Palin defends herself from McCain’s thuggish staffers

From today’s New York Times:

ANCHORAGE—Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska fired back Friday at the unnamed McCain campaign aides who have been maligning her in recent days….

“So, no, I think that if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about Nafta, and about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” Ms. Palin said. “And that’s cruel and it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks, if they came away with it taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It is not fair and not right.”

“Jerks” is strong language for a politician to use, but Gov. Palin is absolutely right to use it. By saying such an absurd thing as that Palin didn’t know that Africa is a continent, McCain’s top aides not only made themselves look like appalling thugs who seek to smear their own candidate’s running mate by portraying her as an idiot; they themselves look like idiots who are unable to construct a believable smear.

But, after all, what would we expect of individuals who had devoted their lives to getting John McCain elected president of the United States—intelligence?

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Terry Morris writes:

You wrote:

But, after all, what would we expect of individuals who had devoted their lives to getting John McCain elected president of the United States—intelligence?

LOL! That’s funny, but a salient point indeed. We all know, and it’s been said over and over again, that a text taken out of context is a pretext, nothing more and nothing less. But even if Palin didn’t know that Africa is a continent, this does not make her an idiot. She’s clearly not an idiot to anyone willing to give her a fair hearing. She may be, at this moment in time, eminently not qualified for the Vice Presidency, but this does not make her an idiot either. And if she is an idiot based on the accusations certain persons are leveling against her in the wake of McCain’s loss (a loss which would have been worse minus Palin’s presence on the ticket), then I’m betting that a fairly sizeable proportion of her detractors are more deserving of the title than Governor Palin ever was.

Terry Morris writes:

I wrote:

“She may be, at this moment in time, eminently not qualified for the Vice Presidency, but this does not make her an idiot either.”

Re-reading this and putting more thought to it, I think I can now articulate it better. As with the difference between, say, a full-fledged cult and having certain cultic beliefs and tendencies, people tend to conclude that someone who has an idiotic perception of things and realities is, therefore, a full-fledged idiot, which is not the case at all. It may well be that Gov. Palin’s belief that she is qualified to be VP is idiotic, but this does not make her an idiot. How many of us have involved ourselves in palpable contradictions and made idiotic statements and assumptions? By the logic that declares Palin to be an idiot, we are all idiots with her.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 08, 2008 07:23 AM | Send