http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjoMxjjzxzY



Palin's been thoroughly coached and stuffed with talking points for the debate. Today she's more comfortable responding to her inability to sound coherent pre-coaching. She's going to sound like a broken record from here on out. No. 9, No. 9, No. 9.

Oh, the boys on Fux News are to hear what she has to say! Their little boy giggles and glee should turn off even more women voters.

The drooling puke that posted that is filtering posts. He's also thinking with the wrong head.

The amazing thing is how they think this reflects well on her.

What's funny is I've heard so many on the Left "whining" about Couric too.

Guilty as charged!!! What amazes me is the fact that the Couric interview coupled with the debate last night....brought forth the obviousness of the extent to which she (Palin) was coached like a trained seal coming loaded for bear with the GOPer talking points.....

I was impressed that she managed to tone down the accent so well.

I didn't see her as coached so much as out of her league. On the one hand I like Sarah Palin as a person more after watching that. And on the other I have never been more certain that she is unqualified to be President. It was pretty obvious that she had no idea what to say when asked what the trigger for deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons should be. She instead looked down at her notes, realized she didn't have a talking point for it, and talked about Iran. She HAD a talking point for that one.

However I thought her delivery was fairly real. She just didn't know the answer, even to a prep question about nuclear weapons deployment...which the President is authorized to deploy as a reasonable and necessary measure to defend the security of the United States. (that's the answer she didn't have BTW) However I thought she honestly didn't know. And so honestly I think that she should go back to Alaska and raise her family and if they like her, she can be their governor. She could be my neighbor and I might even BBQ with her and her family. But I can't agree with her politics and she can't be trusted with the highest office of the land. That's ok. Lots of people like that.

The very fact that she was indeed out of her league, as you say, is the very reason why I say she was coached, and then she crammed for her final exam!! I saw this more as her treating this as something along the lines of a high school debating class. I'm not sure whether her responses were just plain smart-allecky or just pure ineptitude. I gotta be truthful...between the "golly-gees" , the "you bethchas" and counting how many times she said "maverick", I was having a very difficult time trying to decipher how well she delivered her speech.

All of her answers came from 3 x 5's. If you watched CSPAN, she kept her eyes on her cards the entire time Biden spoke. She looked down to read from them when Ifill asked questions. She had a few themes to give as answers to everthing, regardless of the question.

In fact, Couric's interviews are more important than the debates. Bill Moyer's Journal this week had two guests who explained why. It's only through follow up questions that we learn what the person being questioned knows. Palin knows nothing.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10032008/watch.html

This is 100% correct. While Jim Lehrer did a respectable job of asking "followup", Gwen Iffil did not ask one single follow up from what I recall.

The fact that she did not ask the follw ups may be because of the restraints that were put on the time limits by the RNC when the rules were established that the VP debate would not follow the same time guidelines that the Presidential debates would.


In fact, they, the RNC, used the fact that Palin was far less experienced tan Joe Biden, with his 35 years of service, so they asked for, and got, a shorter time period for interactive comments between Biden and palin.

What surprised me was that the DNC went along with it. Well, actually it shouldn't surprise me. After all the WIMPocrats always bend over.

It seems that Governor Palin started to get a little bent with Ms. Katie Couric's style during the interview rather than the substance of the questions. Unless you want to infer (as some have) that Governor Palin has never read a newspaper ............

A Journalist is free to ask any question they want. I do not believe that Governor Palin has ever denied that journalistic perogative. The person being interviewed is also perfectly free to not answer the question. It's a two way street.

Actually, it is more than a two way street. There is no rule or law that states that I have to get news through Ms. Katie Couric. As a consumer of news I am perfectly free to ignore Ms. Couric. I seem to have a lot of company in that regard.

While the internet has been a help in getting topics that used to be ignored by the mainstream media to the fore, it (the internet) still has a long way to go. This self same freedom of bringing up any and all topics (often anonymously) leads to all sorts of wild rumors and charges with little substantiation. Face it, we of the blogosphere rate below the National Enquirer because we don't even have to adhere to journalistic standards here in the land of 1s and 0s.

ALL good interviewers/reporters generally attempt to build a little trust between themselves and the person being interviewed. This doesn't mean that tough questions won't be asked. All it means is that an interviewer should state upfront what their intentions are in regards to the tone of the interview.

I believe that Mister Brian Lamb of CSpan is just about the best interviewer out there. Why? Because he listens! He has also asked some tough questions as well. What he (Mister Lamb) excels at doing is avoiding what so many others in Journalism do. He doesn't use short clip editing as a tool. In fact he appears to air almost ALL of the interview. A luxury that few commercial outlets can afford.

Something went wrong during the Palin/Couric interview. That much is obvious. Where the blame or fault rests for that train wreck of an interview, I don't know. I wasn't there. But if Ms. Couric's intentions before the interview were fully honorable, then she failed in some fashion to fully convey those intentions to the person being interviewed.

Palin is running for Vice President, not the head of the PTA. Couric's follow up questions were the most vital part of the interview, whether she had a smile on her face, offered Palin a cup of tea or whatever. Palin's got a ready made 3 x 5 talking point she can spit out. Anything beyond that, she's got nothing. That's why we learn much more about her, not in a "debate" setting but an interview with someone who asks probing and follow up questions.

What I think is the ironic part of all of this is that Palin, allegedly, has a degree in journalism.



I just sent the U of I this e-mail.

I have been led to believe that Sarah Palin, the current Governor of Alaska , and Vice Presidential candidate, received her degree in journalism from your University.

It is,also, my understanding that during her vetting process, no one contacted your university for transcripts, etc. Therefore, I would like confirmation as to how Governor Palin received her degree.

Was she actually on campus or did she receive it via another avenue, ie correspondence courses or via the internet. I await your prompt reply. Thank You.

Mike Allen

Phoenix, AZ

Or just a shouted question by an individual voter at a rally. Bet she won't be answering those anymore. How'd that impertinent, over-educated punk get into her rally anyway? They'll have to correct that too. I'm sure that can give them some tips...

The MSM ought to be ALL OVER the media manipulation and protection of a VP candidate from scrutiny. This is OUTRAGEOUS. Maybe Bush can get away with it (because he's pResident and can invoke "protecting the safety of the POTUS" crap), but when We the People are INTERVIEWING unknowns for this very important job, WE SHOULD HAVE FULL ACCESS to the candidates -- OR ELSE KICK THEM OUT OF THE COMPETITION...

According to Palin, she reads:
Wall Street Journal
The New York Times
The L.A. Times
The Boston Globe
Newsweek
Business Week
Time magazine
Mother Jones
Rolling Stone
The Washington Post
The Washington Times
and many many more.

She said she reads all of them. Yet she couldn't name even ONE.

She came up with a list afterwards, after she'd been coached. It's all fakery.

Change that to "wouldn't" and I think that you have it.

I don't know how the interview went and in what order the questions were asked. But it appears by the time that this simple question was asked, the professionalism was breaking down between Ms. Couric and Governor Palin.

Whose fault was this? Was Governor Palin doing a Second Grade pout? Was Ms. Couric asking questions that assumed meanings to previous question's answers that Governor Palin felt were being misrepresented/twisted?

Don't know.

But I now ask this question. Do you think that this list from Governor Palin is a bunch of lies? Do you think and assume that she reads NO newspapers just because she didn't answer Ms. Couric's question?

Let's hope Putin doesn't annoy her...

Are you kidding me? If she had answered "The Anchorage Daily News," PEOPLE anything would be better than NOTHING, even Sports Illustrated. . .she was a sportscaster. Only now, days after the first question was asked does she come out with an "impressive" list. Seriously. No wonder why this country is in the tank. You don't want more from an elected official? You want mediocrity at best. An inability to answer a simple question like "what do you read" where Palin says a lot of meaningless words is not good enough. It isn't. She's not qualified to lead. It's a no brainer.

It was a very simple question that she did not answer. She got flippant. She would not name one single newspaper/magazine that she reads.

By that standard, I'm much more 'well read' than she is. I average several newspapers (online), magazines (online), alternative news (online), blogs and forums on a daily basis.

Gee, Golly, that looked a bit filtered with a lot of commentary when I looked at it. Maybe I need one of those new conversion boxes to see it unfiltered, I don’t know. I don’t even recognize the channel that is on, ‘cause I don’t watch much TV. I don’t read any publications either; I just have my opinions about the way things ought to be based on the book somebody reads to me every Sunday. Shucks, people are awful touchy about this being second in command for this country thing. Anyone setting on the sidelines at an adolescent’s hockey game knows how things should work in this country without letting information git in the way. Put the sticks down and duke it out boys, you don't have to be right, you just have to swing hard enough to bring out the stretcher.

"I"ll get back to ya!"

An interviewee has a responsibility to answer any question asked of them. It makes no difference what the tone of the interview is. It seems to me that Barack Obama sat down across from Bill O'Reilly knowing full well that he would likely face a series of "gotcha" questions and did a good enough job of answering his questions that O'Reilly stated afterwards that he had gained some respect for Obama.

The fact is that Sarah Palin has been shielded from press access and is suffering from a case of "stagefright" as a result. The fact that she could not recall the name of even one news source that she reads regularly IS NOT the result of the tone of the interview. It is an indication that Palin it out of her league.

Your making the assumption that she (Governor Palin) doesn't read periodials/newspapers because she refused to answer Ms. Couric's question.

Do you think that assumption is correct? I don't know, it may be possible to get a college degree in Journalism without reading any Newspapers. But I doubt this.

Ms. Couric may well have pissed of the Governor. Could that have been a reason for the silence?

No, they don't. It's not like a trail. No subpeona. It's a voluntary appearance and interview.

An eldarly Robert Oppenheimer took off his mike and walked out of an interview with Mike Wallace.

Chris Wallace got Former President Bill Clinton pretty bent as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaNIBFSMjb8

Look no further than Mister Brian Lamb for an interviewer who knows what the h#ll their doing.

If Palin refuses to answer questions about what kinds of news she gathers and from where to inform her view of the world, then she can just forget about applying for the damned job! What the hell is this? "Couric may have pissed off the Governor"! The Governor is pissing US off for not allowing the American people to vet her after we KNOW the McSAME campaign didn't do it. This is HORSESH#T, as your lousy candidate would put it...

She was asked about where she gets her news, not when she lost her virginity. It wasn't a 'gotcha' kind of question. Now had that interview taken place a few years ago and the one asking questions was Mike Wallace, she would've gotten plenty of 'gotcha' questions.

As for Chris Wallace, he's probably lucky Bill didn't break his jaw. What Wallace did to him in that interview was completely uncalled for. He was trying to make Bill the fall guy for Bush's mistakes.

IV
Because she was unable or unwilling to answer Kouric's question, I am left with two possible explanations.
1- she does not read ANY newspapers and/or magazines and was embarassed to admit it.
2- she DOES read newspapers and/or magazines, but is ashamed to admit which ones
(like maybe National Enquirer, Star, and Soap Digest)

or there IS a third possibility:
3- she is functionally illiterate.


Mac

Someone who submits themself to an interview takes on the responsibility to answer the questions asked when they agree to do the interview. By accepting the terms of the interview, Palin entered into a contract to provide honest answers for every question asked. Failing to do so at the very least raises questions about their candor.

It was Oppenheimer's option to walk off the set, as it was Palin's.

Bill Clinton could have also taken that route, but instead he sat steady and addressed the issue that was raised, even to the point of refusing to let Wallace change the subject before the issue was fully addressed. For someone who holds a degree in journalism to refuse to answer a question about what news sources they rely on to keep informed strikes me as just a little wierd.