Palin Takes A Hitt

Cattle Sign
Originally uploaded by mdt1960

Here are some classic excerpts from the June 2010 issue of the Harper’s Magazine article titled “Is Sarah Palin Porn?” written by contributing editor Jack Hitt.

Modern television politics, we are usually told, begins with the famous 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates. If you look back to them, what you see is not merely the first presidential candidate to realize that packaged talking points come off convincingly on television but also an obituary for a lost political style. Critics always note that Nixon looked crummy in those debates—the five-o’clock shadow, the sweats, the sideways glances, the tugging at his infamous dewlaps. But those gestures are not what sank Nixon. They were merely symptoms of what Nixon was doing, and he was the last politician ever to do it on live TV: Nixon was thinking.


...At a recent “tea party” gathering, she leaned over the lectern and sneered, “How’s that hopey, changely stuff working out for you?” It was a great bit, but a great written bit.

Here Palin most resembles Reagan, but cut her loose from her speechwriters and she shrivels into Dan Quayle. It would not be fair to make this case if she’d had only a few frozen moments with television interviewers. But without a tight script or notes scrawled on her palm, she quickly becomes confused. Her itinerant syntax is now legendary, what Bill Maher calls her gift for unspooling the “sentence to nowhere.” You don’t need to be an English teacher correcting an essay to know that the student did not read the assignment and is slipping into classic high school bullshit.


When Rahm Emanuel referred to liberal activists as “retarded” in a private conversation, she opportunistically pounced. Typically, conservatives stay away from the political-correctness angle. But Palin howled that she was deeply offended. Unfortunately. Rush Limbaugh shortly thereafter denounced the retards in the White House. Retard, retard, retard—he said it forty times, with the usual honking, farting, grandmother-horrifying derision that passes for humor on radio these days. The day after that, Palin defended Limbaugh, drawing a meandering distinction between Emanuel’s comments and Limbaugh’s “satire.” The very next day, an actual satirist, Stephen Colbert, made the argument that “we should all come to her defense and say Sarah Palin is a fucking retard.” For once, Palin shut up.

The mistake of a “Foxy” Sarah Palin

Gummy Rubbers
Originally uploaded by mdt1960

OK, so I’m not a Fox News fan and I’m certainly not a Sarah Palin fan, but that doesn’t mean I wish eternal damnation for both. And so, I don’t get it.

How does a network that uses the jingle “fair and balanced” believe that bringing Sarah Palin on board is going to give them more credibility in the fair and balanced arena? How do they expect skeptics like me to tune in when they’ve taken another step toward the dark side? Talk about reinforcing stereotypes that have everything to do with Fox News being way right of center—and thus off-balance...

Perhaps what is most saddening is they let Lou Dobbs slip away after he left CNN unexpectedly. Who knows, maybe he’s still on their line, and they simply haven’t reeled him in yet. He’s every bit as big a fish as Palin and much more substantial.

And I’m not as naive as I sound. I understand what this is all about—ratings folks, ratings! But at what cost? Fox News is one step away from becoming the classified television version of a supermarket tabloid magazine like the Globe or National Enquirer—neither one known for their astute journalism ethics/practices.

And if Fox News can’t get Lou Dobbs, perhaps they should look at Oliver North or Ted Nugent and leave Sarah Palin to QVC... which will undoubtedly send sales through the roof.

PS: Do you suppose there is any chance that Sarah Palin will get to return the favor and interview Katie Couric? Perhaps Palin can ambush Couric herself with questions like, “So Katie, what do you read?” At the least, I’d tune in for that!