Yet Another Gruesome Palin Interview Yet To Come?
Uh oh. It looks like the ongoing horror movie series otherwise known as the Katie Couric-Sarah Palin interviews may be about to offer up yet another gristly installment.
The other day, Politico's Jonathan Martin quoted an anonymous Palin aide who was worried about still-undisclosed interview footage in which Palin noted Roe vs. Wade but was unable to reference or discuss any other major court cases.
"There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence," Martin wrote.
That was an anonymous account. And CBS News has refused to publicly confirm it. But a few moments ago, CBS News released the text of a couple questions (but not the answers) that Palin has been asked on interview footage that's set to air tonight. And sure enough, one of them is...
Why do you think Roe v. Wade is a good or bad decision? What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?
Dum. Da Dum, Dum. Viewers with weak stomachs, consider yourselves warned...
It's gonna be so much fun tonight! Thursday should be highly entertaining as well... I just wish this was all an episode of some bad TV show instead of reality(tm).
October 1, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am beginning to think that this is all a cooked up deal to increase ratings for Couric and to decrease expectations for Palin.
People that fall for that stuff deserve to have the Chimp and Joe Six Pack running the show.
October 1, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Couric interview may have lowered expecations for the veep debate, but there's no way it was intentional. Palin's embarrassing performance has already cost McCain millions of votes he couldn't afford to lose.
October 1, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
But expectations are of course irrelevant, since the question is whether she is fit to be President in February? No?
October 1, 2008 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do everyone a favor, beginning with yourself: give up the "expectations" cliche. It is nothing more than a fabrication with which to fill otherwise-empty airtime with emptiness intended to keep the horserace anxiety high.
It has no meaning and no merit. No one is going to watch Palin piss her pants and then say, "Gee, I feel so bad for her that I'm gonna vote for her."
October 2, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR MCCAIN!!!
October 1, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
That is so comforting... coming from you.
October 1, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. So good to see this!!
October 1, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's nothing else quite like an idiotic post to settle the nerves.
October 1, 2008 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
sweet jesus....cbs has given us some great food for thought here to see Palin as a true six pack Joe! Will the rest of America see it as well?
October 1, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
It took a lot of six packs to put the pounds on that Avatar. So here is the interview question I want asked: "Governor Palin, what was your reaction to Senator McCain when he told you that, as his running mate, you would have to go down and meet his frined, Mr. Bono?"
October 1, 2008 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I fucking LOVE how they're releasing this shit out a little every day.
October 1, 2008 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, it's the dream scenario, isn't it? Wow! Sara explains the Supreme Court to us!
October 1, 2008 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
My Pet Oaf.
October 1, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
TheraP!
I need a new keyboard because of you. I laughed so uncontrollable that I knocked my coffee over. My Pet Oaf. Sums up so much of the GOP leadership.
October 1, 2008 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well who could stand to watch it all at once? In little bites like this, its like "Tales from the Crypt" type horror; funny and entertaining in a cringe-inducing, lowbrow kind of way. In one big dose, however, it would be like "I Spit on Your Grave" close your eyes and stop up your ears until the urge to vomit subsides type of horror show.
October 1, 2008 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder how much Katie drank after these interviews? Had it been me, I'd just be pulling myself up off the floor...
PEACE
October 1, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're right, she's full of awkward, cringe-inducing moments. Maybe the writers from The Office should consider casting her.
She could play Jan's sister!
October 1, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ifill: Ms. Palin, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
October 1, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I predict that Fox news will try to hire her as a commentator.
October 1, 2008 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who, Palin or the woman Imus called the Times' cleaning lady?
October 1, 2008 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ain't payback grand?
Remember 4 years ago how the Republicans forced CBS to sacrifice Dan Rather and the credibility of their news division?
I wonder what professional linkages, if any, there are between the producers of these interviews and the producers of the Bush National Guard stories?
October 1, 2008 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
A very interesting question, which I have not seen raised until now.
October 1, 2008 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
The right is too busy attacking Gwen Ifill in advance of that debate to get into the inner sanctum of CBS.
October 1, 2008 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
See, Joe Sixpack doesn't know any Supreme Court cases beyond Rose V. Wade. He knows cases of MGD, Bud Light, and Miller, and that's what matters when your economy is being shit down the toilet in front of your eyes. And really, I know that's the person I want running my country. Just like I want an uninformed fucking dipshit to operate on my heart as well. Who wants an elitist who has studied, and gone to to good schools, and has been forced to, you know, LEARN STUFF? THat shit is for nerds.
Jeff Foxworthy/Larry the Cable Guy '08!!!!
October 1, 2008 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm looking for Larry the Cable Guy to come out and say "This lady scares the bejeezus out me. I have to vote for Obama and Biden."
October 1, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Aww, now that's just being mean to Jeff Foxworthy (Larry the Cable Guy, however, is on his own).
October 1, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, he's just the first thing that came to mind in the "average guy" mold. Everybody Loves Raymond guy, then?
October 1, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe Ron White/Jeff Foxworthy '08?
October 1, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm appalled by the Palin nomination on substantive grounds alone.
But these interviews infuriate me. She is an incurious rightwing ideologue who will attempt to jam her disastrous views on the rest of the country. She appears not to realize just how dangerously uninformed she actually is, and it doesn't seem that she would even care.
HOW DARE JOHN MCCAIN DO THIS TO THE COUNTRY?
October 1, 2008 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
And how does that "Country First" shit work again?
October 1, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's payback - for the 5 years he spent as a POW.
It was our fault. And we're gonna pay!
October 1, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Payback. That's interesting. I, however, think that the focus of the payback must be the Republican Party. It seems at times that the McCain/Palin ticket wants to lose, and lose big. All the better to stick it to the party that boned McCain so badly eight years ago. YMMV.
October 1, 2008 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
He's a suicide bomber politically. I agree. Either way you play it, he's destructive.
October 1, 2008 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Palin and McCain figure these interviews were good preparation for the debate and that while 50M+ will watch the debate, a mere fraction of that will see the Couric piece(s).
It would have been so much better had Palin been caught with this question at the debate.
October 1, 2008 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
No need to get greedy, Jonze. Everybody can read about the Supreme Court moment from now until curtain time on Thursday. There's plenty of moose dung to go around!
October 1, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
The man who debated Sarah Palin more than two dozen times, explains why Biden will have his hands full.
Palin does great in debates, and she has done plenty of them.
Read all about it:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/10/the-man-who-has-debated-palin.php
October 1, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
But the format tomorrow is not a debate, it's an interview.
And if Palin opens the door to a true debate, and Ifill allows it, she's going to fall, hard and fast.
PEACE
October 1, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
No followups, baby. No followups -- they are kryptonite to her.
October 2, 2008 2:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Alaska ag, huh? That's the best you got?
Alright I give up with you.
You're right, then. I heard a story that when she was much younger she whupped Martin Luther King in a debate. It's not that well known, but she prepared John Roberts for his Supreme Court appointment hearings. And that guy Sarkozy? Don't even *ask* me how she learned French, I ain't goin' there!
October 1, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I read the excerpt, will go back and read the whole thing. But the entire premise is deeply flawed. This is not Alaska, and Joe Biden is not Professor Beeblebumthwacker who spouts facts and figures in an attempt to get the audience to see the iron clad logic of the matter. He's the guy who came up with the line: "A noun a verb and 9-11". He's the guy who tells stories about his dad who calls him "champ". (get up champ get up champ)He's the guy who lived through legislating the violence against women act, not as an abstract exercise in logic, but as a public response to a emotional and serious issue. I think she is going to have a hard time looking more authentic than Biden.
That's Palin's problem, platitudes take you only so far. Attitude and affect only take you so far. At some point, you have to back it up. She has no depth of understanding at a deadly serious time in our history.
I expect that she will come armed with plenty of insults and zingers and hope that throws Biden off balance and that he'll have to waste time defending himself.
October 1, 2008 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup. You right. Reminds me of "Meet John Doe". Palin winds up a know nothing "heellot", which was Walter Brennan's catchall for "a whole lot of heels".
October 1, 2008 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's no way Biden can be thrown off balance. Unless she flubs up so badly, he - and the audience - crack up!
October 1, 2008 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you, liam. I think Palin is going to surprise a lot of people tomorrow night, and McCain's numbers will start going up slightly. It's to dems detriment to underestimate Palin.
October 1, 2008 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tina Fey
Will find a way!
October 1, 2008 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't wait to see SNL. They just do a 1 hour show. They have so much materials
- I would start 6000 years where men and dinosaurs coexisted
- The newspaper question
- Roe versus wave
- The joe six pack interview
- The troopergate...
So far so my favorite is the newspaper...
October 1, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hope, but doubt, that Gwen Ifill will use the VP candidates recent media comments in a line of questioning. That may hurt Biden, too, which is only fair, but will doubly hurt Palin.
I, for one, have watched most of her prior debate performances and, in an effort to lower expectations, am fully prepared that she will hold her own or be considered the winner of the debate.
I take nothing for granted. Every day is the first day of the campaign. Nothing said yesterday will matter. We need to fight harder every day no matter what the polls or the media say, on either side of the political spectrum.
October 1, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
She'll be charming and articulately incoherent, and thus, the headlines Friday will be "Palin wows at debate". You can make book on it.
October 1, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Charming? I don't know. I expect her to be in full attack mode.
October 1, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's because you, hyperRevue, live in the reality based community.
The media?
Not so much. Even if she attacks, she'll be described as "spirited", "a different person than the one in the Couric interviews", a person in touch with the lives of average Americans...blah, blah, blah.
The bar has been set so low that she only need to walk and chew gum simultaneously for the media to have a positive impression.
October 1, 2008 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, this is what I've been thinking. Even if she goes on the attack and Biden swats most of it aside, she'll get credit for standing firm or being brave enough to go toe-to-toe with him.
October 1, 2008 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The media elite just hate the idea of Joe six-pack as a US Supreme Court Justice.
October 1, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
We already experimented with the concept of a joe-six-pack in high office. I remember in 2000 people sort of agreed the Dubya was not smart enough but voted for him anyway because they thought "he can't possibly run the country to the ground". Eight years later we are in a fight for our livelihood and even for our soul as a people.
October 1, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
And nearly had one in Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court.... How's that workin' out?
October 1, 2008 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's dangerous to confuse ignorance for a lack of intelligence. George Bush sets records for arrogance, myopia and laziness, but I honestly don't believe he's unintelligent.
It would be a mistake to assume that Sara Palin's prideful ignorance is a sign of stupidity. She's ambitious but inexperienced with the attention of a national audience -- give her time, and I'm sure she'll learn to play the game very well.
October 1, 2008 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
IQ, average at BEST - in my professional opinion.
October 1, 2008 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I personally think that the Supreme Court should review Marbury v. Madison.
October 1, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's like an intellectual mobius strip, what you did just there. You blew my mind, baby.
October 1, 2008 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll settle for revisiting Bush v. Gore.
October 1, 2008 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
So good.
Anybody else in favor of Katie Couric hosting the debate?