Mean ol' Katie Couric

[tahnan]

OK, I've posted something about crappy Sci Fi shows. (For Clarke's sake, they cancel Dresden and Painkiller Jane, and bring out this?) So I've earned myself a short Palin post. Even if I hate myself for my continued train-wreck obsession with her.

PALIN: The Sarah Palin in those interviews [with Katie Couric] is a little bit annoyed. Because it's like, no matter what you say, you're going to get clobbered. If you cease to answer a question, you're going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that, too.

But, in the Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing, in terms of an opportunity to ask what a V.P. candidate stands for. What the values are represented in our ticket.

She goes on to talk about (a) what she reads (the NYT, the WSJ, the Economist) and (b) what Supreme Court cases she disagrees with (Kennedy v. Louisiana, Kelo v. New London, the Exxon case).

What I learn from this is that, first, Palin can give a clear, coherent, reasoned answer as long as she knows what's going to be asked—a few news outlets called the Fox interview a "do-over"; and, second, that she did badly in that interview because, er, she thought that actually answering the questions would get her "clobbered", and Couric didn't ask her the questions she wanted to answer.

That's a little bit stunning, really. Or, as the obligatory Rich Dansky put it: "Her complaint? That Couric actually asked her questions that a VP should be able to answer, instead of just teeing her up for anti-Obama talking points.... I think you can agree with me that anyone who has trouble with Katie Couric isn’t going to do real well across the table from Vladimir Putin."

She did own up, just a little, by saying that "on that one, truly I shouldn't have been so (INAUDIBLE) and (INAUDIBLE) that. Because that was an important question and I should have answered it" (transcript is Fox's; I can't find the original. They're bad at transcripts, insofar as they also mark her clearly-enunciated "Kelo" as inaudible). But, at the risk of clobbering her, I just can't help feeling that makes it worse: that's a question she should have answered but didn't (so why not?), and the rest were questions she felt she didn't need to answer (and why not?). She talks specifically about the "what newspapers do you read" question:

But, I was sort of taken aback, like, the suggestion was, you're way up there in a far away place in Alaska. You know, that there are publications in the rest of the world that are read by many. And I was taken aback by that because I don't know, the suggestion that this was a little bit of perhaps we're not in tune with the rest of the world.

You know what? Even if that was the implication of Couric's question—and I don't think there was any anti-Alaska prejudice, though I might grant that Couric was implying that Sarah in particular isn't so in tune with the rest of the world—even if Couric asked a loaded question, in what sense is the right response to utterly brush it off instead of meeting it head-on? If Soledad O'Brien called Couric "a pit bull in an interview", what kind of hockey mom is Palin that she couldn't handle her?

Oh, it's all just so stupid. I need Obama to win in November because of his policies, his leadership, his vision, but more and more I need him to win because I need Sarah Palin to go the hell home.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what Bush does. If reporters ask questions that aren't on the pre-approved list, they're not answered, and then they're not allowed back in to the press conferences. If it works for the president, why not for a lil ol' state gubnor?

I want her to go home, too, and then I want to watch her lose her job in a great flaming landslide in 2010.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

I'm having a more visceral reaction. I just want to claw her eyes out. It's a feeling that hearkens back to 7th grade when I was staring at the Popular Cheerleader who had just given a meaningless answer and gotten praise for it.

Also, the winking. I've had 24 or so hours now for that to settle in, and I've gone from mildly repulsed to outright infuriated. Governor Palin, although she clearly does not appear to realize this, is not running for Miss America. She is running for the office of the Vice Presidency (and likely the Presidency) in which she will, quite directly, be responsible for directing the course of some 300+ million lives. And she's treating it like a joke. Flaaaames. Flames coming out of my head!


(Note to secret service agents reading this blog: I don't REALLY intend any harm to any of the fine people running for office.)

[leighjen.livejournal.com]

I tried to watch the debate but I couldn't. Just hearing her voice makes me scream! So I made cookies.

[aatish2.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel better -

I've been driving up to NH (or calling NH residents) for the last couple of Sundays in an effort to swing some of the swing voters over to Obama. I've now spoken to four households that have jumped off the fence and gone running into Barack's waiting arms because, as one put it, "We just can't have that Sarah Palin here."

[ennienyc.livejournal.com]

Her sentence structure is almost Yoda-like.

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

"The Bridge to Nowhere just said thanks but no thanks to I did."

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

I mostly don't see what everyone is complaining about. She follows the Ford/Reagan/Quayle/Kemp/Dubya tradition. She's not really any less fit for office than they were.

So I have very little faith that my fellow citizens will reject her on this basis. If God forbid she finds herself across the table from Putin, she would find it very hard to be any more absurd than the guy who "looked into his soul and saw a man of peace."

It's what they do. It's all they do. The Republican tradition for my entire life has been to put a Chauncey f^#king Gardner on their ticket. They insulting simpletons who would have given the inbred royalty of medieval Europe a run for their money. And we elect them. And I've been yelling about this since I was about ten, when I watched Ford DENY THE EXISTENCE OF THE IRON CURTAIN ON NATIONAL TELEVISION, and people have smiled, patted me on the head, and told me I'm such a Democrat and so partisan and so unfair. And I've felt like I was watching Being There while everyone else was watching Forrest Gump (which as far as I can tell is just Being There except the audience isn't in on the joke).

I mean it. Go through the list. Ford. Reagan. Quayle. Kemp. Dubya. And now Palin. She's not any worse than, or any different from, any of them.

Sorry to rant. And I dunno if you're the sort who's felt like I do, all these years, or if you're the sort who would have been one of the head-patters till now. But Palin is just not at all unprecedented and not at all surprising. And anyone who ever voted for any of those morons and now is dismayed by Palin is being just a bit precious.