Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly and the death of irony

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How dare an interviewer ask questions I’m not prepared to answer

Immediately following the vice presidential debate last week, Sarah Palin gave an interview to Fox News’ Carl Cameron and expressed gratitude that he was so much easier to deal with than Katie Couric. She didn’t like the Couric interviews because, she argued, it didn’t matter what she said — she was still going to be criticized for it:

Palin told Carl that she was “annoyed” at some of the interviews she has done. “OK, I’ll tell you honestly, the Sarah Palin in those interviews is a little bit annoyed because it’s, man, no matter what you say you are going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question you are going to get clobbered on the answer,” Palin said. “If you choose to try and pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that, too.”

Yeah, see? It has nothing to do with the fact that she had no idea what she was talking about on one issue after another. It has nothing to do with having her rank ignorance of major issues exposed to the world. It has nothing to do with the fact that she appeared to be completely unable to put together a coherent sentence or thought in those interviews. Even if she hadn’t looked like foolish and unprepared, she still would have been clobbered. Thus it doesn’t matter that she looked foolish and unprepared. It all stands to, errr, reason.

But she wasn’t done with the whining yet:

She defended some of the circular answers she gave the CBS anchor saying that she did not get to cover some of the topics she saw as important, “[b]ut in those Katie Couric interviews I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a V.P. candidate stands for. What the values are represented in our ticket. I wanted to talk about Barack Obama increasing taxes, which would lead to killing jobs. I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase government spending by another trillion dollars.”

She seems to be having a difficult time grasping the difference between an interview and a stump speech. You see, Sarah, in a stump speech you get to talk about what you want to talk about; in an interview, you have to talk about what the interviewer wants to talk about. And when you consent to be interviewed by someone else, this is usually implicit in the agreement. Unless, of course, you’re doing an interview with Fox News, which turns into a therapy session wherein you complain about how unfair it is that the evil liberal media actually thinks you should answer questions. And don’t you love the fact that immediately after saying she wanted to talk about the “values” represented by their ticket, the only thing she could think of as examples of those values were attacks on Obama?

The Palin effect

Speaking of the vice presidential debate, Rich Lowry, one of the editors of the National Review, seems to have gotten a case of the vapors watching Sarah Palin’s performance:

I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.

No, Rich, I’m sure you’re not the only male in America who reacted that way. You likely are, however, the only male in America who (presumably) doesn’t still live in his parents’ basement who did so. Still, I’ll give you credit for having typed that line with one hand.

Bill O’Reilly proves the existence of God

And that proof is … himself. No, seriously. It’s in his latest book:

Next time you meet an atheist, tell him or her that you know a bold, fresh guy, a barbarian who was raised in a working-class home and retains the lessons he learned there.

Then mention to that atheist that this guy is now watched and listened to, on a daily basis, by millions of people all over the world and, to boot, sells millions of books.

Then, while the non-believer is digesting all that, ask him or her if they still don’t believe there’s a God!

Bill, Bill, Bill … the fact that you sell millions of books is not proof that God exists; it’s proof that P.T. Barnum was an optimist.

Think the presidential campaign is nasty?

Wait till you hear about the commissioner in Cobb County, Ga., who hired a voodoo priestess to give her opponent cancer. Best of all, she wrote her bad checks to do it:

Cobb County Commissioner Annette Kesting today repeatedly denied accusations from a South Carolina “voodoo priestess” that Kesting wrote $3,000 in bad checks for the woman’s services.

George Ann Mills said Kesting approached her at home in Blythewood, S.C., in late August seeking otherworldly help against Democrat Woody Thompson, who beat Kesting in the primary runoff vote for the District 4 seat representing southwest Cobb.

The commissioner denies it, but has a tough time explaining the money she sent to the voodoo woman:

Mills said Kesting wrote two checks totaling $3,000, which were returned for insufficient funds. Kesting then sent two $1,000 money orders in payment. Mills produced a copy of a MoneyGram receipt, dated Aug. 28. The receipt, which she faxed to the AJC [Atlanta Journal Constitution], listed Kesting’s husband, Christian, as the sender.

“I kept a paper trail of everything,” Mills said. “I don’t think this would have ever come out if I had been paid.”

OK, new rule: If you’re going to hire a voodoo priestess to strike down your opponent, pay her in cash. Maybe they could contact Palin’s pal, Pastor Muthee. I hear he’s good at chasing out witches.

Another irony meter bites the dust

If you’re looking for the most staggering political claim of the week, look at this one from Cindy McCain:

Cindy McCain said today that she expects her husband to clear the record at tonight’s debate and let America know where he truly stands.

[Mrs.] McCain, who stopped to visit a half-dozen children at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt today, said the presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has “waged the dirtiest campaign in American history,” and her husband Sen. John McCain will use tonight’s debate to correct the distortions.

Has she been drinking too much of that beer her family distributes? She can’t really be that oblivious to reality, can she? Then again, this is the campaign where a man with seven houses and 13 cars has called his opponent elitist and out of touch, where Rudy Giuliani was sent out to talk about “small town values,” where a candidate who had been slamming his opponent’s inexperience then picked a running mate with even less experience and where a man who’s been in Congress for 26 years has been running as an outsider and a reformer. They simply don’t make irony meters strong enough to withstand spikes like this.