A whole book of these things would be lethal, I think


Charles Pierce gives us another quote from Sarah Palin. I’m glad someone else is extracting these, because I can’t listen to her for more than 3 or 4 seconds.

Any interest in doing a political talk show, either on TV, radio or the Internet?

Maybe. But the politics would have to be interspersed with a whole lot of fun and real life and inspiration showcasing American work ethic, because those topics are all pretty much the antithesis of today’s politics, which I find incorrigibly disastrous! It’d be so much fun to shake it up taking on issues that make audiences objectively consider all sides, and I’d do it with my own real-life groundedness, candor and commonsense that I’m known for. Media needs that today, versus the condescension that oozes from TV and radio. I hear everyone recently got canned from The View, maybe a show like that needs a punch of reality and a voice of reason from America’s heartland to knock some humble sense into their scripts. You know, someone willing to go rogue.

Oh, gob. The arrogance. The incoherence. Urrk, my brain is seizing up!

I hope her speeches are never militarized.

Comments

  1. Suido says

    I’d do it with my own real-life groundedness, candor and commonsense that I’m known for saying I’m known for.

    I fixed a bit.

    It seems like Sarah Palin has developed an immunity to satire, which is almost admirable.

  2. says

    Suido:
    I’ll tackle the first half of that sentence:

    It’d be so much fun to shake it up taking on issues that make audiences objectively consider all sides, from the point of view of religious fundamentalism which is a POV never seen in the US {…}

  3. anteprepro says

    But the politics would have to be interspersed with a whole lot of fun and real life and inspiration showcasing American work ethic,

    Wow, brilliant. Adding inane, feel-good schlock to water down the real and serious shit. What a novel idea.

    incorrigibly disastrous!

    I think Sarah Palin found the title of her new book. It’s an autobiography.

    It’d be so much fun to shake it up taking on issues that make audiences objectively consider all sides,

    First up: Sarah Palin makes you objectively consider all sides. Next up: Dick Cheney provides a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on. And at 10: Rick Santorum has a not all uncomfortable conversation with three gay authors.

    All tonight, on The Bizarro Channel.

    I’d do it with my own real-life groundedness, candor and commonsense that I’m known for.

    Oh common sense. What ever happened to you? When did you become a synonym for overconfidence and bullshit?

    Media needs that today, versus the condescension that oozes from TV and radio.

    Condescension oozing from TV and radio: That’s what happens when you watch O’Reilly or listen to Limbaugh. Your electronic devices get STDs.

    I hear everyone recently got canned from The View

    God, the inanity. To make a general case from one talk show. To say that they all got fired when Whoopie is still staying, and when Barbara Walters just retired. And then to follow that up by implying that The View needs to sound more like Her. What were we just saying about condescension? I don’t remember, I am too distracted from my computer screen oozing.

    You know, someone willing to go rogue.

    It’s like everything she says is ultimately a random cobble of idiotic catchphrases. Listening to or reading Sarah Palin is the equivalent to listening to Radioactive Man from the Simpsons, or to AHNOLD’s version of Mr. Freeze. The only bits worth paying attention to are the slogans and terrible jokes and everything else is just filler. And there is damn little of that filler anyway.

  4. Ragutis says

    Incorrigibly disastrous? Someone got a “Word a day” calender for their birthday.

    Still, to her point, Elizabeth Hasselbeck was pretty condescending.

  5. screechymonkey says

    Palin’s ghostwriter for that interview (it appears to have been conducted by email) was clearly working hard to try to, as Palin would say, “ensmarten” her. There’s a lot of ostentatious vocabulary in there. anyone ever recall a Palin speech or interview in which she used words like “interspersed,” “antithesis,” or “incorrigibly”?

    But hey, clearly Sportsman Channel is building its stable of elite intellectuals, because in addition to Palin:

    And last week, Sportsman Channel, which is in a little over 36 million homes, announced a new program hosted by Penn Jillette. Premiering July 17, Camp Stew is a Talk Soup-like clip show that will have the illusionist commenting on outdoor bloopers and caught-on-camera mishaps.

    That sounds about right.

  6. Ragutis says

    Here’s me giving Sarah Palin shit, and I friggin typo calendar. Must be bed time.

  7. yoav says

    showcasing American work ethic

    Like quitting halfway through your term as governor in order to make piles of cash as a do nothing “fix noise contributor”, yah, sound very americam work ethicy to me.

  8. says

    A message from the crown Queen of Condescension herself, having and keeping for herself all the fun of making ambiguous death threats (yes, folks actually remember that) in front of an armed assembly! That couldn’t possibly be construed as disastrous, eh? How much more “rogue” could a person get without personally setting squeaky clean, god-fearing Brown Shirt thugs loose on some anti-American scapegoat?

    One wonders.

  9. anteprepro says

    She gives herself way too much credit with her Going Rogue shit. We can see right through it. See is Going Paladin. Or Going Cleric, at best.

  10. says

    Please anteprepro don’t ever associate a Sarah Palin with a paladin or a cleric. From a quick wiki definition: The paladins, sometimes known as the Twelve Peers, were the foremost warriors of Charlemagne’s court, according to the literary cycle known as the Matter of France.

    Palin would incite battle, but never fight within it. The most one could say she is one bat-shit crazy zealot, because that is all she could ever attain. Now Joan of Arc could be argued as a paladin, but not Palin.

    Clerics are people who are about the well being of others by their “religious views” (they are generally depicted as holy doctors “no doctorate degree needed”, just faith), Mother Tereasa would be a better equivalent of this because part of being a cleric is being a equivalent of a priest or priestess within ones faith.

  11. says

    No actually I wouldn’t miss that, but when it comes to fantasy worlds including D&D, World of Warcraft, and others they are usually empowered in some observable or demonstrable way. And since religion has not met this qualifier, I chose to go with the historical reference. I was actually defending what is a paladin or cleric vs Sarah Palin, lets no give her undue credit.

  12. rogerfirth says

    And to think that idiot could have been a heartbeat away from the oval office.

    We dodged a bullet there. Sadly, the whacko right has plenty more bullets, and they’re itching to use them.

  13. flex says

    From OP,

    maybe a show like that needs a punch of reality and a voice of reason

    I don’t know why, but the first thing that sprang into my mind was a Punch and Judy show.

    Not that I’m suggesting that anyone gets thwacked with a stick, but there is a similarity between the two groups of talking heads saying stupid and often incoherent things for entertainment.

  14. anteprepro says

    Wes Aaron, the way I see it Palin the Paladin would not involve herself in hwr own holy wars, true. But I could totally see herself using her righteous religious authority and might to quash uppity folks at home, bullying and assuring she would only fight if she knew she would win. As for clerics….I think you are strangely over glorifying them. Like I dont even know how someone on Pharyngula could sincerely take the “just concerned about the well being of others” thing from a religious zealot and not see anything wrong with it. Clerics are priests. Priests work for churches. Churches are all about conversion and the money and also like to impose their ideology on everyone else. Palin fits that perfectly. She definitely ain’t no rogue.

  15. frog says

    Palin’s ghostwriter for that interview (it appears to have been conducted by email)

    Ah, that would explain why in this case her Dunning-Kruger Effluence is grammatically correct (for the most part; certainly more than when she speaks extemporaneously).

    Now I want to work out the stats for Palin as Paladin. She’s got a better-than-average CHA, but average-at-best WIS and obviously INT was her dump stat. High CON and DEX (how else does she keep coming back to torment us?) and probably higher than average STR for the same reason.

  16. Becca Stareyes says

    Hey, my local friends and I are real heartland folks with real opinions! Maybe Sarah Palin can give us a show! (For that matter, so is PZ. Minnesota is pretty ‘heartland’.)

  17. Mobius says

    I’m sorry.

    Sarah Palin, the woman who skipped out on being the governor of Alaska, talking about a work ethic…

    That’s some industrial grade irony.

  18. keresthanatos says

    … that needs a punch of reality and a voice of reason from America’s heartland to knock some humble sense into their scripts. You know, someone willing to go rogue.

    Hmmmm…. Someone like…. P.Z. Yeah P.Z…first the View… then the P.reZ! then the world 11!1!111!!!!!ty, et. al. (really gotta find that tin-foil hat[Aluminium is for posers] sometime soon).

  19. Dweller in Darkness says

    @ 23, Nah, I’d say Wisdom is her dump stat – she just ACTS like someone who thinks she has a high Int when she’s probably middlin’ average.

    Really, I’d rather stat her out in FATE Core, probably as a Henchman.

  20. says

    You know, someone willing to go rogue.

    Really. You’d have to know what that meant in the first place.

  21. John Horstman says

    @frog #23: And she never levels up becasue of her alignment shift to Neutral Evil and lack of atonement.

  22. twas brillig (stevem) says

    re Palin as “Cleric”:

    Cleric is a D&D class of characters. IRL: Cleric = Priest, but not in D&Dverse. Other than the stats for Cleric {W = primary; Strength & Int, inconsequential} [W=18+, I = 3; appropriate Palin] Clerics are only allowed to use, as a physical weapon, the HAMMER. Seems very Palinesque. And their attack spells are ‘Cause Major Wounds‘, and ‘Curse‘. Also very Palinesque. Paladins are just Fighters extremely aligned to Lawful|Good. Not very Palinesque, so Cleric is for Palin’s D&D avatar.

    {rolling d20… save, save, save, save …}

  23. anteprepro says

    twas brillig: I’ve been in a few campaigns with characters who play paladins. And campaigns with different people who had paladin NPCs. In the rules, paladins are religious, self-righteous, cannot tolerate teaming up with people that don’t meet their purity standards, and are set out for quests and holy wars. They are knights in shining armor with holy healing powers and a stick up their ass. And virtually every paladin I have seen played, PC or NPC, has existed entirely to be Lawful Stupid, and to make life harder for the players. Must kill all orcs because they are congenitally evil. Can’t kill the villain because it is illegal. Can’t steal because it is illegal. Can’t defy orders from a clearly corrupt political authority. Must not let the rogue do their thing and ambush the enemy because it is dishonorable. Etc. etc. etc. They are hyper religious kill-joys obsessed with their own ideas of good and right who don’t even have the decency that clerics do to actually have the magical capacity to help other people. That fits Paladin to a tee. They I suppose she might also be a Cleric who multiclassed into Ranger.

  24. frog says

    @27: I had a big debate with myself about whether it was WIS or INT. On the one hand, she’s displayed a kind of rank instinct for understanding a certain kind of person. OTOH, that could be a certain kind of con-artist sharpness.

    It’s certainly fair to say she hasn’t got much of either trait.

  25. says

    I will say it has been ages since I played 2nd ed Advanced D&D. But from what I remember paladin or cleric (which cleric was a priest who could wear armor and fight with non-bladed weapons, but was still mainly a healer class; which is why in modern use of the word refers to faith healers), focused their entire existence upon their religion. They spend the majority of their spare time in prayer or offering to their Gods. If you’re evaluating the classes upon the people who play them, it seems kind of flawed. Even in Dragonlance Novels which were heavily based on D&D world, the palidin or cleric is almost always heavily associated with their church and spend the majority of their time in service to their god. Palin doesn’t represent someone who devotes all their spare time to their religion. She could be a merely low lvl warrior trying to multi-class as a ranger with strong religious beliefs, but that is the best I could ever credit her with. She is definitely lawful/evil by alignment and that rules out the paladin by default.

  26. anteprepro says

    The Palindin lv.12, DND 3.5:

    HP 240
    AC

    Str. 10
    Dex. 20
    Con. 30
    Int. 6
    Wis. 12
    Cha. 16

    BAB +12/+7/+2

    Fort +21
    Ref + 12
    Will +8

    Aura of True America
    Detect Librul at will
    Smite Librul 3/day
    Lay on Jazz Hands, 36 hp per day
    Aura of AMERICA FUCK YEAH
    Turn Unamerican
    Divine Mount (Dire Helicopter)

    Skills:
    12 Ranks in Perform (comedy)

    Feats:
    Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge
    Endurance
    Diehard
    Point Blank Shot
    Weapon Focus (Shotgun)
    Track

    Spells:
    Bless Shotgun
    Zone of Truthiness
    Government Mandated Prayer
    Dispel Atheism

    Equipment:
    1 Ring of Mind Shielding
    1 Ring of Animal Friendship
    1 Immovable Rod
    +4 Slick Adamantine Chain Mail
    +3 Flaming Burst Wounding Shotgun
    1 Bag of Tricks
    1 Bottle of Air
    Boots of the Winterlands
    Bracers of Archery
    Deck of Delusions
    Shit ton of Anchor tokens
    Horn of Middle America (see: Horn of Valhalla)
    Helicoptershoes of Speed
    Teabaggins’ Instant Fortress
    Lyre of Astroturfing
    Mattock of The Founders
    Sphere of Thought Annihilation
    The Eye of Cheney

    Allies:
    1 Pet Mama Bear
    1 Pet Noise Fox
    Joseph The Latrine Repairment
    Ol’ Mack Cain
    Nowher Bridges
    Strafe Wolfenstein
    Rifey The Sentient Rifle
    Teabaggins
    Tina Fey
    Katie Couric
    Cleastwood And The Mouthy Chair
    Wayne Lapierre
    Demilich Cheney
    Lone Star Dubya
    The Real Amurkka Confederation

  27. anteprepro says

    Wes Aaron:

    She is definitely lawful/evil by alignment and that rules out the paladin by default.

    That’s great that you think alignment/morality is so black and white. You know why I think Palin would be lawful good? Because that’s what she thinks she is. Evil is done by good people. In Dungeons and Dragons, most actual evil characters know that they are evil. They just don’t care. They are sociopaths, they gain pleasure for causing harm. They crave death. But they are caricatures. In reality, most villains are good or neutral people.

    Also: you seem to be ignoring Palin’s religiosity. It is pretty damn intense.

    This is kind of frustrating because it seems like you are wrong on both ends of the candle here. On the trivial end, of not getting that there is wide swath of representations of clerics and paladins in the game. And on the serious end, of not getting that Palin is a stupid religious zealot who thinks she is holy and pure and that is exactly what makes her and people like her a problem. They aren’t evil. But they cause evil. That’s what being stupid and self-assured does.

  28. says

    First of all lets look at the definition of the two alignments and then determine which one she actually fits. This is how a DM would manage a character’s alignment in a game. It is ultimately up to how the character is portrayed in the world that determines their alignment, that is why there are strong punishments for a paladin not acting Lawful/Good.

    Lawful/Good:

    A Lawful Good character typically acts with compassion, and always with honor and a sense of duty. A Lawful Good nation would consist of a well-organized government that works for the benefit of its citizens. Lawful Good characters include righteous knights, paladins, and most dwarves. Lawful Good creatures include the noble golden dragons.

    Lawful Good characters, especially paladins, may sometimes find themselves faced with the dilemma of whether to obey law or good when the two conflict — for example, upholding a sworn oath when it would lead innocents to come to harm — or conflicts between two orders, such as between their religious law and the law of the local ruler.

    In the Complete Scoundrel sourcebook for D&D 3.5, Batman, Dick Tracy and Indiana Jones are cited as examples of Lawful Good characters. She is way off from these examples.

    Lawful/Evil:

    A Lawful Evil character sees a well-ordered system as being easier to exploit, and shows a combination of desirable and undesirable traits; while they usually obey their superiors and keep their word, they care nothing for the rights and freedoms of other individuals and are not averse to twisting the rules to work in their favor. Examples of this alignment include tyrants, devils, undiscriminating mercenary types who have a strict code of conduct, and loyal soldiers who enjoy the act of killing.

    Like Lawful Good Paladins, Lawful Evil characters may sometimes find themselves faced with the dilemma of whether to obey law or evil when the two conflict. However, their issues with Law versus Evil are more concerned with “Will I get caught?” versus “How does this benefit me?”

    Boba Fett of Star Wars, and X-Men’s Magneto are cited examples of Lawful Evil characters in (3.5e). Magneto never thought of himself as evil as for Boba Fett it is undetermined whether he thought of himself this way. All I have seen from Palin, she fits this definition quite comfortably.

    It seems pretty strait forward the alignment is based upon the characters interaction with the game not the players perception of their character.

  29. anteprepro says

    Try this from the same article:

    “Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

    Evil implies harming, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient or if it can be set up. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some malevolent deity or master.

    People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.”

    Evil in Dungeons and Dragons is comic book supervillainy. Which, really, is what is generally meant when someone calls someone else “evil” anyway. It is often just thoughtless hyberbole.

    See also: “. A player character’s alignment can be seen as their outlook on life. Players decide how their characters should behave when they assign them an alignment, then play them based on that decision”

    Also, in 3.5, it is described as their “attitudes”. It isn’t JUST about actions.

  30. lopsided says

    The last time I found a politician this incoherent was Crack Mayor. I honestly think she’s on drugs.