"Bristol can be used." That's one of the things Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said last week, during her interview with CNN's Larry King. Here's the entire exchange on Bristol:
KING: Something all mothers fear, though, is the knowledge that her daughter is pregnant. Was that very hard for you to take?
PALIN: When it was revealed to – on national media that my 18 ...
KING: No, when it was revealed to you.
PALIN: year old daughter is pregnant? Oh, when it was revealed – what do you think, Larry? Of course. I looked at her and thought – and I thought, Bristol, honey, you're going to have to grow up really fast and she is a strong and kind-hearted young woman. She is going to make a great mom. She – she is very strong. She is going to be just fine.
But Bristol has an opportunity at this point also to reach out to other young American women and let them know that these are absolutely less than ideal circumstances that she or any other unwed teenage mother are in and it is not something to glamorize, it is not something to condone, if you will. Bristol has an opportunity to reach out to other young mothers and help them and hopefully not see such a prevalence also of unwed teenage mothers, the rates are too high.
Bristol can be used as an example of Larry taking less than ideal circumstances and still making the best of these circumstances and that is who she is. She is strong, she is kindhearted, she is going to be just fine.
That's our Sarah Palin.
I'll give her credit for at least making a fairly coherent statement of more than 100 words, though.
I've read a lot of comments about how cynical Palin's discussion of her daughter was. But I haven't yet read one that asks the first question that came to my mind when I heard Palin say that - "Did you clear this new public role for your daughter with her before you made that statement?"
Bristol can be used.
At the risk of being so reviled, let me point out that in the marathon of Palin interviews last week, the single most revealing exchange had nothing to do with her wardrobe or the “jerks” (as she called them) around McCain. It came instead when Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked for some substance by inviting her to suggest “one or two ideas” that Republicans might have to offer. “Well, a lot of Republican governors have really good ideas for our nation,” she responded, without specifying anything except that “it’s all about free enterprise and respecting equality.” Well, yes, but surely there’s some actual new initiative worth mentioning, Blitzer followed up. “Gah!” replied the G.O.P.’s future. “Nothing specific right now!”
Bristol can be used.
She failed to save John McCain from presidential election doom, but Sarah Palin, the Republican senator’s controversial running mate, may yet emerge as the saviour of the American publishing industry. Literary agents are queueing up to sign her to a book deal that could earn her up to $7m.
Bristol can be used.
MIAMI — Gov. Sarah Palin seized the spotlight Thursday from her fellow Republican governors, 12 of whom awkwardly stood behind her as she continued a high-profile effort to repair her battered image.
The Alaska governor did something she never did in two months as the Republican vice-presidential candidate: She held a news conference, a six-minute event with only four questions in which she refused to look back.
"I don't even want to talk about strategy within a campaign that is over," she said.
Palin then gave a 22-minute speech to the Republican Governors Association that dwelt on the recent campaign. It began and ended with standing ovations and occupied a larger chunk of speaking time than other governors had here.
It doesn't matter whether Palin was “a joy to work with,” as McCain aides said publicly, or a “diva” and a “whack job,” as some said privately. It doesn't matter whether she decided to buy the $150,000 in new clothes, or the Republican National Committee bought them for her. What matters is her real and measurable effect on the broader American public. And if Sarah Palin were a cereal, she’d be rushed off the shelf.
Bristol can be used.
I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.
I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed.
What will ambitious politicos learn from this? That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate’s valuable traits?
And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high.
What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”
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.
And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”
It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.
(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)
(How many contradictory and lying answers about The Empress’s New Clothes have you collected? I’ve got, so far, only four. Your additional ones welcome.)
Matt Lauer asked her about her daughter’s pregnancy and what went into the decision about how to handle it. Her “answer” did not contain the words “daughter,” “pregnancy,” “what to do about it” or, in fact, any two consecutive words related to Lauer’s query.
Bristol can be used.
"I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. And if there is an open door in (2012) or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door."
I'm not sure whether God will listen to Palin's request. But if He has a sense of humor, God will open that door for Palin, and America will have another riveting presidential campaign in 2012.
Well, Governor Palin, if Bristol doesn't work, you've already used Todd, Track and Trig. If I were Piper or Willow, I'd be wanting to spend a helluva a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa, and keeping my ears pealed for the sounds of an oncoming bus....
