Stewart on Palin

January 19, 2011 • 11:01 am

As only he can, Stewart takes on Palin’s reaction to the Arizona shooting, and her attempts to exculpate herself.  There’s little doubt that her lame responses to the shooting, denials that there were “crosshairs” on the liberal political map, attempts to pin the shooting on “liberals,” and so on, have turned off the public.  Palin’s approval rating is now at an all-time low, with 56% of Americans having an unfavorable view of her.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.984528&w=425&h=350&fv=autoPlay%3Dfalse]

Jon Stewart, posted with vodpod

72 thoughts on “Stewart on Palin”

  1. Sarah Palin is yesterday’s lunch. Comforting that a majority of the country understands this now.

    1. She may be yesterday’s lunch but that’s no reason to relax. Someone just as loony will take her place. Hell, NEWT GINGRICH is every bit as batshit insane as her. Why is he still even around? It’s been almost 20 years and he should long ago have been tossed on the trash heap of history, but he’s STILL AROUND.

      There will be somebody, and progressive people everywhere on Nov 6 2012 will be on the edge of their seats watching election returns. Obama may hold on and win, but it won’t be the landslide that 2008 was. Call it a prophecy. LOLz.

    1. Actually, that’s not too bad when you consider that half the electorate is of “below average intelligence”.

      1. It’s not about intelligence, which is a good thing, because intelligence, in the biological, 50% are below the average sense, probably can’t be improved much (and if it could, many people would just use it to better able to defend their ingrained prejudices, instead of seeing the flaws in them).

        It’s about the ability to reason well, which can be improved through education. If we could get elementary schools to teach kids how to reason before they get too invested in their opinions, it would have a tremendous effect on American politics. Maybe we should use the standardized tests to our advantage: change the tests so a large part of the grade depends on critical reading and reasoning ability. Sure, there are biological reasons why kids can’t reason as well as adults; but we could test them at an appropriate level, which would force the schools to teach them how.

  3. In defence of my homestate, 58% of the state has an unfavourable view of her. Granted, it’s within the MOE, but I’d like to pretend that’s 2% wiser than the lower 48. 😉

    Sadly, we had no idea what can of Crazy we were opening when we elected her Gov…

    1. It was awfully good of you to run the experiment for the lower 48, tho. Without that, she would have gotten more traction.

      And re. JS, his continual reference to someone as Gov who resigned at mid-term seems way more deferential than warranted.

      1. What are you talking about? Without that, no one, including McCain, would ever have heard of her.

    1. Oh dear. There’s a link at HuffPo, too, here, but it probably connects to the vodpod video that you can’t see.

  5. Canada (and the UK according to Rob) aren’t getting much love from Comedy Central. Fuck you, Viacom. Sarah Palin, fuck you too!

  6. God’s she’s revolting. I don’t know how she could seem less presidential. She’s petty and paranoid and utterly self-centered. Wouldn’t any world-class politician and (presumed) presidential aspirant use her time on a public stage to express concern about Rep. Gifford and to talk about healing?

    If 56% disapprove, does this mean 44% approve of her? How utterly depressing. She should be a laughingstock.

    1. use her time on a public stage to express concern about Rep. Gifford

      She spent at least 2 seconds on that before moving on to a more important topic: herself.

    2. The linked article says 38% approval rating. I presume the remaining 6% have been living in caves for the last 2-1/2 years. She’s nothing if not polarizing. It also says she’s dropped 14% among independents.

    3. . I don’t know how she could seem less presidential. She’s petty and paranoid and utterly self-centered.

      Like Bush, you mean?

      1. Bush wasn’t a fraction as self-centered as her. I would take four more years of him before I’d take four hours of Palin as President. Bush was arrogant, but not because he thought he had brilliant ideas. He knew his place and that others in his administration were doing the thinking for him.

        2. Bush wasn’t a fraction as self-centered as her.

          Really?

          The worst part of his presidency was when some guy I don’t know said he didn’t care about black people. If that’s not selfcentrered, I’d hate to meet someone who is.

        3. Ophelia and Sili, I just meant relative to Palin. I don’t recall GWB speaking as though everyone else lacked “common sense” like Palin says. He never claimed to be intellectually superior to anyone which is all I meant by “knew his place.”

          Not a Bush defender… I have less contempt for Bush SR.

  9. I ashamed to say it, but whenever I read a statistic like that, I fantasize about what it would be like to permanently disenfranchise 44% of the voting public.

    1. I used to fantasize about solutions like that. Then I stopped daydreaming about unrealistic solutions and tried to come up with ideas that might actually work. I find I’m happier and less frustrated that way.

  11. The day after Palin took the “cross hairs” off her site and made a feeble statement saying she was disappointed with the reaction towards her, she showed up in Haiti with a “Reverend and his self resurrected “Good Samaritan’ sect. She made no statement there, just got her picture taken in the group behind the Reverend.
    She looked dissapointed and rightly ashamed but again I don’t think so on the latter, she’s too thick skinned and slightly below the mentality of George W. B.

    1. Please understand that I detest Palin as much as anyone.
      But I also value the truth. I worked for many years as a typographer and printer.
      Those “crosshairs” or “gun sights” on Palin’s map were printers’ registration marks. If you have Quark or Pagemaker on your computer, you can find them.
      They allow printers to align the four color negatives in order to print in full color.
      Of course, Palin doesn’t know that, or she would have said so by now.
      But those of us on the left ought to make it clear we value honesty above political points.

      1. They are; but I don’t think that’s how the map designer was thinking of them. I think that person just didn’t know the difference. (I don’t have any evidence for this, of course, and I doubt any could be found.)

  12. I weep for our country, when 44% of the population does not have an unfavorable opinion of that bag-of-hammers.

    1. Pretty much the same electorate as it was in 2004, when, after seeing Bush as president for four years and the Iraq war for a year and a half, about half of them thought Bush should be reelected. That was when I got sick of the place. I love it, but I’m deathly sick of it.

  13. Hello,
    I am a biology student at the University of Miami currently taking a course on systematics, and was endearing what your thoughts on the Plylocode vs the Linnean system were.
    Thanks!

  14. As usual, I’m in the minority. I WANT palin to be more popular right now. I want her to split the republican party, to siphon votes from Romney et al at the repub convention.

    And if on the remote chance she is the repub nominee, then we can bring out all of this stuff. But if we keep attacking her now, she won’t get a chance, and she won’t damage Romney or whomever.

    We should WANT to run against Palin.

    We should take a page from the republicans, who kept rooting for Hilary in the primaries because they wanted to run against her, not Obama.

    1. Hillary would have wiped the floor with McCain.

      And we would have had the exact same toxic political environment. Just with a different target.

      1. Hitler Tamed By Prison
        — The New York Times, December 21, 1924

        I’ve seen this article around the Internet, so I searched nytimes.com for the title, and my link here confirms the article really ran. What could go wrong?

    3. As a registered Republican in a hopeless district, that’s precisely what I do.

      I was an “ardent” McCain supporter in the primary. I didn’t manage to convert my little roomful of Romney-bots for the weaker candidate, despite my acting lessons. I wish there were more of us system-gamers. The existing system is pretty much broken.

      2. In my selfish defense, when I was huckstering for McCain, he hadn’t announced Palin yet. If I had known who his running mate was going to be, I would’ve been trying to steer the room towards the next-least electable moron.

        I’m so tired of voting against people. I honestly think I haven’t voted FOR anyone in a national election since Tim Wirth. I hate our politics with a passion.

      3. I think it is important not to get too carried away. While we may not know what might happen in two years, right now she is significantly more unpopular than Obama.

      4. I don’t get that idea, either. The Republicans and the bigots (no small minority) would vote for Palin over Obama. Sure, they might prefer someone less crazy (or not), but they would still vote for her.

    5. While I agree that Palin being taken seriously would help Obama’s reelection, I think that has to take a back seat to the longer-term goal of raising the level of political discourse in this country. The next presidential election matters, but it’s temporary. Raging irrationality will bring this country down sooner or later if it isn’t checked.

  15. I can’t catch Stewart when (at 1’02”) he says Sean Hannity was ready to upgrade Palin’s status from “innocent [baloo teen?]” to Joan of Arc. And at 1’05” the targets seem to lack the crosshairs you get by searching “palin crosshairs”.

    1. And at 1’05″ the targets seem to lack the crosshairs

      That was as Democratic map from 2004. ‘O noez, targets! They might throw darts at us!’

    2. “innocent bully teen(ager)”, I think.

      That graphic was the one right-wingers put up in response to the Palin cross-hair graphic. (looky, Dems do it, too!!)

  16. Palin fits perfectly the profile of an NPD. I’d be very interested to hear Jerry’s take on speculation connecting personality disorders like Palin’s with evolved traits. In the Blank Slate, Pinker discusses ASPD in terms of evolution and raises the question if ASPD is really a “disorder” at all, rather than a mechanism useful to exploit non-ASPSs. What about NPD? BPD?

    1. Pinker […] raises the question if ASPD is really a “disorder” at all, rather than a mechanism useful to exploit non-ASPSs.

      Why can’t it be both? Just because it might be (or have been) an evolutionary stable strategy doesn’t make it any less of a problem for society (or for the individual, as ASPDs are disproportionately incarcerated).

  17. As usual, Stewart and his writers are brilliant. Sorry state of affairs when the most insightful political and social commentators are on Comedy Central.

    1. It’s not political commentary, it’s comedy. The segment is designed to make people laugh. He didn’t address the interview to inform or to contrast opinions. Instead, they selected the appropiate bits so he could make the corresponding funny remark.

      Insightful is not the same as witty.

      2. Witty it certainly was, though–needed a note about no coffee drinking during the show above the video. Nearly choked–I took a drink of coffee right before he said “Palindrome?”… :-))

    1. oops. that was in response to a post whining about the vid being “censored” in their country. By the time I replied, the target post was gone. Sorry for the clutter. Tough medium, this.

  20. As much as I dislike much of her politics, the free speech purist me screams ‘for FSM’s sake DON’T APOLOGIZE’.

    Seriously. It is bad precedent. Because some complete wacko (who may not even have seen that website) goes off and commits a vicious crime (something that MILLIONS of people who looked at that website did not do), it’s really appalling that supposedly freedom loving people are crying for ‘restraint’ (accommodationst language anyone?)

    I (and I hope others) REFUSE to be held accountable to rantings of a nutcase. Were not the ‘motoons’ intentionally provocative, and did they not result in murders? But who are the guilty parties? The killers or the publishers of the cartoons.

    When we have to ‘tone down’ heated language because some nutcase, somewhere, might go off, we have surrendered our freedom.

    2. You have to ‘tone down’ heated language because it is stupid and useless, as opposed to civilized discourse, which is useful and serves to make good policies.

      You don’t want politicians saying stupid things around all day just because they are free to do so, right?

      lol. I’m picturing Palin talking about her death panels and saying ‘yeah, I made that ship up, and I am PROUD of it! I did it because I have FREEDOM to do it! No apologies for FREEDOM!’

  21. The show was hilarious. I had to watch it all to see the ASTROPHYSICIST!

    When I watched Palin’s video I noticed how she kept referring to the dead “innocents” without ever referring to the “innocents” that were wounded. Maybe I’m reading too much into the way she said it, but it sounds as if she went out of her way to keep from saying Giffords is an innocent. I’m surprised Stewart didn’t use that–I can’t be the only one noticing that.

  22. OMG that was hilarious. And spot-on.

    The polling result is good news but I wish it had come earlier. Say, October 2008.

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