Turnabout Can Be Fair

Sarah Palin Speaking at the Tea Party convention.The Liberals are having a grand old time belittling Sarah Palin for having a some notes written on her hand during the first National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, TN. They’ve been spewing a lot of vitriol and various personal insults at her over this throughout the last few days.

In this particular case my suggestion is to just let them jabber, howl, and gibber.

While it goes directly against the grain of all right-thinking Americans to allow a woman to bear the brunt of such attacks, Mrs. Palin has willingly chosen to face such attacks and is far more than capable enough to handle them. She really doesn’t need us to jump to her defense – especially when doing so would be playing into the hands of the enemy by letting them choose the argument and, therefor, the terms of battle.

Sarah Palin's crib notes on her palm at the 2010 National Tea Party Convention
Sarah Palin’s Crib Notes

Turnabout, while almost always unpleasant, can be fair. In cases where it is actually not a manufactured corollary and is truly applying the same standards, turnabout is fair. This is sadly one of those cases.

Just let it slide by unheeded and unresponded to, as it deserves to be.

We Americans have rightfully lambasted President Obama, the TOTUS, more than once over his inability to speak without a teleprompter or other such aids. It has never sat well with Americans that the person who got elected largely on his charisma and carefully scripted rhetoric is a fraud, a charlatan, and a grifter.

But the door has now been swung wide for the Liberals to make this same claim about Palin.

Palin did, in fact have notes jotted on her palm. There’s no way of getting around that, just as there’s no way of getting the fact that there’s a strong corollary between such notes and Obama’s ever present teleprompter. The only real, substantive differences are the respectively level of intrusiveness of the two speaking aids and their tech levels.

And please don’t get fixated on the difference between President Obama needing a teleprompter to provide him an ongoing transcript for his speeches and Mrs. Palin having a few notes written on her palm. The contexts of their uses were quite different.

Sarah Palin’s crib notes, from all reports, were for use during the Q & A time that followed her speech. Fixating on that is just going to give the Liberals a perfect opportunity to claim that this shows that Palin had shills planted in the audience to feed her preplanned questions.

This is also something that Americans have complained about President Obama doing both during his campaign and after his election.  Engaging the Liberals on this issue is just going to give them the chance to rant, “She did it too!’ or claim that you’re a hypocrite for supporting Palin while attacking Obama.

This whole thing  is an inconsequential issue. Do not let the Liberals suck you into an argument of their creation over it. Turnabout is, after all, fair play and this is close enough to true  to fall into that category.

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6 Responses to “Turnabout Can Be Fair”

  1. Paradigm Says:

    My first reaction was that she held her hands like that so that people would in fact see it and find it endearing and folksy. But maybe I’m getting paranoid.

  2. jonolan Says:

    Yeah, that’s more than a little paranoid or at least cynical. With politicians and public speakers, however, that’s not an entirely bad trait to possess. 😉

  3. Kelly Mahan Jaramillo Says:

    Personally, I think it was done on purpose, also, just so that the left would go nuts and the right would just love here even more, to paraphrase Paradigm. (Hi Mom? C’mon…..).

    The whole business about bellowing on President Obama using a TelePrompTer, or Palin using her hand for crib notes is just beyond me. EVERY politician, public speaker, ANYONE behind a podium is either consulting their notes, or TelePrompTer, or being silly and writing it on their hand.

    President Clinton had the best memory, and often did not need them, and when President Obama was meeting the Republicans and Democrats separately, he did not use any notes, nor a TelePrompTer, for the Q&A, but honestly, besides that, even Bruce Springsteen has had to use a TelePrompTer because he could not remember the lyrics to his own songs, he had sung them so many times.

    I am really not getting the shrieking and carrying on about the President using a TelePrompTer, when every public speaker has used them since they were invented, and so Sarah’s hand notes, I agree, are just not worth anything more than a brief chuckle at her basic silliness and her usual hypocrisy.

    More important news issues deserve front page attention, both in hardcopy papers and on political blogs. Just my opinion.

  4. jonolan Says:

    Kelly,

    So you’re not in the “Palin is stupid” camp? You are, after all suggesting a high degree of political savvy and crowd manipulation across multiple mediums.

    As for Obama’s teleprompter needs – I certainly don’t think it’s a major issue, though there’s room in it for Doonesbury-esque humor.

    Others do have a problem with it though and, if you strip out all the levels of bullshit from both sides over the issue, I think it’s because he got elected to a large degree on the strength of his speaking ability. Needing a teleprompter as much as Obama seems to undermines that “qualification.”

  5. Jay Burns Says:

    To say that writing 4 or 5 words on your hand is the equivelent of having every word of your speech on a teleprompter is a bit of a stretch. Didn’t Palin’s mother ever tell her not to write on herself.

    In my opinion both are worth of satire, neither hinder qualifications. I will say though that for a person attempting to be presidential writing on ones own hand does no favors. It makes you look a bit hokey. But maybe that is her charm.

  6. Kelly Mahan Jaramillo Says:

    Jonolan-
    I wandered off again, sorry. To answer your question, I think Palin has an incredible amount of media manipulation savvy. If it falls into the political realm, then yes, she has media savvy. I do not think she is an idiot, but I do not think she is in any way fit to lead. She is much too reactive, and not as informed as a politician should be.

    And as I had mentioned, President Obama does not seem to need a teleprompter any more than any one else – and there was NO teleprompter at the Q&A, if I may reiterate.

    I particularly love the fact that at the CPAC, everybody is bashing the President for using a teleprompter, reading their anger, um, straight from a teleprompter. The humor is getting predictable, and borderline dull.

    Really, really silly.

    I do not think President Obama got elected solely because of his speaking ability, I believe he got elected because eight years of a President and Administration who decimated this country had people ready for something different. I have had my days of feeling critical towards what the President is doing, but overall, when someone shouts out “How’s that Hopey changey thing workin’ out for ya?” I have to say, so far, so good, thanks for asking.

    I’ll catch up with your posts soon, but I have been having the winter sleepies, and seem to be in semi-hibernation these days. 🙂

    Kel

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