Dick Cavett, someone from whom we don't hear enough, opined in the 14 November 2008 New York Times about Sarah Palin, the 'Wild Wordsmith from Wasilla".
I doubt whether the good Governor will see it, since she doesn't read the New York Times or any other newspaper or magazine. But I am being unfair, since she said she couldn't name the ones she read - just "any and all of 'em."
Here's a Palin gem from Cavett's article:
My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.
All I can say is three words: WTF? Sorry I cannot be more articulate.
Cavett continues: Has there been a poll to see if the Sarah-ites are numbered among that baffling 26 percent of our population who, despite everything, still maintain that President George has done a heckuva job? A woman in one of Palin’s crowds praised her for being “a mom like me … who thinks the way I do” and added, for ill measure, “That’s what I want in the White House.” Fine, but in what capacity?
More from Cavett: Could the willingness to crown one who seems to have no first language have anything to do with the oft-lamented fact that we seem to be alone among nations in having made the word “intellectual” an insult? (And yet…and yet…we did elect Obama. Surely not despite his brains.) Yes, one thing her candidacy did expose is Americans' mistrust of smart people. Yeah, let's put someone average in the White House, not one of those Ivy League-types. Like George W. Bush, the Yale-Harvard BA-MBA grad, right?
I honestly don't think Palin is stupid, she just doesn't seem to know much outside of Alaska. What is more, she seems to revel in it - 'Jane Six-Pack', the self-styled "hockey mom", albeit with a $150,000 campaign wardrobe for her and her family.
One pundit commented that her primary function as Governor of Alaska was presiding over the distribution of lucre as head of a kleptocratic petrostate. She hasn't done much to dispel that image. But since oil prices are tanking, she may have to put some more thought into actually governing. I am sure she'll continue to do fine up there.
But a person many want to be President? I don't think so.
"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border." --Sarah Palin, explaining why Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience, interview with CBS's Katie Couric, 24 September 2008
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