Compared to that, a little Neiman Marcus bling (is that an inherent contradiction?) might not seem such an extravagance.

The larger context of the quote--that she refused to prepare for the Couric interview, because, you know, how tough could it be?--is sufficiently damning. The woman is utterly incapable of answering a follow-up question on any national issue--it's stunning. She did better at the end of the campaign because they avoided follow-ups; even if the brief soundbite seemed a bit confused, there wasn't the long, damning, silences of the Couric interviews. I could sound like a reasonably competent football analyst to a crowd as sympathetic as Palin's supporters, if I followed her approach to questioning.

The clothing: You know, if you sent my husband to the mall with orders to spend $20,000 on clothing for himself I don't think he could do it. Todd is truly amazing.

You're skeptical. I suppose its possible that it is a fabrication although it seems oddly specific for a lie to my ears. But I have a lot of experience with people being far more ignorant than ought to seem possible to even be especially surprised by the Africa/Palin story. She seems like the type to me and certainly nothing she has ever said or done suggests to me that she is any more well informed than the average barfly.

I don't know if she's dumb as a grub or not, but I'm relatively confident she's not the reason they lost. Possibly she's a symptom, but she's not the disease. This was a bad year for a Republican to run, but even taking that in account they ran a lousy campaign. It had no consistent message and got personally mean. It was full of risk-taking stunts that, while occasionally fun to watch, blew up in their collective faces. It was beneath most everything I ever liked, or thought I liked, about the man. I was tempted, at times, to vote Alan Keyes just to register my disdain for his idiotic campaign.

If his campaign had been good I think he would've still lost, but maybe could've maintained Indiana or even Virginia. He wouldn't have been as tarnished either.

However his campaign people can blame everything on Palin and then still get work where in a just world their next job would be managing the campaign of some small-town mayor somewhere deep in Appalachia. Or working at Chucky Cheese maybe.

@Thomas R: If he had run a good campaign he would have been close enough to capitalize on an Obama error or crisis. It's a more passive role--positioning yourself to take advantage of an opening and hoping one appears, rather than seeking to create the opening--but he would have been close enough to pounce. Imagine if McCain's response to the fiscal crisis had come across as an experienced hand pulling all the pieces together to forge a solution while Obama, framed by his present votes, waited. That could have been the crucial opening. Instead, having already gone wacky by, as the WaPo put it, deciding to run a typical Republican presidential campaign in a change year, plus tactics over strategy, plus Palin, he capped it by reacting to the financial crisis like Wile E. Coyote, trying an increasingly bizarre and ineffective series of traps to nab that wily economic crisis.

It's not implausible at all.

I try not to get too haughty about stuff like this (though I fail), because I'm sure that there's tons of things I am wrong about that would be similarly embarrassing, though hopefully not many things that could be exposed by the average fourth grader.

Now to my question. Coates describes Palin's shopping spree as "ghetto" (I don't disagree, although some of my older relatives may have called it "Ni--er Rich". I don't know if people still use that term). Why is the adjective "Ghetto" almost universally considered non-offensive? We aren't talking about the Warsaw Ghetto here. The term clearly connotes the idiosyncrasies of poor urban black folk (sort of the black equivalent of white trash).

If anyone cares to respond, I'd appreciate it.

I've transcribed many interviews which, when done well, sound like conversations, and it is a mark of professionalism IMNSHO to clean 'em up a little -- literally to write what you heard, not necessarily precisely what the recording shows someone said. There are judgment calls to make -- sometimes, people are unintentionally revealing in saying a little more, or less, or something other than what they might have meant to say with a little afterthought.

But the humbling thing is to realize that ALL of us -- I mean that -- speak most of the time in rambling strings of phrases that cannot be parsed into sentences much less paragraphs with anything remotely like what could be considered a literarily coherent train of thought in which we make astonishing leaps of faith and communication involving incomplete and inappropriate implications that the other person or persons will instantly appreciate but no one bothers to articulate so what I am observing and not simply saying here is that we should cut Palin a break.

She might have meant "countries in Africa" but said "the country of Africa", caught her verbal fumble with a nano-second's worth of facial expression that anyone who knew her would have seen as part of the conversation and recognized made the mis-step not worth correcting, then moved on. But the harshness of this sorta crap -- 57 states ring a bell? -- magnifies into not only her error, but exponentially increases the brain/speech mismatch that really wastes everybody's time.

She's gonna say plenty of genuinely ignorant and stupid things; we don't have to be this unkind about it.

I really can't envision a way in which McCain could have won this campaign, not with Obama playing every hand nearly perfectly, and not with the hilarious unpopular Bush still bumbling around in front of the cameras as the face of the Republican party. So yes, I agree that Palin most certainly did not lose the election for McCain.

That said, she is an awful candidate for a national campaign. She may be fine in Alaska—the state where secession from the United States is a not unreasonable proposition and where voters apparently reelected their venal, convicted-felon Senator—but that doesn't mean she's national campaign material. She is clearly not a "thinker" in that she hasn't spent time mulling over the problems that confront the nation. She also has not provided a shred of evidence that her lack of coherence in interviews and her lack of substance in debates somehow belies her true intellectual ability (say, for example, if she were known to write brilliant policy pieces). She also unquestionably violated state ethics laws to fulfill a personal vendetta, and an enormous number of reports detailing her time in Wasilla portray her as a petty, vindictive religious fundamentalist.

In short, she is an absolutely terrible candidate. But I can't imagine that McCain would have won the election with Romney or Huckabee either. So the loss is certainly not her fault.

Likewise, it's incredibly easy to publish a calendar with Bushisms for every day of the year. On the other hand, it would be much more difficult to do the same thing with other presidents.

The problem with Palin was both the specifics (Bush Doctrine) and the sheer volume of her inane utterances and cant-filled answers.

Doubt it.

Hey! That was my idea! http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_9287.html#934551

Well...before anybody else brings it up I better throw out my theory behind the shopping spree -- in brief, Sarah had to bribe her family so that they would play along with her vp bid, and so she got the RNC to give her an unlimited wardrobe budget.

Precisely. When Obama says there are 57 states, I am quite confident that the former EIC of the Harvard Law Review does not actually think there are 57 states. When Sarah Palin continuously argues that living close to Russia gives her foreign policy experience, I see no reason to think she does not actually believe that.

I forget where I read it, but I saw an update this morning that what she had actually done was asked if a reference to 'South Africa' was a reference to a region of the continent, or was its own country. Still, not exactly MENSA-grade, but one dwarf-step above not knowing the geological status of Africa.

Also, this is a thirdhand anecdote, not a direct quote transcript. Campaign leaks are as prone to exaggeration and hyperbole as any other anecdote, I suppose.

Finally, are we ok with the fact that we're only hearing this now? Doesn't this qualify as information that the American people had the right to base their voting decisions on? Why did the reporters sit on this for so long? Seriously, these reporters should be facing as much criticism as Palin when shit like this leaks.

http://www.redstate.com/diaries/erick/2008/nov/05/operation-leper/

I think the Germans created the word SCHADENFREUDE for days like today.

This is the rare event that actually is Great News! For Hillary Clinton! Because the disfunctions of the McCain campaign, and especially the Wasilla hillbilly bashing to come, will cast all that Mark Penn vs the psychotic firefighter stuff into a footnote.

That might have been what happened but that is not what is being described in that clip. Cameron is making a point about what aides are saying about what Palin knows not about what she said. Indeed, it could be that the aides in question are judging her offhand comments harshly. None of us were there so we will probably never know. The point for me really is that from what I have seen of her, it is not at all difficult for me to believe that she just isn't very well informed. In almost every public statement I have ever seen from her, especially including her one policy speech this cycle, she has demonstrated an absolutely stunning ignorance of the world around her. If this one story about her lack of geography knowledge came out of nowhere we would probably all have a different reaction.

Because reporters make agreements with sources such as "this is off-the-record until after the election" all the time.

Likewise, Sy Hersh has told us that many many Bush people have told him to give them a call on January 20th, 2009, because that's when they'll have stuff to tell.

That's the way this game is played.

"At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said."

Ghetto? She's a freakin' femme fatale straight out of James M. Cain.

Example: A friend of mine took to me to a Mexican restaurant, and to his surprise, the crowd at 10 PM was almost entirely black. He afterwords joked that it seemed kind of "ghetto," but that wasn't a reference to class at all. It wasn't Momofuko, but it wasn't a cheap place either. And when I went to the area a few days later, I found it was a very upscale shopping district with a focus on African American customers.

So I think white's use it to refer to blacks indiscrimately.

"Uncle Tom" is pretty specific to blacks, I can't come up with an analogue for white people, except maybe Stockholm Syndrome which is far less satisfying.

Those are the times we live in. Even if I were friends with a black man for 20 years, I don't think I would ever use "nigger" as an endearment, the way some blacks do with each other. It just wouldn't be right, it would highlight the difference between us, namely, that I'm white, and he's black.

I would however be happy to call TNC a "D&D nerd", a "poetry-reading freak" and other such disparages, since I'm all that too. Such names reinforce our ties, not our differences.

The ghettos I've lived in were fairly racially diverse, but that's just anecdotal. I won't say you're wrong, but I don't see why a primarily white, poor, inner-city neighborhood wouldn't be called a ghetto. What else would you call it?

It's not racially charged and has the same basic gist.

Ha. I wonder if she stuffed her family's suitcases and pockets with the hotel silverware, tissue boxes, shampoos, lotions, sugar packets, creamers, coffee packets, etecetera.

As for Palin's poor performance in her Gibson and Couric interviews, this highlighted her true lack of any common sense. She was lobbying GOP pundits back in 2007 to get on the VP shortlist. I would have expected that she would have studied up on key national and international issues sometime between December 2007 and August 2008.

25K is a lot of money, but doesn't seem all the unreasonable for somebody who's been thrust onto the national scene. She probably didn't have near enough clothes for a national campaign, and most people don't have the money to purchase them off-hand. I remember people being able to justify in the 25K-50K range, with the thought if they were put into the same situation they would need to spend a similar amount. It's the completely over the top 150K+ that made people wonder what she spent the money on.

Just as I expected. She's so the type to take advantage of people's kindness and generosity.

Re: Africa

"She might have meant "countries in Africa" but said "the country of Africa", caught her verbal fumble with a nano-second's worth of facial expression that anyone who knew her would have seen as part of the conversation and recognized made the mis-step not worth correcting, then moved on. But the harshness of this sorta crap -- 57 states ring a bell? -- magnifies into not only her error, but exponentially increases the brain/speech mismatch that really wastes everybody's time."

I think if she didnt just try to bs 100 million people into voting her into the VP slot, she'd get the benefit of the doubt. I kind of believe the Africa is a country allegation. Not that it really matters. We already knew she's not very bright. This allegation true or not does not really change that substantially.

Palin is so ghetto her baby has a baby.

Palin is so ghetto she lives in public housing.

I don't agree. If this is true, this is a whole other level. This would put her in the lower 20 percentile for intelligence in this country. This would be proof that she shouldn't even be running Alaska. This is the kind of thing that could prevent her from being re-elected in Alaska.

That being said, I'm not convinced its true. Not being sure whether South Africa refers to a country or a region seems much more believable to me. Which makes me wonder...do you think Sarah Palin has any idea what apartheid is? I can't help but giggle just thinking of her trying to explain it. And I'm not a big giggler.

GKM asks what I would call a primarily white, poor, inner-city neighborhood. Since I live in NYC, I'd call it history (not really since there are some Russian/former republic neighborhoods that could fit). But seriously, to the extent that the neighborhood was ethnically homogenous, I would probably call it a ghetto.

All that being said, I still think that the term is almost exclusively associated with black ghettos, whether used by whites (as in Davey's example above) or by blacks (as in "Ghetto Bastard" by NbN).

TNC, sorry if I killed your joke by explaining it.

Possibly she's a symptom, but she's not the disease.

That is absolutely the case. The base wanted this. Even if "the old John McCain" had run with, say, someone of Romney's experience, and had been high-minded and on-message with a coherent and fleshed-out set of ideas, they would have probably lost because Obama has all of those things in spades, and at a time when Americans are not only pissed at Republicans but find they don't agree with them on very much anymore.

That having been said, the GOP is truly diseased right now. Look at the people who have come out of the woodwork over the past couple of months, fools with monkey-dolls and theocrats and all - and marvel in dismay that these people are ascending in a party where many of the most reasonable people have already decamped. They are done for a decade; they're fresh out of good ideas, and the cancers of fear and rage have completely replaced the intelligence and coherence and genuine principles that once lived in the GOP. I guess if we truly want a new and better politics here, something has to die and nourish the roots. I eagerly await the emergence of new and robust ideas over the next generation in the USA.

On another note it is somewhat amazing that Alaskasn would rather have a convicted felon than a Democrat as their senator.....

I’ve talked before about the fact that it’s more or less impossible to teach even very smart, capable, theoretically-savvy undergraduates that Africa is a continent, not a country. I’m sure it’s hard for medievalists to shake some similar understandings of their subject matter. Certain kinds of “facts” are mapped very deep into our collective unconscious, often precisely by these kinds of everyday reinforcements.

I don't think TNC's usage is offensive, and I get the joke. I'm just not sure why it is not offensive when it seems more offensive then many other words that are often considered offensive.

Did I say "offensive" too many times?

I've met people like her throughout corporate America, she's commonplace. Meritocracy exists in very few places. She benefits from being an above-average looking white woman. She does what works.

Based on her political ascendancy and jobs, she didn't need to know more. Her arrogance in not preparing for her Couric interview sounds about right. She relied on lying her entire life and felt she could wing-it.

It's worked before.

a)Palin hates shopping for clothes

and

b)she and her kids weren't really allowed out of her hotel room before these events.

Basically, she claims that they rolled a clothes rack into her room with a bunch of options to pick from.

Seems reasonable to me and comes from a source that I trust and who would know. With that in mind, I encourage people to keep in mind that those who were in charge of getting her clothes would have every incentive to lie. Moreover, it isn't like these guys haven't shown an unwillingness in the past. Lastly, it would explain stories about people not seeing her or her family in the stores at which these costs were run up.

The whole thing was just a liberal media misunderstanding.

Maybe a reference was made to the nation of South Africa and she confused it with southern Africa generally? Or maybe confused South Africa with sub-Saharan Africa? Or something along those lines.

Of course if it's true - the nation owes Barack big time for making sure she never got anywhere near the levers of power in Washington.

That's true, but Palin goes way, way beyond the norm. It's simply impossible to clean up some of her statements because there's no way to figure out what she meant. There simply isn't a coherent point buried in the verbiage. Try reading some of the transcripts.

she a big fat dumbbell.

That struck my funny bone for some reason and I voted for McCain/Palin.

As Mama would say,

She has no home-training.