X Factor Politics
The parallels between Sarah Palin and a typical X Factor contestant are striking: style over substance, ego triumphing over ability, totally and utterly convinced that such is her “personality” and “passion” that they alone have marked her out for superstardom. She also sounds like someone trying to blatantly blag her way through a job interview. She’s actually bemused that people are focussing as much on what she says as on the way she says it.
In her latest comments, she defends her farcical interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric by declaring that the questions she was asked about economic and foreign policy were “unfair” (really! She said that, asking a Vice Presidential candidate questions about the economy and foreign policy is unfair), and that Americans weren’t given a chance to hear her attacking Barack Obama. Really, she said that too. As if America’s current economic and political woes are somehow his fault, as if the American public have got nothing better to do than to listen to an unprecedentedly inexperienced neophyte bad-mouthing a person who isn’t even responsible. She quite clearly believes that she needs do nothing more to win the Vice Presidency of the world’s most powerful nation, than to repeat “What the American people need is change and new energy” ad nauseum. That’s it, set the platitude to infinite loop, keep up the “I’m just one of you” mantra, and she’ll be in.
Thanks to the wonders of a service like YouTube, we in the rest of the world can also hear those jaw-dropping interviews. They are quite shockingly bad. Her answers to prepared and closed questions are feeble and inept enough, but whenever Palin is asked an open-ended question (e.g. “Which Supreme Court decisions have you taken exception to?” “What do you think should be done if this bail out plan fails?”, etc) She goes into hyper-bullshit mode, and frankly, it’s embarrassing. I’ve never heard anything like it at this level. It’s almost surreal. I keep hoping Simon Cowell will interrupt proceedings by holding up his hand and saying “OK, OK, we’ve heard quite enough thank you”.
Update: Astonishing, during her debate with Joe Biden she as good as states that the American people don’t want to be told by the media that they need to think about the economy, or the country’s standing in the world, what they want to hear is that change is coming, and that there will be a fresh approach in town. Talk about appealing to the lowest common denominator. None of the interviews that I’ve heard or read have challenged her to explicitly state what this fresh approach will consist of. She’s allowed to trot out this meaningless platitude over and over, and she’s called out, at best, only indirectly.
UPDATE: Here’s Christopher Hitchen’s (Daily Mail correspondent) view of the potential VP:
http://www.slate.com/id/2202163/
Tags: politics