(Modified since original posting to include what's now the first video clip)
In thinking about the upcoming debate, where the consensus says that expectations have been so lowered by now that Sarah Palin will be declared "the winner" by the chattering classes if she manages to get through the whole thing without needing Steve Schmidt to come on stage to throw a blanket over her, I thought I'd gather up some thoughts of others that reflect on what she has shown us so far. If nothing else, these should help coat, soothe, and protect your stomach lining in anticipation what we're likely to hear over the next couple of days from tools like Tom Brokaw.
Katha Pollit's Sarah Palin, Affirmative Action Babe begins:
Ah, meritocracy! Not so long ago, conservatives had a lock on it: no affirmative action, no A's for effort, no competitions where everyone gets a prize. People who complained that racism or sexism or any other ism was holding them back were whiners looking for excuses. They either didn't want to work hard or, as Charles Murray claimed in The Bell Curve, they weren't smart enough to make the grade.
Well, never mind. Sarah Palin has done for meritocracy what she's done for those other conservative obsessions: working mothers (you go, girl!), teen pregnancy (a challenge!), masculine authority (the first dude?)--to say nothing of gravitas, statesmanship, wisdom and all those other weighty abstract nouns George Will likes to talk about.
... and just keeps getting better from there.
I came across Pollit's piece by following a link contained in Michael Bérubé's So you Palin-mockers think you’re so smart. Yes, you should click that link and read the whole thing. Longish post but worth it, and the surprise ending is an extra reward.
Also quite good: Paul Campos's Please make it stop, an analysis of Palin's Supreme Court non-answers, and his earlier post, Turning trick questions. Be sure to follow the "this column" link within the latter.
Not in the mood to read? (Silly question, if you made it to this point, maybe.) Okay, via Oliver Willis, here's a clip of the answer that drove Campos to the keyboard:
Here's the same Palin response, in a side-by-side comparison with Joe Biden's answer to the same question (h/t: uncle ebeneezer, and sorry for the lead-in commercial):
Here's another comparison of the VP candidates, on the question of separation between church and state (same apology):
I was going to complain somewhere in this post about the way the McCain camp gamed the debate -- answers to be kept short, and no follow-up questions allowed -- but after sitting through these latest streams of Palin once again demonstrating the inability to form complete sentences even from clichés, maybe it's just as well. Call me a Katha Pollit elitist.
(I'm already a Richard Dawkins elitist.)
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