Decrepit Old Fool

I’ve been misunderestimating Katie Couric.  She always seemed like a lightweight to me but I should have known better – it isn’t like the network lets star camera personalities dress themselves or choose their own hairstyles.  Or, at least not if they are female.  Turn the dial; It’s one channel after another of NILF.  Except the Fox news anchors, no thank you;  brrr!

But Couric’s interview with Sarah Palin, the little bit I’ve seen of it, was good.  She kept her cool while the candidate bluffed her way through one question after another, giving her just the right amount of rope.  And maybe she’s told the network executives to bugger off – she was dressed very professionally for the interview.

(Oh, and Sarah?  Since May the president of Russa is Dmitry Medvedev, not Vladimir Putin.  Please try to keep up.)

Maybe we should have some schoolteachers interview Sarah Palin.  Who knows more about bluffing than a schoolteacher?  Ask an incurious student about some point of world history, and you get back a cloud of words, not much content.  Next best thing is the analysis of a schoolteacher who watched the Couric interview:

…Like I said, I actually feel for a bluffer when I see them at it. My first reaction to watching the video wasn’t political, it was much more like how I feel seeing this as a teacher: a sympthetic wince. Whomever is sitting down and trying to cram with Palin is making a bad mistake. She’d be a lot better off if she didn’t to try to seriously talk about how Putin is rearing his head and floating into Alaskan air space and so on. I suspect that her personal instincts about how to answer these kinds of questions are better than the staffers who are trying to infuse her with Stature™ at the last minute…

Easily Distracted: Trade secret of teachers

(HT Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles)

UPDATE:

• Ed Brayton has a bit more video for us in Why they don’t want Palin talking

• This MSNBC Videoincludes the first Couric bit, but has more.  The interesting thing for me was at the end where a WSJ poll found “more than half said she was qualified to be Vice President, but 49% said she was unqualified to be president”.  Presumably not the same half of respondents, or someone’s “not clear on the concept”.