So, Carrie Prejean was on Oprah yesterday, and when... wait, I'm sorry, it was Sarah Palin. My mistake. I confuse them at times. Beauty pageant winners who left their jobs early and get peevish when you ask something hard they don't want to answer, but claim you're stifling their freedom to speak.
Alas, I didn't watch. I just figured that if she had nothing to say when running to be Vice President of the United States, why in the world would I care when she was simply hawking a book she didn't write?
Indeed, seeing a single quote from the autobiography she didn't write, and just one clip from her TV appearance, that was more than enough emptiness to confirm my decision.
There she was, responding to being asked if the estranged father of her unmarried teenage daughter's baby, who has been relentlessly trashing her publicly and posing nude would be coming to Thanksgiving dinner. "That's a good question!!," she enthused.
No, it's not a good question. Anyone who thinks the answer is anything except, "Not even if Jesus Himself was his chaperone," has eaten too many candied yams. The bigger problem, though, was that she continued, trying to sound patronizing...sorry, "forgiving," by saying he needs to become part of the fold to know that he's loved. Loved??!! That wasn't a "forgiving" answer, it was a creepy one. Sarah Palin hasn't shown a wisp of "love" in a single one of her scathing public press releases about him. Further, to suggest that he should be taken under the "wing" of her "fold" ignores the reality that Mr. Johnston a) has a family where he is, no doubt, actually loved, and b) is the father of her granddaughter, not applying for admittance to the Church of Palin.
When you give a chuckleheaded answer, you come across like a chucklehead.
But then, it's very telling that she thinks this a "good question," yet believes it was a horrible question to ask a Vice Presidential candidate what publications she reads to inform her world view.
You see, what was so ghastly about the excerpts from her book concerning the Katie Couric interview is not that she was offended (still) by the question. It's what she wrote next.
As the AP reports, "...given what she called Couric's lack of knowledge about energy issues, Palin wondered whether she should have asked the news anchor what she read."
Keep in mind that Sarah Palin had a full year to think about this. A year!! And the best she can come up with is that she should have asked the anchor of the "CBS Evening News" what she reads!
Ms. Couric would likely have said something like, "I read the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Rome Il Messaggero" - which not only would have made Ms. Palin look truly foolish...but then she would have continued, "Okay, I just answered your question. Will you now answer mine?"
But even that's not what's most ghastly about her comments. It's something that has been ghastly since the moment the Couric Question was asked. It's that what Sarah Palin should have answered is - "I read the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Rome Il Messaggero." It doesn't matter if she really does read these - she's a politician, the truth is an alien - but it would have ended the matter.
Or she could have said, "My staff puts extracts from newspapers on my desk in the morning. Most politicians don't have time to read daily papers."
But Carrie Prejean just stood...sorry, Sarah Palin stood there like a bobbleheaded deer caught in the headlights and crash-landed. Imagine if Sarah Palin was sitting in the White House and had to answer, say - a serious question. Harder than "What do you read?" It's becoming more clear why she quit the governorship halfway through.
And still, she writes that she was mortified by Couric's supposed lack of knowledge on energy issues. This from someone who's sophisticated position is, "Drill, baby, drill."
But then, lack of knowledge during interviews really isn't something Sarah Palin should ever bring up. As in - not ever.
Because this is the person who claimed she had foreign policy experience because Russia is close to where she lived.
That can never be repeated enough. Sarah Palin was running for Vice President of the United States and claimed she had foreign policy experience because Russia is close to where she lived.
It's not that this is so air-gaspingly stupid - it's that she was caught unprepared on so basic, obvious a question...and thought it was a smart answer. She could have said almost anything half-rational. Instead - unprepared - she gave an answer that a second-grader would give. Though not a third-grader.
When you give a chuckleheaded answer, you come across like a chucklehead.
It is not living in the past to bring this up. Her answer speaks to character. And the ghastly thing is, a year later there's no evidence that today her answer would be any different.
One year. And that's the best that she came up with for her book. That she should have asked the anchor of the "CBS Evening News" what she reads.
One year. And she's still bumfuzzled by having been asked what she reads. That it was too hard, too unfair, too inappropriate. No wonder she dismisses difficult questions asked her as "Gotcha Questions." No wonder she quit being governor after only half a term.
If she can't handle any of this, if she can't handle "What do you read?" - in what universe does anyone think she could handle sitting down with a confrontational Iran to negotiate a nuclear arms agreement??
It came as no surprise, therefore, to hear that Carrie Prejean considers Sarah Palin one of her heroes. When the Emperor of Softball Questions, Larry King, asked her nothing more than what she was thinking ("You don't have to tell me the terms of the settlement, but why settle...?"), she imploded. It was too hard, too unfair, too "inappropriate."
But then, Ms. Prejean has this ongoing problem answering questions that she finds inconvenient, just like her "hero," Sarah Palin. I can't talk about that. I won't talk about that. The media is mean to me. That's inappropriate. Doing endless interviews to yammer that her Free Speech Rights are being blocked.
When you give a chuckleheaded answer, you come across like a chucklehead.
Here's the thing: if Sarah Palin - sorry, if Carrie Prejean doesn't want to answer questions, then stop doing interviews. She reminds me of a sketch by the great comics Bob & Ray, where a guy comes in for an interview and hands the host a list of prepared questions - and at one point berates the host for asking a bad question, from that very list. Carrie Prejean isn't interested in doing interviews; she wants a One Woman Show on Broadway. "Carrie Prejean stars as Carrie Prejean."
SarahPalinCarriePrejean are two peas in a pod. Both preening for the cameras, winking as human contact, and unwilling, unable to answer any question that forces them to process opinions different from their own. Pouting their way petulantly through life.
If Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean want to be bastions of female equality, role models of womanhood, this is not the way to go about it. This is One Giant Leap Backwards for Womankind. Women are so much smarter, better than this.
When you give chuckleheaded answers, you come across like a chucklehead.
And this reaction here, it all came from nothing more than an excerpt in an autobiography she didn't write, and one TV clip. And you wonder why I couldn't bear to make it through the whole interview.
My head would have exploded.