[Anyone] What the Brits think of Palin

Mon Oct 13 14:07:57 MDT 2008

What the Brits think of Sarah "the Dick Cheney" Palin. (BTW, she has the sneer - it's just on the other 
side of her mouth).  And one t-shirt stated:
"Sarah Palin - Dick Cheney with lipstick">

This commentary is from the UK:

Flirting her way to victory?

Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both
female candidates and US political discourse

Michelle Goldberg
Friday October 3 2008?
guardian.co.uk

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous
vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience.  Had a male candidate with
a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt
his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have been
universally noted, discussed and mocked.  Palin, however, has single handedly so
lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political
discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full
sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential
candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing
announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to
her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want
to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them
know my track record also," she said.  And so she preceded, with an almost
surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash
fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating
references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.

It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as
such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth,
wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to 
pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical
mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.

In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a
candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she
is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial
markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan . The criteria are far more
vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating
herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she
had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the
Alaska governor, mission accomplished.

There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming and
fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to
slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's
worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how
bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example,is how she responded to
Biden's comments about how the middle class has been 
short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue
Bush's policies:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You
preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration.  Now doggone
it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them
in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know
education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years,
and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think
is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those
third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School , you get extra credit for
watching the debate.

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on
a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard
questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering.
They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the
point of shtick - and dishonesty.

Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand
or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her
"connection to the heartland of America .  Being a mom, one very  concerned
about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to
college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills?"

None of Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to college.
Her son is on the way to Iraq , and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged
to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin'
redneck".

Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and
public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import.
In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious  and phoney. 
What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is?  That
her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how high
Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.