Posts Tagged ‘Sarah Palin’

Sarah Palin appeared on Fox News and alleged that the reason that this disaster in the Gulf has been so bad is because the Obama Administration is in bed with big oil.

Take a moment and compose yourself. I hope you didn’t spit coffee on anything that can’t take it.

The Palin/Beck Doctrine: Say something batshit crazy. I mean totally fucking loony. Repeat this lie as loudly and as often as you can. When questioned, blame the non-Fox media for taking it out of context and hide behind the populist rage. Repeat and collect speaking fees from anyone stupid enough to believe you.

There are things that a politician can get away with when they go back on something they previously said or stood for. There are even instances where they have done their very best to pretend as though they never said something they were quoted as saying. You’ll hear the phrase “taken out of context” or something to that effect. It’s part of politics and it’s what keeps cynics like myself a perfect dichotomy of both disgusted with political power and deliciously entertained.

But John McCain has topped them all. (Hat tip TPM)

“Maverick” is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”

That may very well topple “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and “Read My Lips: No New Taxes” as the biggest fucking political gaffe in recorded history. And when you throw BFD Biden in the running, that’s certainly no small feat.

This man has spent the past decade building up his street cred as “The Uber Maverick”. He brought in Sarah Palin because she was a “Maverick”, too. They ran their entire 2008 campaign politicking on how wonderfully “mavericky” they were because it created the false impression that they were somehow different than the disastrous Bush Administration and bet the farm they could fool the American people and lost.

Now that he’s facing a hard-core right-wing primary opponent (who is, by the way, one of the ten dumbest human beings on the planet) who is actually making a decent showing against the one-time Republican standard-bearer for the office of President less than two years ago. But, to be fair, he only won that role by being the least detestable in the field of Republican candidates.

But I simply cannot understand why he is now trying to shed his Maverickiness. It certainly polls well for him with the coveted “undecided” voting block. And to lie so easily and blatantly, when anyone with a computer or even a half-baked memory can demonstrably prove that he indeed claimed to be “The Original Maverick“, is mind-boggling. I honestly don’t think McCain possesses the mental capacity to hold his office.

That said: If Republicans in Arizona end up choosing this half-baked right-wing nutjob that is opposing him, there’s a damn good chance the seat could turn blue in the general election. General elections don’t like fringe players, and this so-called Tea Party movement has dragged up the very bottom of the barrel. Put another way: Scott Brown didn’t win in Massachusetts by being an ultra-right candidate — he did so by being very middle-of-the-road. Arizona is much more red, but that doesn’t mean they want an ideologue, which is why McCain’s Maverickliciousness has played so well for so many years there.

And to steal from a commenter at TPM: “How’s that Mavericky thing working out for ya?”

In an effort to win over the hearts and minds of the average Fox News viewer, President Obama agreed to do an interview with Bret Baier. What followed has now become somewhat of a controversy and also a shining example of everything that is wrong with Fox. By the count of the good folks over at Raw Replay, Bret interrupted Obama sixteen times. Watch the video for yourself.

Now I tend to agree Chris Hayes of The Nation; I like it when journalists really sink their claws into an interviewee. Those in power must be questioned. That’s a given. And while confrontational, Mike Wallace was infamous for his “going for the jugular” style of interviewing. The problem is, of course, Bret Baier is decidedly not Mike Wallace. As pointed out by Think Progress, Baier’s interveiwing posture differs greatly when he’s dealing with a Republican president. Who led us into war under false pretenses. Took a huge national surplus and plunged into into a huge national debt. Violated the Constitution …ah, you get my point.

Baier is clearly motivated by right-wing politics. That would be okay if he, or anyone else at Fox News, would simply admit it. Fox News was and always will be a channel of propaganda. They have an agenda and they have zero qualms about forcing it down the throats of the American people. They practically revel in it. And the Orwellian doublethink they employ that justifies their actions by stating they’re only being the answer to a liberal media, and then subsequently denying any bias in their vast content is just mind-blowing. Scarier are the millions of viewers who believe it every last word.

To illustrate my point further, allow me to remind you of how Fox News treated Katie Couric’s interview or even Charlie Rose’s interview of Sarah Palin. You know, the one where she was unable to answer simple questions about how government works, the horrific policies of George W. Bush that she supported but couldn’t actually explain, or simply what magazines she read? The wingnuts out there thought that Couric and rose were being unfair. Yet I’m willing to bet they’re frothing at the mouth that anyone would dare question Baier’s constant rude interruptions of a sitting US President. I look forward to a similar treatment of Dick Cheney, but I think I’ll be ultimately disappointed. As usual.

Sarah Palin’s biggest complaint/defense of her past performance is that the “liberal” or, my favorite, “lamestream media” is picking on small details. That they are somehow holding her up to a standard that is higher than most. And her followers eat this shit up. How dare the media ask questions, demand substance and look for depth?

If you’re one of these people, then perhaps you shouldn’t watch this video. It kinda encapsulates the double-standard that Palin, herself, wants to live by. You see she’s the first person to complain that Obama uses the teleprompter too much…

…well at least he hasn’t resorted to the “I’m going to cheat on my exam” method of crib notes during his Q&A. He just leveled the entire House Republican Caucus at their retreat on national television. (For those of you who watch Fox, they cut away during the parts where he completely destroyed their talking points but you can catch the entire thing on the White House site. Send complaints to Roger Ailes c/o Fox News.) And he did that without having answers hand-fed to him by scribbled notes on the palm of his hand.

I guess tickets to this Tea Party event were upwards of a few hundred dollars each. And I would gladly pay that amount to see Sarah Palin stand in front of the House Democratic Caucus because I guarantee you it would be a totally different outcome. And I don’t even like them all that much.

But I think the kicker of this is what she did scrawl on her palm.

“Energy”
“Budget Cuts”
“Tax”
“Lift American Spirits”

She needed fucking crib notes for this? What a totally empty vessel.

I realize that this is bit of old news, but in case you missed it, former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been hired by Fox News as a paid consultant. This should come as a shock to absolutely no one as there are few places a bat-shit crazy right-wing ego the size of Alaska could find a job. Indeed, most of what this woman is quoted as saying stem from comments that are so stupid that most educated people stand in awe at how perfectly idiotic she is. But considering Fox News’ track record of taking in such wayward pariahs and allowing them to make incredibly stupid remarks in the name of ratings gold, it’s a match made in heaven.

But then I stop and think that Fox News has the lion’s share of network news ratings. And I see people clutching copies of that moron’s book like it’s a lost chapter of the Bible. “The Book of Rogue”. And I’m frightened that more than a few people actually think this woman is in any way sincere in her beliefs.

I guess I’m saying that Fox isn’t a surprise, but the collective intellgence on the right is going to dive sharply. Gretchen Carlson is one thing, but this is something akin to mixing that clueless imbecile with the twisted populist nutbagginess of Glenn Beck. And I’m left to wonder if she’ll be tempted more by the power promised by a potential Presidency in 2012, or by the millions and millions of dollars she’ll get from the Murdoch Empire.

Either option makes me want to vomit. People like Palin cheapen the political discourse into partisan sniping, of which I am perfectly aware that I’m a participant. But the difference I see is that I’m not paid to do this. And the fact that she is and is not held accountable to that is infuriating.