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Sarah Palin thinks she's got it covered now in explaining why she did so badly when interviewed by actual journalists in her failed vice-presidential campaign last year. She went on The O'Reilly Factor last night and told BillO that a simple foreign-policy question like Charles Gibson's query about the Bush Doctrine was just a "gotcha technique" by the liberal media (instead of a routine question intended to ascertain her bearings on foreign policy).

And Katie Couric? That was just a reaction to Katie's snotty questions:

O'Reilly: Katie Couric's a different story. Katie Couric asked you an easy question and you booted it, governor.

Palin: I sure did.

[Plays video]

COURIC: What newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them ...

O'Reilly: Why did you boot it? I mean, if somebody asks what do you read, I say I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, I could reel them off in my sleep, you couldn't do it.

Palin: Well, of course I could. Of course I could.

O'Reilly: Well, why didn't you?

Palin: It's ridiculous to suggest that or say I couldn't tell people what I read. Because by that point already, although it was relatively early in that multi-segmented interview with Katie Couric -- it was, it was quite obvious that it was going to be a bit of an annoying interview with a badgering of the questions. It seemed to me that she didn't know anything about Alaska, about my job as governor, about my accomplishments as mayor or governor, my record. And a question like that, though, yeah, I booted it, I screwed up, I should have been more patient and more gracious in my answer, it seemed to me the question was more along the lines of -- Do you read? How do you stay in touch with the real world?

O'Reilly: See, that was your inexperience.

Palin: It was my inexperience with having to deal with a condescending, badgering line of questioning. No -- no reflection at all on my inexperience in terms of administrative record or accomplishments or vision for America.

Pardon me while I call b-llsh-t. "What kinds of things do you read?" is a stock question of the political journalist when querying candidates, particularly those new on the scene. And as you can see from watching the clip that O'Reilly shows, there was nothing high-handed or suggestive of "Do you read?" in Couric's question.

You can watch the longer clip of this portion of the interview here. Palin is not bridling at Couric's arrogance -- she's drawing a blank and reaching for straws.

But in Palinopia, of course, she's just being "human." And I guess that's right, to an extent -- since prevaricating and dodging and making up lame excuses is part of the human condition too. Just not a very attractive or inspiring one.

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Watching Sarah Palin being interviewed is always a little like watching an incoherent art-student film or something from a William S. Burroughs fantasy. It obviously comes from a completely different planet in a different quadrant of the universe.

For example, among the things you learned by watching Palin on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night were the following nuggets:

-- Palin still is unhappy with the McCain campaign for not having smeared Barack Obama enough with phony association-game stuff about Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright -- you know, issues Americans really cared about.

-- She seems to have been watching a lot of Glenn Beck, though, because she practically repeats Beck's favorite talking points about Obama's supposedly nefarious associations.

-- Palin says "it wasn't negative campaigning and it wasn't off-base to call someone out on their associations." Hmmmm. Well, when Max Blumenthal and I did just that with Palin over her lengthy far-right associations, she completely freaked out.

-- Obama is "dithering" in Afghanistan. And evidently, if Palin were president, the only people she would listen to regarding the use of troops would be generals. Civilian advisers? Fuggedaboutit.

-- The reason she "blew" the question in the Katie Couric interview about what she read? She was irked by Couric's "arrogance." Apparently it's arrogant of media folk to ask national politicians softball questions that every other politico on the planet can readily answer.

-- What does she read? The first publication she cites is NewsMax. Yep, that NewsMax: The folks who, in the late 1990s, were peddling "Y2K apocalypse" theories and Clinton "New World Order" conspiracy theories. The same NewsMax that recently published a piece extolling the virtues of a military coup in order to remove Obama.

One thing that I think will become obvious in the coming weeks: Palin will not risk any more Katie Couric interviews. She will be completely ensconced only with friendly interviewers like Hannity. Oprah will have been her most risky interview.

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On his Fox News show last night, Glenn Beck launched his latest campaign to unseat a member of the Obama White House: Valerie Jarrett, one of the president's closest advisers and a close friend of Michelle Obama as well.

Beck in fact devoted over 20 minutes of his opening segment to attacking Jarrett. He not only puts Jarrett at the center of the controversies Beck has managed to stir up and force resignations, but he says Jarrett is the reason the Obamas are flying to Denmark to lobby for Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Olympics.

It's straight out of black-helicoptersville, of course. But this has never stopped Beck in the past. Indeed, it's been the key to his success so far.

Somehow, I don't think Jarrett is going to be as easy to throw under the bus as Van Jones was. Now we may get to see, finally, how this White House responds to these kinds of attacks -- other than rank capitulation.

In the meantime, has anyone noticed yet that all of Beck's targets to date have been black?

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Just like it was coincidence that Beck couldn't explain to Katie Couric the meaning of "white culture":

UPDATE: White House blogger Jesse Lee has posted a factual response pointing out how reality-deprived Beck's attacks are.

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Katie Couric asks Glenn Beck about the Tea Baggers he's stirring up at the rallies and whether that bothers him, his comment saying the President is a racist and his comment about poisoning Nancy Pelosi and hitting Charlie Rangel over the head with a shovel. Beck of course shows no remorse for the protesters behavior.

As to the racism comment he says he was sorry for the "way it was phrased" but says "it is a serious question" that he thinks needs "serious discussion".

He asks Couric is she's "ever asked Jon Stewart that question" in response to the Pelosi/Rangel question. Glenn, I don't think Jon Stewart has ever joked about poisoning Nancy Pelosi or hitting Charlie Rangel over the head with a shovel.

Dave N.: It's clear that Beck isn't about to apologize for calling President Obama a racist, because he believes it's true. And you can see, from watching his show this past month, that proving this thesis -- that Obama's radical anti-white racism is driving him to remake the USA as a communist/socialist state -- is his ongoing enterprise.

But even more noxious is his claim that he's bothered by people carrying Obama-as-Hitler signs -- a little, anyway:

Couric: When you see posters -- I'm curious -- of President Obama dressed like an African tribesman --

Beck: Haven't seen those.

[We call BS on this. Everyone's seen those.]

Couric: Or poster of President Obama with a Hitler mustache. I'm curious -- are you comfortable with that? Does that make you uncomfortable?

Beck: I'm as comfortable with that as I was when they -- the people who were marching against the war were doing it to George W. Bush.

Besides the starkly higher proportion of Obama-Hitler signs, there's one really big difference between them: There weren't any leading figures on the left -- particularly not any with a popular cable show -- telling their audiences of millions that Bush was bringing fascism to America.

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Bill O'Reilly, last night on his Fox News show, discussing Sarah Palin:

O'Reilly: The perception that the governor is dumb comes almost exclusively from the left, does it not?

Well, no doubt there are a lot of people on the left who consider Sarah Palin dumb. But they're hardly alone.

Peggy Noonan:

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

Kathleen Parker:

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

... If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

Parker again:

Of course, there’s a difference between a lack of polish and a lack of coherence. Some of Palin’s interview responses can’t even be critiqued on their merits because they’re so nonsensical. “Let Sarah be Sarah” has become the latest rallying cry among my colleagues on the right. She’ll be fine if we just leave her alone, they say. Between prayers, I might add.

David Frum:

I think Sarah Palin was a huge mistake...Americans can be pretty jokey about their government when times are good, but when times are bad, they want to know do -- can you do the job? And when you have a candidate who so obviously has never thought about any of the issues that are going to be important to the next administration and whose knowledge is so shallow, it makes people -- it doesn't just make people offended, it makes them afraid.

David Brooks:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

You don't have to be a liberal to conclude that Sarah Palin is not what they call "the sharpest tool in the shed" back in Alaska. You just have to be someone not consuming the Republican Clap Louder Kool Aid.

Attempting the political equivalent of relaunching the Hindenburg, soon-to-be former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin hosted ABC, Fox News, CNN, Time, the AP and other media outlets while fishing Tuesday. But even as she proclaimed of her abrupt resignation, "politically speaking, if I die, I die," Palin reminded Americans once again why she so deserves that fate.

By claiming the nonexistent "Department of Law" in Washington would protect her from the kind of ethics woes she encountered in Alaska, Palin demonstrated her continuing ignorance of American government and public policy alike. Of course, it's far from the first time.

Here, then, is a look back at Sarah Palin's Greatest Hits:

"I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out." (July 7, 2009.)

"It's all for Alaska." (Asked by Time why she resigned, July 7, 2009).

"In what respect, Charlie?" (Asked by ABC's Charles Gibson if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine, September 11, 2008.)

"Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy..." (Misunderstanding Alaska's 3.5% share of U.S. domestic energy production, September 11, 2008.)

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America." (October 16, 2008.)

"A task that is from God." (On the war in Iraq, June 8, 2008.)

"I think God's will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that." (June 8, 2008.)

"To me, it motivates us, makes us work that much harder. And it also strengthens my faith, because I'm going to know, at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4. So I'm not discouraged at all." (Asked if she was discouraged by polls showing the McCain-Palin ticket trailing, October 22, 2008.)

"As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?" (August 1, 2008.)

"That's something that Piper would ask me!...[T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom." (asked by third grader Brandon Garcia what the Vice President does, October 20, 2008.)

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h/t The HuffPo:

David Letterman had CBS News anchor Katie Couric doubled over with laughter when he referred to Rush Limbaugh as a "bonehead" and described his shirt-unbuttoned appearance at the recent CPAC conference as that of an "East European gangster."

Well at least Letterman's not cow-towing to Limbaugh but Katie's sounds disappointed she might not get her interview with him. Cry me a river. Rush might get a little less free air time to bloviate.

  Jon Stewart recaps Sarah Palin's excruciating interview with Katie Couric.

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Couric: But [Rick Davis] still has a stake in [his lobbying company] so isn't that a conflict of interest?

Palin: [Blank look on face]

Stewart: If you look closely in the reflection of her glasses, I think it says buffering...buffering...buffering... I love this show -- it's like the first season of Lost, only it makes less sense.

  She really is George Bush in lipstick. Katie Couric asks Palin another one of those "gotcha" questions, this time about which publications she reads to learn about the world.

Download | play   Download | play  

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and understand the world?

PALIN: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

COURIC: Like what ones specifically?

PALIN:  Umm... all of them. Any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news... Alaska isn't a foreign country where it's kind of suggested it seems like, wow how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, DC may be thinking and doing, when you live up there in Alaska. Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Good Lord. Put this poor woman out of her misery already. 

DIGG IT!

UPDATE: Glenn gets it.

In order to learn the source of her political knowledge, Katie Couric asked her three times what specific newspapers she read prior to being selected as Vice President, and Palin -- after trying to answer a couple times with her trademark rambling incoherence ("all of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me all these years . . . a vast variety") -- abruptly decided that the question was an elitist, condescending East Coast media assault on Alaska and chided Couric accordingly, without answering. How could you mock that other than by repeating it verbatim?

UPDATE II: Holy crap. It completely slipped my mind that Plain has a degree in journalism. Yes, someone who studied journalism can't name a single magazine or newspaper.

  It's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between Sarah Palin and Tina Fey. Not even joking. Her parody is that spot on. See original Palin interview video here.

Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Heather)

"PALIN": "Like every American I'm speaking with, we are ill about this. We're saying, 'Hey, why bail out Fanny and Freddie and not me?' But ultimately, what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help, uhhh, it's gotta be all about job creation too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddie back on the right track, and so health care reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending...'cause Barack Obama, ya know, has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans, also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That's gonna help. But 1 in 5 jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know. Also....."

The blog Orange Crate Art compares Palin, Orwell and the English language.  Truly scary.

As George Orwell points out in "Politics and the English Language," one need not take on the responsibility of thinking when composing sentences:

You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connexion between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

Another disturbing snippet from Palin's interview with Katie Couric.

We don't have to second-guess what their efforts would be if they believe … that it is in their country and their allies, including us, all of our best interests to fight against a regime, especially Iran, who would seek to wipe them off the face of the earth. It is obvious to me who the good guys are in this one and who the bad guys are. The bad guys are the ones who say Israel is a stinking corpse and should be wiped off the face of the earth. That's not a good guy who is saying that. Now, one who would seek to protect the good guys in this, the leaders of Israel and her friends, her allies, including the United States, in my world, those are the good guys."

That Sarah Palin shares the Bush's administration's good vs. evil mentality should give us all great pause, especially since her foreign policy crash course is being taught by the likes of Joe Lieberman. We may not know very much about Sarah Palin, but it's clear she shares this radical view of foreign policy.

For more, see this article by Glenn Greenwald about his second book, A Tragic Legacy, that examines this Manichean theme in great detail.

Here's part two of Sarah Palin's disastrous interview with Katie Couric. Yesterday Palin couldn't provide a single example of John McCain favoring market regulations, and today she tries to defend the foreign policy "experience" she gleaned from being Governor of a state that's close to Russia.

Download | play   Download | play  

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

Full transcript below the fold:

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  Hannity's infomercial notwithstanding, Sarah Palin is now 0-2 in media appearances. When Katie Couric asks her to name specific steps McCain has taken with regard to pushing for more regulation, Palin is stumped and says she's gonna have to get back to her.

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Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you. 

Maybe it's actually smarter to keep her away from the press, no? Check out this report from Politico's Jonathan Martin:

McCain then looked around the room and gestured as if to welcome questions. The AP reporter shouted a question at Gov. Palin ("Governor, what have you learned from your meetings?") but McCain aide Brooke Buchanan intervened and shepherded everybody out of the room.

Palin looked surprised, leaned over to McCain and asked him a question, to which your pooler thinks he shook his head as if to say "No."

As TPM's Greg Sargent says: Letting Sarah Palin Answer Questions Is Very, Very Dangerous

Full transcript below the fold:

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