The Sarah Palin Kool-Aid Drinking Society

I know what I saw at the Palin-Biden debate for the next American vice president on October 2nd 2008: Sarah Palin could not answer all the questions. She did not even try. She was like a talking doll: she could only give canned answers. And if one of her canned answers did not fit the question, she would just pick any old one and start saying that with a smile, pouring on the charm and the gosh-darns and doggone-its.

Proof that she was not thinking on her feet, that her performance was completely canned, that it was not at all her true self, was what she did when Biden came close to tears telling of his dead wife: she did nothing. There was nothing in her canned answers or her notes about dead wives.

And yet some Republican talking heads said she did great! That she is fit to be vice president! Maybe they were blinded by her charm. Maybe they were blinded by their party loyalty or the party line. Maybe they were just not honest. Whatever the reason might be, you cannot trust what comes out of their mouths!

If they are like that now, how will they be if she ever becomes president? Or, more to the point, how can we trust anything they say from now on?  Being Republican is one thing, but drinking the Kool-Aid is something else.

So for future reference here are some of those who belong to the Sarah Palin Kool-Aid Drinking Society (links go to their opinions of the debate where I could find them expressed online):

• politicians
  • Joe Lieberman
  • Rudy Giuliani
• talking heads and opinion-makers
  • David Brooks
  • Fred Barnes
  • Monica Crowley
  • Pat Buchanan
  • Peggy Noonan
  • Rush Limbaugh
• newspapers, etc
  • National Review
  • New York Daily News
• blogs from my blogroll
  • Michelle Malkin

Those who do not drink her Kool-Aid (though they may well be drinking someone else’s):

• politicians:
  • Rick Santorum
• talking heads and opinion-makers
  • Andrew Sullivan
  • Bill Maher
  • Bob Herbert
  • Charles Krauthammer
  • Chris Matthews
  • Daniel Larison
  • Eleanor Clift, Newsweek
  • Gail Collins
    
  • George Will
  • Hillary Rosen
  • Howard Fineman
  • Jeffrey Goldberg
  • Juan Williams
  • Keith Olbermann
  • Kevin Drum, Mother Jones
    
  • Rachel Maddow
  • Robert Shrum
  • Steven Pinker
• newspapers, etc
  • New York Times
  • The Economist
    
• blogs from my blogroll
  • Abagond (me)
  • Acting White
  • All Other Persons
  • Angry Black Bitch
  • Aunt Jemima’s Revenge
  • Because I Said So
  • Concrete Loop
  • Crooks & Liars
  • Dallas South
  • Invisible Woman
  • Jack & Jill Politics
  • Mirror on America
  • plezWorld
  • Something Within
  • The Field Negro
  • The G Spot
  • Think Progress
  • What Tami Said
  • What Would Thembi Do?
  • When I Write

Most of these are known or suspected Obama supporters, like me, but not all of them. George Will, Rick Santorum and The Economist, for example, are all well to the right.

A Kool-Aid drinker is someone whose common sense judgement is blinded by his loyalty to an idea or a person. Like when nearly a thousand followers of Jim Jones died after drinking poisoned Flavor Aid (not Kool-Aid, like people think) at Jonestown in 1978.

Thanks goes to The Black Snob, who unwittingly did some of the research for this post!

See also:

• What it’s like to debate Sarah Palin – from Alaskan politician Andrew Halcro the day before the Palin-Biden debate. Halcro says: “… she’s a master, not of facts, figures, or insightful policy recommendations, but at the fine art of the nonanswer, the glittering generality.”
• 2008 election
• Sarah Palin
• Joe Biden
• Barack Obama
• The Economist
• The New York Times
• Michelle Malkin