Palin/Oprah

I watched it (the broadcast version; I don't have the energy to try the unedited version). I thought it was relatively dull, for Palin. Probably the best stuff (as in: most fascinating, in a train-wreck way) was her explanation of what happened with Couric. The idea, now, is that she did terribly because (1) she was mentally still back on the rope line, and (2) that led her to get insanely defensive, taking a mild question about what she likes to read as some sort of weird anti-Alaska slur, which she reacted to by (logically, in her mind) just shutting down. No, it doesn't make much sense, and I won't be surprised if it turns out that there was no rope line. On the other hand, the immediate leap to victimization might actually be true. We've heard the Alaska slur explanation before; I'm not sure whether the rope line makes it sound more or less implausible. Of course, the idea that she expected it to be a nice chat about motherhood is totally implausible; she obviously knew that it was supposed to be a real interview.

At any rate...look, you can never tell which things that pols say are real, and which are just pieces of scripted junk that they use, whether it makes sense or not. Still, I tend to agree Palin obsessive Andrew Sullivan on this point:

"You don't need a title to make a difference." Here again she uses the term "title" as opposed to "office." She really does see politics as an extension of being a Beauty Queen, subject to nice p.r. events, interviews that are restricted to the "light-hearted, working mother" puffery that Oprah is enabling, and cover images on magazines. The idea that a politician holding public office is required to address tough questions about policy and record and the truth of various factual statements does not seem to have occurred to her.

(Andrew is checking about the "Bristol is in college" claim, right?)