NOVATOWNHALL

Not one to avoid controversy for long, Alaska Governor and former Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin is back in the news for an interview she gave at a location that was possibly not thoroughly vetted by her public relations staff.

As Palin nonchalantly fielded questions from reporters in an ad hoc press opportunity on the occasion of her annual “pardoning” of a turkey for the upcoming Thanksgiving Day holiday, both the television cameras and audience noticed something terrible occurring in the background as the governor blithely continued the back and forth with the press.

Just outside the governor’s field of vision but completely observable by everyone else, an apparently crazed political candidate from Minnesota was crushing small dogs one after the other, saying “THIS is how we win. THIS is how we win. THIS is how we win.”

During the course of the nearly 10-minute interview, an estimated 17 small dogs were either suffocated, or mortally wounded from massive blunt force trauma.

Confronted with the video evidence, neither the governor nor her staff would comment on yet another major miscalculation by the woman who would have been next in line for the presidency of the United States of America.

Just an observation as to why Sarah Palin has become such a phenomenon that she has literally (and I mean that exact word) been getting more television time than Barack Obama since the election. Add in the Internet and (such as it is) print “media” and I’d say it’s Palin over Obama by about 20%.

Why is such a crazy thing happening?

Obviously reason #1 is because Americans by and large are fascinated by Sarah Palin and want to know more about her. From the perspective of the mainstream media people, who are largely liberal but also quite concerned about making a buck these days, Sarah Palin represents eyeballs. As a longtime liberal Democrat, even I can accept this obvious fact.

But I think it is also because Sarah Palin represents an extreme anti- figure to us liberals. She freaks us out completely. Oh yes, the media workers are liberal but this means they are also 100% in touch with the liberal mindset, which means they think she is a monstrosity, and they recognize such things can be profitable so all the more justification to cover the airwaves with all-Palin all the time if that is what viewers want.

Remember: liberals gave us Planet Death and the Terminator movies. Same basic concept.

UPDATE: Here is a pretty interesting final perspective on the 2008 and campaign (and a first glimpse at 2012).

I can’t tell for sure if there is a compliment tucked into this column, but by cracky I wager there is!

My view of Sarah Palin has changed in the two months since John McCain named her as his running mate. I’m guessing that McCain’s view of Palin may be changing, too, and not entirely in a good way.

I thought Palin was a lightweight; she’s not. I thought she was an ingenue; she is, but only as long as her claws are sheathed. I thought she was bewildered and star-struck at her sudden elevation to national prominence; if she ever was, she isn’t anymore. I thought she was nothing but raw political talent and unrealistic ambition; it turns out that she has impressive political skills. I thought she was destined to become nothing more than a historical footnote; I now think that Democrats underestimate her at their peril…

BulletProof Monk has photos.

Well, obviously it’s too little too late in the sense we did not get to vote for Sarah Palin in the Republican primaries. But the recent strategic getting-a-clue movement among the GOP campaign intelligentsia which is now allowing Sarah to pretty much do whatever the hell she wants highlights the huge missteps since September 1.

Stacy McCain has the best analysis of the misuse of Sarah Palin that I have seen. Go read it all.

Scott Conroy of CBS gives an instructive report that should have Republican hands striking Republican foreheads while highly-compensated Republican mouths say “what were we thinking?”

In the past two days alone, Palin has answered questions from her national press corps on three separate occasions. On Saturday, she held another plane availability, and on Sunday, she offered an impromptu press conference on the tarmac upon landing in Colorado Springs. A few minutes later, she answered even more questions from reporters during an off-the-record stop at a local ice cream shop.

By contrast, Biden hasn’t held a press conference in more than a month, and Obama hasn’t taken questions from his full traveling press corps since the end of September. John McCain—who spent most of the primary season holding what seemed like one, never-ending media availability—hasn’t done one since Sept. 23.

Though she often turns the “mainstream media” into a punching bag on the stump, Palin clearly enjoys interacting with reporters. She seems to relish the opportunity to demonstrate that her breadth of knowledge far exceeds what she offered to CBS News’ Katie Couric in a series of interviews that were marked by vague, often convoluted answers to straightforward questions.

Sarah Palin is the Republican Party’s best weapon right now because she has instant credibility with regular Americans and she drives the liberals bonkers nutso.

Too bad our party geniuses held her back for so long.

Here’s an idea: Instead of spending John McCain’s remaining campaign war chest on more John McCain commercials and direct mail, why not buy a half hour on prime time television for Sarah Palin?

[Scroll down - links to the NBC video clips of Sarah Palin on SNL are at the bottom of this post.]

Anybody else watching this?

She was pretty good in the opening “skit” - not much of a skit, but some humorous banter with Lorne Michael and Alec Baldwin (said “Stephen is my favorite Baldwin brother”).

Not sure if that’s it or what, but more power to her for doing it.

UPDATE: Boy, it is going to be a little painful having to watch all the non-Palin skits in the meantime. Maybe it’s like that philosopher dude once speculated about music - that eventually all the possible melodies would be used and that would be it: Maybe all the jokes have already been written, and there is nothing left for SNL to do but play out the string. At 11:45 pm this is some unfunny stuff going on here in this first sketch and it is supposed to be the good material at the beginning, right?

UPDATE II: The real VW and Burger King commercials are FAR more entertaining than the SNL “MacGruber” McGyver parody. Lorne Michael should go to Madison Ave and hire some writers.

UPDATE III: 11:56 pm - Maybe no more Palin? The Suze Orman sketch was lame. I’m gonna surf the Web while this is on because this is one upcoming hour of life I know I won’t get back.

UPDATE IV: Elsewhere, African Press International says the Michelle Obama story will be updated tomorrow. This could be big news. Michelle apparently called in to complain about something and let slip that Barack Obama was adopted by a foreign national after he was born, and thus was not a U.S. citizen. Supposedly API is going to release the audio of the phone call from Michelle Obama, a phone call the Obama campaign reportedly says never took place.

UPDATE V: Powerline was worried the Palin appearance would be like going into the lion’s den but if that at the beginning was it, no harm done to her and she performed fine, certainly reminded why people love her. And a nice counterpoint to the Tina Fey impersonation version of herself which was playing at the same time. Made Fey’s look pretty insipid. But all in good fun.

UPDATE VI: She’s back, on Weekend Update. “I’m not gonna do the piece we rehearsed … I think it just might cross the line.” A rap. Sarah is playing along … heh. This is pretty funny actually.

UPDATE VII: Man, Sarah Palin is a natural in front of the camera. No wonder she strikes such apocalyptic fear in the hearts of her opponents. I know I speak for all of America when I say: We want to see more Sarah Palin!

UPDATE VIII: Whoa. Barack Obama and Bill Ayers shared an office for three years. That does not seem like it’s made it into the narrative yet; it will be interesting to see how this will update the “when I was 8 years old” data point, you know, the one where Barack Obama knows practically nothing about Bill Ayers.

UPDATE IX: NBC says the video of Sara Palin’s appearances will be up on their Web site, not there yet though. Here’s a snippet of the first portion on youtube. (May not be there long … copyright issues).

UPDATE X: Sarah came out for the farewell from the stage, about 15 seconds. Tina Fey did not appear to be out there.

UPDATE XI: NBC videos coming up now. Here is the opening. (Does Sarah Palin look good in comparison or what?) And here is the Palin rap.

UPDATE XII: Wow, Palin brought the highest SNL ratings in 14 years.

Sarah Palin is Iron Man on the stump:

She led the 2008 Republican offensive before the 2008 Republican offensive was cool. We need to clone this woman.