Sarah Palin, Don't Wink at Me, Ever

Under the scrutiny of the entire free world, Sarah Palin cleared an ankle-high bar last week at the Vice Presidential Debate. Indeed, Palin proved her oratical prowess by opening her mouth and having sound come out of it, though not much else.

In an attempt to prove herself to a skeptical liberal media, Palin did little more than stay afloat in her head-to-head against Joe Biden. After a series of stumbles in her infamous Katie Couric interview, Palin was declared all but dead by headlines across the nation. Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times dubbed Palin’s encounter with Couric as the “worst interview Palin has ever done.” Over on the West Coast, James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times calls Palin "rambling, marginally responsive and even more adrift than during her network debut with ABC’s Charles Gibson."

Certainly, a woman who could not name a single Supreme Court decision she disagreed with or a newspaper she read was not capable of being the vice president.

As it turns out, this widespread doubt about Palin’s competence may have given her an edge in the debate. America had such low expectations of this self-styled “hockey mom,” that Palin needed only to say one or two sensible things to avoid an election-defining blunder for John McCain’s campaign. Yes, dodging disaster was all she needed to do to recover from her previous encounters with the "Gotcha" press and win the debate in the eyes of millions of Americans.

“Last night was a big, big win for Sarah Palin,” wrote Gail Collins in the New York Times the day after the debate. “Gone, long gone, are the worries about how good or well-prepared Sarah Palin is.”

Really? In the debate I watched, Palin was baffled by many of Gwen Ifill’s questions. This “moose-gutting, polar bear-trashing, aerobics-class-networking vice presidential nominee” (as Gail Collins styles her) seemed to lose her Wonder-from-Wasilla attitude when asked about details of McCain’s foreign policy plan, especially. Palin’s responses were not 100% accurate, to say the least. Besides getting the name wrong of the commanding general in Afganistan (McKiernan, not McClellan, Sarah), she also misquoted Obama on health care, the Iraqi war, and tax increases.

            If all this is so, how did Palin manage to walk away from the debate with such a positive response from the press? I find this extraordinarily unusual, especially after Palin’s statement about the “Gotcha” press only a month earlier.

“Here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to win their good opinion,” Palin muttered angrily at a speech in St. Paul early this September.

If this current trend continues, I doubt she’ll be going at all.

(I read a few sources for this piece.. here are the articles I liked the best..)

-http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/opinion/04collins.html?em

-http://www.newsweek.com/id/162396

An Op-Ed with Good Intentions but a Poor After-taste

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When discussing the political career of Sen. Barack Obama, most journalists avoid mention of his skin color, fearful of appearing biased. In "Racisim Without Racists," Nicholas ristof plunges headfirst into this controversy without hesitation, a trait unmatched by most modern political analysts. More than three decades after the Civil Rights Movement, most whites like to think prejudice is extinct. According to Kristof, these same "well-meaning whites" are the ones who "discriminate unconsciously," which has significantly affected Sen. Obama's campaign. This kind of accusation is so bold that it makes white readers, like myself, get their backs up, and makes them defensive enough to keep reading.

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Kristof then mentions how racism helps Sen. Obama's campaign. He wrote, "[Obama's race] underscores his message of change; it appeals to some voters as a demonstration of their open-mindedness." Taken a step further, Kristof is saying that no matter how whites vote, they are biased. He later said, however, that only 50% of whites have unconscious bias. He is essentially contradicting himself, which for me, took away some of his credibility as a writer, although I admire his audacity to write about such a controversial matter.

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Kristof's conclusion was also poor. With such a unique thesis, I expected Kristof to give readers a send-off that is equally unique and meaningful. Instead, Kristof tied up his article about racism with a history lesson on Catholics in the 1960s. Blacks have been abused for hundreds of years around the world, and to compare their struggle for freedom with that of the Catholic's lessens the urgency of the issue. The ending was weak and distasteful.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05kristof.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=racism%20without%20racists&st=cse&oref=slogin