Stupid on display
Every now and then, I get the tiniest twinge of sympathy for Sarah Palin. She's clearly in over her head, and I do believe she's a scary extremist, but there are times when the her inexperience in dealing with national media is somewhat unfairly interpreted as stupidity. I can imagine that it would be very easy to feel like a deer in headlights when you're desperately trying to avoid saying the wrong thing on national TV.
And then, there are things like this:
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
This is not Palin misspeaking. This is not a "gotcha" or poor choice of words. Leaving aside the absurd sense of victimhood and the attempt to bully the media into refraining from asking questions about her, this is a US governor and vice-presidential candidate publicly displaying a lack of EVEN THE MOST BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT. Either she's dumber than a box of hair, or she's attempting to deliberately mislead the public about their fundamental legal rights, and how they work.
This is the sort of thing that makes me really hope for an Obama landslide. The only way to develop a healthy civil and political discourse is to convince our political class that this sort of thing is unacceptable.
And then, there are things like this:
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
This is not Palin misspeaking. This is not a "gotcha" or poor choice of words. Leaving aside the absurd sense of victimhood and the attempt to bully the media into refraining from asking questions about her, this is a US governor and vice-presidential candidate publicly displaying a lack of EVEN THE MOST BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT. Either she's dumber than a box of hair, or she's attempting to deliberately mislead the public about their fundamental legal rights, and how they work.
This is the sort of thing that makes me really hope for an Obama landslide. The only way to develop a healthy civil and political discourse is to convince our political class that this sort of thing is unacceptable.