Gee golly, that’s so maverick-y of you, Sarah!

Posted on November 16, 2009 | 3 Comments

Remember that interview with Katie Couric, the one in which Sarah Palin made a complete fool of herself? She couldn’t even answer simple questions like “what newspapers and magazines do you regularly read?” And, even more disturbingly, other than Roe v. Wade, she couldn’t name another Supreme Court decision:

Couric: What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?

Palin: Well, let’s see. There’s, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that’s never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but …

Couric: Can you think of any?

Palin: Well, I could think of … any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I’m so privileged to serve, wouldn’t be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.

!!!!!!!!!!!

So, Her Royal Maverick-yness was on Oprah today, and, when asked to explain her poor performance in the Couric interview, Palin said:

that she wasn’t expecting her now-infamous sit-down with CBS News anchor Katie Couric to be difficult — and that she didn’t do preparation for what she thought would be a “light-hearted” sit-down between two working moms.

and said that:

“…it was supposed to be kind of a light-hearted, fun, working mom speaking with working mom, and the challenges that we have with teenage daughters. So it was supposed to be more light-hearted.”

Think about that for a second. Think about the sheer, appalling gall on display here. Sarah Palin was a candidate for vice-president of the United States, yet she thinks that someone should have had to warn her in advance if an interview was going to involve a question of actual substance. Seriously? A vice-presidential candidate thought that an interview on a major news program would be and should be “light-hearted” and some sort of “gee golly, isn’t it hard to raise a teenage girl today?” kind of conversation?

How does Sarah Palin get away with making statements like this? How is it that nobody calls her on them?

No one should be allowed to participate in any sort of serious public or political discourse unless they are well-informed on the topic they’re discussing/debating and can provide actual evidence in support of their assertions. If they won’t or can’t do that, then their opinion isn’t worthy of serious discussion. Obviously, this requirement applies even more stringently to individuals who are running for public office. Yet we have a former vice-presidential candidate asserting that she should have been warned in advance if an interviewer was going to ask her even the most simple of questions regarding her level of intelligence and experience. And, somehow, she needed to prepare for these questions? Who has to prepare for questions about what they like to read and what Supreme Court decisions they disagree with? Any halfway informed person of average intelligence would’ve been able to answer any of the questions Couric posed. They were not hard questions.

I find it absolutely dismaying and upsetting that we’ve gotten to a point where it’s acceptable for a candidate for any political office, especially for vice-president, to be so blatantly, horrifyingly, and willfully uninformed. But what’s even worse is that she clearly doesn’t see her ignorance as a problem; on the contrary, she seems proud of it. She wears it as a badge of honor.

Not that anyone expects Oprah to ask challenging questions, or to press her guests on any of their answers, but how could she let Palin get away with making these statements without asking something, anything at all, about why she would’ve expected the Couric interview to have been anything but serious, and why she would’ve needed to be “prepared” to answer even the easiest of questions? She should have demanded that Palin explain why she thinks it acceptable for a vice-presidential candidate to display such galling ignorance.

Seriously, someone please challenge this woman when she spouts her dangerous and ignorant nonsense. She clearly feels entitled to participate in serious political discourse even though she is willfully and proudly ignorant. That’s unacceptable.

Her ignorance is bad enough on its own. Add to that the fact that she’s proud of it and that others seem to look up to her as a role model (yeah, I don’t get it either), and we have a serious problem on our hands. It’s neither elitist nor unreasonable to demand that anyone who wants to participate in serious public discourse of any kind, especially major political figures, be able to discuss serious issues and to back up their opinions with facts. As soon as she entered the public/political arena, Palin should’ve no longer had the option to remain a proudly ignorant fool.

On a lighter note: Sarah Palin = (Miss) Anne Elk. Seriously! I know that I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s so true. And it’s always nice to have an excuse to post some wonderfully hilarious Monty Python-ness:

Ah, brilliant :)

My theory by A. Elk. Brackets, Miss, brackets.
This theory goes as follows and begins now: all Brontosauruses are thin at one end, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end. That is my theory, it is mine, and belongs to me and I own it, and what it is too.

(Miss) Anne Elk for VP!

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