A coherent thought ?
I was reading a transcript (or what appears to be a transcript) between Katie Couric and Senator Sarah Palin. My take away from the short read is that our education system has failed us – completely. There are times I think absolutely no coherency exists in what the interviewee is expressing.
Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.
Couric: What, specifically?
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.
Couric: Can you name a few?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where it’s kind of suggested, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?” Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.
If I were asked what news papers I read, I would have no trouble explaining I read very few papers in paper form. I read posts from the BBC, NYT, CNN, MSNBC, and others as well as blogs and links to on-line content such as CNET, AP, etc. Is that overly difficult ?
Another exchange took place around “the morning after pill”. I don’t wish to stir up a debate about pro-life and pro-choice, but someone missed an important bit of timing – which I will get to shortly. First, here is the exchange …
Couric: Some people have credited the morning-after pill for decreasing the number of abortions. How do you feel about the morning-after pill?
Palin: Well, I am all for contraception. And I am all for preventative measures that are legal and save, and should be taken, but Katie, again, I am one to believe that life starts at the moment of conception. And I would like to see …
Couric: And so you don’t believe in the morning-after pill?
Palin: … I would like to see fewer and fewer abortions in this world. And again, I haven’t spoken with anyone who disagrees with my position on that.
Couric: I’m sorry, I just want to ask you again. Do you not support or do you condone or condemn the morning-after pill.
Palin: Personally, and this isn’t McCain-Palin policy …
Couric: No, that’s OK, I’m just asking you.
Palin: But personally, I would not choose to participate in that kind of contraception.
So, a strait forward question took multiple attempts to get a less than strait forward answer. Now, to that bit about “timing”. It may be inconsequential to most (unless it directly effect you) but “conception” does not start at orgasm and the natural introduction of the male sperm into the female. There is some debate as to how long it takes for fertilization and it could be as short as a few hours and as long as a couple of days. It is not, however, instantaneous so by definition, there is a window of time for the morning after pill which does not contradict the statement; “life starts at conception”.
You can read the rest of the transcript, just don’t expect too many strait answers. Of, if I were to channel ambiguity of the likes in the interview, here is what might happen …
Journalist: I want to be sure you have a chance to answer my question directly – do you agree with congress’s actions ?
Polititian: You want a strait answer ? Well, I do not judge people as strait or I mean I know a homosexual and I don’t think of them as “not strait” and they are just people I have met so they are no less important. I answer as my own person and with my running mate. Congress is a collection of many different people all who represent America and they are many different people and some are homosexual and I do not think that is important for what we are talking about now. So, yes, I agree with my running mate and the change he is trying to accomplish. He is not one of them, congress, he is here to change the established partisan ways. He has the experience to accomplish change.
See? Clear as mud. Any can answer a question like a politician. Go ahead, try it for your self.
I believe that all opinions should be considered and that they are all valid and furthermore the people expressing those opinions are valid human beings that should be offered every opportunity to speak in the great tradition of our proud nation and express their views on topics that concern them and their families and furthermore our campaign supports the rights of every person to express their views as long as those views are respected by our great citizenry and I personally support the right to free speech and the privilege to express oneself as one may feel is appropriate furthermore our campaign firmly believes that any attempt to restrict free speech is wrong when it disagrees with the opinions expressed by our campaign and even when it disagrees with our campaign we support the right of a person to quietly and privately express those views to members of their immediate family in the privacy of their own homes which is why this nation is great and why we are the strongest nation on the planet.
Ed – one problem with your answer – it stayed on topic.
I do question Ed’s patriotism in not making clear that our wonderful planet on which so many hardworking Americans have fought and died for our freedoms is in fact the strongest planet in the universe and must express my deep concern regarding his doubt that we are perhaps secondary to some rogue state that may exist in our universe or perhaps an alternate universe. This is a disservice to many hardworking, tax-paying Americans to imply that there may be some elitist planet out there that thinks it’s better than we are.
Having watched the entire series of “Yes, Minister”, it seems a wholly perfect time for a quote from Sir Humphrey …
“Well .. if you ask me for a straight answer, then I shall say that, as far as we can see, looking at it by and large, taking one thing with another in terms of the average of departments, then in the final analysis it is probably true to say, that at the end of the day, in general terms, you would probably find that, not to put too fine a point on it, there probably wasn’t very much in it one way or the other as far as one can see, at this stage.”