Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [126]
It’s interesting that even when driven by a penny-ante intellectual mob, behavior activated by groupthink seems to show some of the earmarks of actual possession. The famous Catholic exorcist Malachi Martin reports that those in the grip of possession always speak as if they are talking to someone else in the room. “She was speaking for the benefit of someone else’s ear,” he said of one woman before an exorcism, “repeating what somebody else was telling her.”22 (Obviously, I’m not saying Couric is possessed by the devil—even Lucifer couldn’t sit through the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.)
The tone of both of their interviews with Palin was: You’re not as smart as we are. This, from people whose fame was based on showcasing winning recipes and hair care products. Thus, Gibson interviewed Marsha Brooks as she prepared a prizewinning apple pie. (Gibson: “Now one of the things Marsha did, just as soon as she found out you’d won, you took the pies down to your local firehouse.”)23 And Couric investigated the claims of a “Twist-a-Braid” infomercial (Couric: Well, nobody has hair like this chick, that’s for sure.)24 Having your intelligence questioned by Katie Couric must be like having Michael Moore say to you, “Have you put on a few pounds?”
Consider Couric’s question about what Palin reads. The question wasn’t terribly interesting. It’s the sort of thing that gets posted on Facebook, not asked of vice presidential candidates. But the point wasn’t to interview Palin, it was to nurture Couric’s own self-esteem. In addition to national and political news, Palin probably read a lot of Alaska newspapers, hunting news, Guns & Ammo magazine, and religious publications and she correctly surmised that such literary preferences wouldn’t help her with Couric’s audience, so she avoided answering the question.
There is hardly a person in public life who wouldn’t be embarrassed by that question. Why wasn’t Obama asked what he reads? How about Joe Biden? There is no question but that Palin reads more widely than Patty Murray or Barbara Boxer—and has better reading comprehension. But a Democrat would never have been asked the question. Its only purpose was to make Palin look stupid, coming from someone who is herself barely hanging by a thread intellectually.
What Palin reads had nothing to do with any campaign issues. As the most knowledgeable governor in the country on energy, Palin had boatloads to say about the nation’s energy policy, but she was never asked about that. The last thing the media were going to do was raise an issue that would help the Republicans.
Gibson’s question to Palin about “the Bush doctrine” was similarly asinine. He chose a deliberately arcane way to ask a simple question in order to make himself look brilliant. The subject matter wasn’t obscure, but Gibson’s label was inscrutable.
No one talked about “the Bush doctrine” the way they talked about, for example, “WMDs” or “preemptive war.” It simply didn’t come up in conversation. Charles Krauthammer couldn’t have answered that question—because no one knew what “the Bush doctrine” was. Even the Washington Post ran an article with various foreign policy experts scratching their heads about what Gibson meant.25
If Gibson really wanted to know Palin’s position on Iraq, why didn’t he just ask, “Do you think it was legitimate to invade Iraq?” No, he couldn’t do that: It wouldn’t have been a calculated attempt to trip her up. Both Couric’s and Gibson’s interviews had little to do with Palin. The ex–morning show hosts were aggressively pursuing their own agendas to win acceptance from their betters.
It was just like the time