palin
01 Nov 2008Roger Abramson and I have disagreed on a lot in the past. In the spirit of reconciliation, I .. well, just kidding, here’s something else:
- Indeed, Sarah Palin is not stupid. Anyone who thinks Palin is stupid really has no idea what a stupid person really is.
I am gonna have to go ahead and disagree. Now, I’m not saying she is genuinely mentally deficient (I think), but she’s said some really stupid shit. And she also demonstrates an ignorance not befitting someone that should really know more/better. First, the fruit fly thing. Yes, I know she wasn’t referring to the bounty of genetics knowledge we’ve gleaned from fruit flies. (Though the fact that she didn’t feel the need to clarify means she probably doesn’t know it exists.) She was referring to research into fruit flies as a crop pest. Which, you know, is completely useless. The lord will provide, I guess? I hope so.
Then there’s the first amendment thing. I won’t even bother with the “I can see Russia from my house!” stuff – I’m willing to write that off as election shenanigans.
I realize there are different types of “smart” – and let’s face it, when it comes to the ability to achieve success in politics seemingly without a wit of tact or knowledge whatsoever, this woman is a fucking genius. But I don’t really see the need to defend her against accusations of being stupid in a traditional sense. This is a woman that has spent most of the campaign barricaded from the press because they were afraid of the insane shit that would come out of her mouth – that is, until she “went rogue” and torpedoed any remaining hopes for McCain’s campaign.
There are people I disagree with vehemently – Republicans or otherwise – that I would still concede are very smart people. Roger is one of them. Sarah Palin is not. She’s either stupid or faking it really well. Either way, she’s not fit for public office, and not worth defending.
I have mixed feelings about Palin. At first, I laid into her because I thought she was a tested politician that made her political decisions to pander to the right from a position of leadership and could take the intellectual fisking. But then something happened along the way, and I can’t put my finger on it. Somewhere, at some point, there was something decisively stupid about her that literally made me feel mean for expecting she was on a certain intellectual level that she clearly is not.
I’ll give Roger this. There are all kinds of intelligence. But I think a majority of Americans are ready for the kind of intelligence that turned Reagan and Bush I’s deficit spending into a decade of responsible goverment and economic proserity the likes our nation had never seen before, not the kind of intelligence that it takes to be an OK moose hunter, soccer mom or clergy, all of which do take a level of intelligence I don’t have patience for and that people will need a lot more of if our country gets to a point where hunting moose is the new Kroger.
But do we want 8 more years of that kind of intelligence leading our country? Can we afford it after all we’ve spent and squandered as a nation under eight years of that special brand of intelligence?