Palin's ABC interview II
This morning's Good Morning America segments with Governor Palin's were more helpful than last night's hatchet job. However, Gibson's down-the-nose-over-the-glasses-condescension was even more irritating the second time through. I've seen him do interviews before. I don't recall him being so severe and patronizing.
And then came Jake Tapper's "Fact check" on what Gov. Palin said. However, Tapper needs some fact checking himself.
1. Palin said if you go back in history there are probably lots of VP's who never met a world leader. So Tapper goes a mere 32 years back into history to discover that no living VP has not met world leaders before becoming VP and stamps her statement with a big red FALSE! They went all the way back to Nelson Rockefeller who was appointed in 1974 (that's 34 years, Jake) and is conveniently dead. They stopped there. Maybe because that's where VP's who've met heads of state pretty much ends?
Please. Osama Bin Laden quotes from the Balfour Declaration and we're going to judge someone's worthiness to be VICE-president on a convenient 32 year example? We're going to deal with the Chinese who remember and frame their policy based on thousands of years of history and we can't be bothered to go back through our mere 232 years? This during a time when it's never been easier to research any world leader with a few clicks on the computer by viewing video, text and comments from around the world. Is a mere meeting more valuable than knowing about them?
2. In a desperate effort to put flip-flops on Palin Tapper stamps her statement that man may have an impact on the environment as FALSE because she said last year she's not a Gorebot saying:
"I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity."
Really, folks, anyone who spends any time in nature, like a woman who hunts and fishes for a living, realizes that man has an impact on our environment but that's a long way from taking all the blame. She, like lots of people, isn't convinced they're not cyclical changes we're currently observing. So, because she fails to worship at the alter of global warming (and prays in a church for God's will to be done) she's not qualified to be Vice-President?
Her opponents are coming across as tremendously desperate which, I believe is good news for the country. Desperate people make mistakes and the Obama campaign cannot afford many more mistakes. It won't take much more before they've alienated more than enough normal Americans to lose the election.
7 comments:
Normal Americans? I suppose normal is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes, I can't believe we live in the same country and worship the same God.
Me either.
I was going to add a comment more connected to substantive topic of the post, but this talk about alienating "normal Americans" disturbs me, because it's something I hear from modern Republicans too often, the not-so-subtle implication being, I take it, that we who are strong liberals or strong supporters of Barack Obama are not "normal Americans." I'm sick of hearing lines like that from conservatives.
It's wrong, frankly, when some liberals suggest that those who disagree with them on policy are, by definition, backwards and stupid. There are liberals like that out there, and they sicken our political discourse and, in the long run, hurt their own cause. They should be ashamed.
But those on the right who peddle the idea that those who disagree with them on policy are somehow un-American, somehow cut off from the standard, American experience, fall into the exact same category. Really, I think they do more harm than the alternative smear ever can, because they corrupt, for those well-intentioned liberals, the language of patriotism and of national community. When one encounters a liberal who shows some degree of discomfort with large displays of national love, parades of flags, mass recitation of the Pledge, and so on and so forth, one should ask how many times they have had it suggested to them that such things belong to the real Americans, the good, god-loving, decent, values-having Americans, and not to them.
I suppose, as a young liberal, I am possibly being overly emotional about a largely rhetorical point, but these things really do bother me. I can't tell you how many times I've been watching, say, C-SPANN or Republican commentators on CNN and heard them talk about the things American families know and value...and realized that they aren't including me and mine in that definition.
That seriously messed with my head, when I was younger, and it hasn't gotten any better, now that I can vote. So please, please...talk about how Palin will show us all that Obama's policies are wrong. Talk about how the attacks on her are unfair. Even talk about how the media is out to get her. I'm okay with all that, though I vehemently disagree.
But don't imply that those she brings around are "normal Americans" and that those of us who think Obama will be a great president are something other. That's just wrong.
I don't think Kay Brooks is stupid or backward. Does she have a misinterpretation of God and humanity. From my view, yes. But then again, this is my view. One formed by my environment, my understanding of God and humanity.
I'm not implying it at all. I'm saying it straight out. The people Palin brings back to the debate are not un-normal Americans either. Many of them, like her, hunt, fish, pray to Jesus and expect to hear answers, have more than 2.2 children, know their minds and hearts without hesitation, love to wave the flag and honor our soldiers, have children that veer off the path and others that are fighting evil across the globe, want lower taxes, drilling for oil here, less government and doubt that 'community organizer' is a real job, let alone one that trumps governor of any state.
They key is in the fact that you are a 'young liberal'. I suggest you spend some time considering what might be normal when you're 45 or 55. As I heard this morning, sometimes where you stand depends upon where you sit. You'll be sitting in a different place in a couple of decades. Statistically, you'll see things differently and will likely be standing in a much more conservative place then.
That is true. I consider myself to be a liberal libertarian. As society naturally progress, yesterday's liberal can morph into tomorrow's conservative. I've known young conservatives who have progressed into leftists as well. It goes both ways.
Kay, this is my last comment. But thanks for providing me with a work distraction. I'm being sincere.
1.) I pray to Jesus.
2.) I hear answers.
3.) I love to wave the flag and honor our soldiers.
4.) After the governmental morass known as the Bush administration, I yearn for less government. Or at the very least, I want a more responsible government.
5.) I want lower taxes.
I suppose we have more in common than previously thought.
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