see Russia, yes you could, from an island, yes, an island in Alaska!
She thinks that Georgia should be allowed into NATO and that we should then go to war if Russia gets all shirty about it and reinvades.
She appears to have a profound disconnect (read: SHE'S PROGRAMMED LIKE A BORG!) between the things she's asked and the answers she gives. You can see the panic on her worried little face, and the mental finger running down the checklist on the back of her eyelids for the rote response, and the relief when she finds it. And the answer NEVER EVER is to the question she was asked; it's just a rephrasing of a stock response.
She's a parrot. A Borg parrot.
But let's hear Maureen Dowd tell it (even though I haven't been liking her very much of late...), from today's NYTimes:
The really scary part of the Palin interview was how much she seemed like W. in 2000, and not just the way she pronounced nu-cue-lar. She had the same flimsy but tenacious adeptness at saying nothing, the same generalities and platitudes, the same restrained resentment at being pressed to be specific, as though specific is the province of silly eggheads, not people who clear brush at the ranch or shoot moose on the tundra.
Just as W. once could not name the General-General running Pakistan, so Palin took a position on Pakistan that McCain had derided as naïve when Obama took it.
“We must not, Charlie, blink, Charlie, because, Charlie, as I’ve said, Charlie, before, John McCain has said, Charlie, that — and remember here, Charlie, we’re talking about John McCain, Charlie, who, Charlie, is John McCain and I won’t be blinking, Charlie.”
She tried to finesse her previous church comments about Iraq, asking worshipers to pray “that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.” Earnestly repeating after her tutors, she said she had meant to echo Abraham Lincoln, that in war we must pray that we are on God’s side rather than that he is on ours. But her original comments sounded more W. than Abe — taking your policy and ideology and giving it the hallowed mantle of a mission from God.
Sarah has single-handedly ushered out the “Sex and the City” era, and made the sexy new model for America a retro one — the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible.
Her explosion onto the scene made Obama seem even more like a windy, wispy egghead. Like W., Sarah has the power of positive unthinking. But now we may want to think about where ignorance and pride and no self-doubt has gotten us. Being quick on the trigger might be good in moose hunting, but in dealing with Putin, a little knowledge might come in handy.
Dear God (and I mean that in the pan-deist sense, any god who'll hear me), spare us from this utter nincompoop. (Palin, not Dowd. Well, sometimes Dowd too.)
Oh, and I loved Tina Fey's spot-on impersonation on Saturday Night Live last night. Indeed, the hair and makeup job was so perfect I thought for a second or two that it WAS Palin.
Then she started to speak, and the words were coherent, so I knew it wasn't.
posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison | 1:54 PM
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