Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Yes, quotes. Because there are just too many imbecilic comments in this article, based on an interview with Victoria Jackson, to narrow it down to just one. First of all, I love the fact that they refer to her as an "NBC comedian." When I saw the headline I figured they meant Leno. Jackson was on SNL 20 years ago, for crying out loud. Let's start with this one:
"I trust Sarah Palin," said Jackson, who will be taking part in WND's upcoming "Taking America Back" national conference in Miami. "People make fun of her because they're afraid of her, because she's honest. Wow! What a new concept! An honest politician. I love her."
Yeah, she's honest. Like when she said she told Congress "thanks but no thanks" on the bridge to nowhere when, instead, she lobbied hard to get it and only scrapped it after Congress voted it down.
"I feel like Rush Limbaugh should be the president," she noted. "He's saying what we believe in better than anyone else."
And why does she say that?
In a July 4th New York radio interview with WND's Aaron Klein, who will also take part at the Miami event, Jackson said, "I'm close to the conservatives on the radio and TV because those are the only people I'm exposed to."
What a shock.
"People like me, we took our freedom for granted, because I was raised with it," Jackson, 50, said. "They even prayed in my public high school ... and I took it for granted that I could say what I want and believe in God and all that."
Hey, guess what? You still can say that you believe in God and all that. You just did it. And no one stopped you.
"This is changing us from capitalists and freedom to communists, and I'm still in shock that more people aren't waking up."She said she wanted to find a clever way to spread the message about the communist threat Obama poses, and thought to herself, "Well, maybe if we could cloak it in entertainment or comedy maybe we could reach people who won't read the Drudge Report or watch Fox News. ... If everyone would put in their two cents trying to educate our neighbors, we could show them this is really serious."
Okay, think about how stupid Victoria Jackson is. Now think about just how stupid someone would have to be to have their views changed by listening to her play the ukelele and sing a song about Obama being a communist.
"I'm very proud that I was one of the first who was brave enough to tell the truth," she said. "It's kind of like 'The Emperor's New Clothes.' It's like it takes an airhead to say, 'Look, the emperor's naked!' You know what I'm saying?"
Right.
"Obama's minions are out there trying to stop our freedom of speech," Jackson warns. "It's going to push the church underground.""We can hardly get the truth now. We can get a little bit on Fox News and go on the Internet. They want to stop us from getting the truth and that is so frightening."
Uh huh.
Politics
Comments
YAAARRGGJGJGJJGJHHGHGH!!!!!
Beyond words.
Posted by: James Sweet | July 12, 2010 12:17 PM
With Victoria Jackson, only two theories possibly explain her comments above: a) she's not serious, and teasing her audience, or; b) following her departure from SNL, she accidentally gave herself a home lobotomy with a power drill.
Vegas odds are currently split as to which option is more likely.
Posted by: CHV | July 12, 2010 12:26 PM
Aye Carumba!
Posted by: RodM | July 12, 2010 12:26 PM
Someone this stupid might forget to breath. She loves Sarah Palin. She feels xian persecution. She equates Obama's politics to communism. While ranting inanities, she worries about her loss of freedom to rant inanities. You'd have to work hard to be dumber than this lackwit.
Posted by: MikeMa | July 12, 2010 12:26 PM
Has anybody ever considered that Victoria Jackson might actually be a comic genius... the ultimate Poe? I happen to think her 'Orly Taitz' character is brilliantly portrayed, where does she find time to come up with all of this hilarity?
Posted by: Shap | July 12, 2010 12:33 PM
There are a number of churches I would personally quite like to push underground. Possibly utilising some form of giant robot to get the job done.
My wishes are as likely as her fantasies. Just sayin'.
Posted by: AegisLinnear | July 12, 2010 12:36 PM
Leno is a comedian?
Posted by: carlsonjok | July 12, 2010 12:36 PM
"It's going to push the church underground."
Heh. That's probably closer to the truth than most evangelicals would claim. You know how they claim they're ready to die for Jesus if and when the Atheists and Muslims and children who give away free lemonade take over? I don't believe it for a minute. Most probably wouldn't risk attending even an underground church. I bet an awful lot of them would publicly offer sacrifices to the Emperor, too.
Posted by: Chiroptera | July 12, 2010 12:43 PM
Schempp was decided 47 years ago, so her school must have been violating the constitution.
Posted by: Alan B. | July 12, 2010 12:47 PM
Now this is surprising, her comment here is ... stupid. Shocking, truly shocking. But, let me explain. On the one hand, if she simply prayed on her own in school, she could do so just like kids today can do so. If that's what she is talking about then she is flat out lying or (surprise, surprise) has no idea what she is talking about.
On the other hand, if she is harkening back to those wonderful times when children could be forced to pray to her invisible friend in the sky, then she is either lying or has transformed her past into a wonderful Leave it to Beaver world that didn't even exist twenty years before she was in high school let alone during the late 70s when she was. She's fifty, that means, assuming she wasn't held back (major assumption here), she graduated in 1978. Engel v. Vitale put an end to coercive school prayer when she was two.
I think, in many ways, she is just like Palin, which is why she
likesworships her so much. She is willfully ignorant and celebrates that fact. Attempts to rewrite reality to match her persona and personal agenda. And has no bloody clue what a socialist or communist even is. Add to that both of them appear to get all of their information from the echo chamber a'la Faux "News," Beck, Drudge, Limbaugh, and other right wing loonies who are concerned much more with money and ideology than they are with actual legitimate news.Posted by: dogmeat | July 12, 2010 12:51 PM
"Obama's minions are out there trying to stop our freedom of speech,"
Drats! I've been sneaking out at night to break into real American homes and redacting words like god an responsibility from their dictionaries. I reprogram their bookmarks to go to NPR instead of Fox News.
Now that I've been uncovered may I suggest Palin/Jackson twenty twelve. (not say if thats the year or their respective IQs)
Posted by: Mr Ed | July 12, 2010 1:06 PM
Posted by: Modusoperandi | July 12, 2010 1:08 PM
Mr. Ed #11,
Yes, Palin / Jackson in 2012. Stroke of genius!
Posted by: Reverend Rodney | July 12, 2010 1:26 PM
Rev,
Michele Bachmann will be striking you off her christmas card list for that remark.
Posted by: MikeMa | July 12, 2010 1:39 PM
@ #s 9 and 10: I'm in my mid-40s and at my elementary school in South Georgia I can remember having teacher-led class prayers through sixth grade.
Hell, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they were still doing it.
Posted by: Fifth Dentist | July 12, 2010 2:09 PM
In the words of a much better comic than Victoria Jackson could hope to be 'What a maroon.'
Posted by: Mike from Ottawa | July 12, 2010 2:26 PM
More fun than "The Poseidon Adventure"!!!
Posted by: Rick R | July 12, 2010 2:27 PM
>> Following the conference is the weeklong cruise, "The >>Tea Party at Sea," Sept. 19-26, with Joseph and Elizabeth >>Farah as the hosts.
>More fun than "The Poseidon Adventure"!!!
Not as intelligent as Gilligan's Island....
Posted by: criswell | July 12, 2010 2:39 PM
"or; b) following her departure from SNL, she accidentally gave herself a home lobotomy with a power drill."
Reminds me of this SNL skit:
Willie: Yeah, I know what you mean. You know, the other day, I took one o' them, uh--?
Frankie: Meat thermometers
?
Willie: Yeah! And I just shoved it into my ear, you know? As far as it could go, you know? But then I took one o' them, uh--?
Frankie: Ball-peen hammers?
Willie: Right. And just whacked it a few times right in there, you know.
Frankie: Boy, that must smart.
Willie: I know! I HATE when THAT happens.
Posted by: t_p_hamilton | July 12, 2010 2:40 PM
That's awesome. I don't think that The Onion has even come up with that one yet.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | July 12, 2010 2:45 PM
#2- It's more likely a chemically induced lobotomy or autoerotic asphyxiation
"Tea Party at Sea"- yeah! The economy has really hurt these clowns, half will probably take a deduction, claiming this is a trip to drum up business, the rest are too rich and/or too stupid to care.
Posted by: Bahrfeldt | July 12, 2010 2:55 PM
@carlsonjok, you are clearly evil - evil and rotten to the core. AND you owe me a new keyboard; I'm never going to get the popcorn kernel/Diet Coke mixture I just snarfed out of this one.
Oh please, Gilligan's Island is high freakin' culture to the Palinista crowd.
Reminds me of the mockumentary C.S.A.: Confederate States of America which is based on the premise that the South won the Civil War and imposed slavery on the entire country. Canada becomes the refuge for escaping blacks and white abolitionists and enemies of the Confederacy (including the deposed President Lincoln, who dies in 1905) and as a result becomes the popular culture leader in the 20th century (especially after Elvis Presley is exiled there for playing "race music"). The mockumentary states that the repression necessary to continue slavery in this country leads to a stagnation of culture - and uses real clips of Hee Haw and the Lawrence Welk Show to represent the entirety of C.S.A. "culture."
Posted by: CPT_Doom | July 12, 2010 2:57 PM
I'm going with a variant of b. I actually think she really is borderline mentally handicapped.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | July 12, 2010 3:00 PM
Al Franken used to work at NBC before going into comedy.
Posted by: asdf | July 12, 2010 3:12 PM
Actually, according to her biography, she went to a private Christian school, Dade Christian School. I'm fairly certain that they're still praying during school ... probably not right now, given that it's summer, but I'd wager this fall they'll have classrooms full of praying goin' on.
Posted by: dogmeat | July 12, 2010 3:14 PM
@ t_p_hamilton:
Willie: So then I took one of those...
Frankie: Linoleum knives?
Willie: Yeah. Then I just spread apart the webbing on my toes on started sawing.
Frankie: Ouch.
Willie: Then I just dumped a bunch of salt and pepper in there.
Frankie: I hate when that happens.
Posted by: Captain Mike | July 12, 2010 3:16 PM
#9: "People like me, we took our freedom for granted, because I was raised with it," Jackson, 50, said. "They even prayed in my public high school ...
Schempp was decided 47 years ago, so her school must have been violating the constitution.
--
My public high school in the Texas Panhandle cheerfully broke the law twice a day (once in homeroom, then at lunch), plus at most assemblies and other general gatherings, until at least 1972, when I graduated. After years of protest by the handful of Jews (maybe a dozen?) in the school, they finally dropped the "In Jesus' name" bit. That some of us weren't Christians OR Jews, or that even religious people might not like to have their prayers said vicariously by someone else over the intercom, or that maybe they should just obey the law because, you know, it's the law, and generally public schools should try to instill respect for the law, never seemed to occur to anyone in the administration.
They were, however, very zealous about hair and skirt lengths, and keeping your shirt tucked in.
Posted by: MS | July 12, 2010 3:32 PM
@ MS, # 27
Oh, just remembered. They had the Gideons come give us the little tiny New Testaments w/Psalms and Proverbs. That was during a school-wide assembly when I was in the 9th grade, IIRC, which would have been like 1980. It has a red cover; I actually still have the bugger.
Posted by: Fifth Dentist | July 12, 2010 4:29 PM
People make fun of her because they're afraid of her, because she's honest.
No, Victoria. People are afraid of her because she's an idiot with power. People are not afraid of you because you're just an idiot.
Posted by: Taz | July 12, 2010 5:33 PM
Posted by: Modusoperandi | July 12, 2010 5:44 PM
Didn't she once write that she never heard the word "fuck" until she worked on SNL?
Posted by: Dr. X | July 12, 2010 5:47 PM
Dr. X "Didn't she once write that she never heard the word "fuck" until she worked on SNL?"
And it wasn't until after she left that she found out it's not always preceded by "dumb".
Posted by: Modusoperandi | July 12, 2010 5:58 PM
Is this the most exposure that Victoria has gotten in the last Decade? She never was very funny but it is hilarious to watch the nutball fringe use up the last of her tenuous celebrity pushing idiotic crap.
What would REALLY be funny is if she was just playing them and all of this went to some uber-nutball crescendo and then she just said "Psych!"
Posted by: Eric Houg | July 12, 2010 5:59 PM
Eric Houg "What would REALLY be funny is if she was just playing them and all of this went to some uber-nutball crescendo and then she just said 'Psych!'"
She would then be excised from the Conservative tribe, but her words would remain, defending it. They'd join the Conservibary's*1 Apologetics section, which at this point is the only section left (since "history", "economics" and the like have all been superceded by the omnibus category of "NO!", making all other subjects conform to the ideology rather than having the ideology informed by them*2) much like the paluxy river footprints are still used by YECs on occasion.
*1. That's like a library, but filled with bile.
*2. For instance, did you know that MLK was a modern American conservative? Oh, I know what you're saying, "But, among other things, the Right used to smear him as both a negro and a Red!", but you're wrong. That version of history is, was and will always be wrong. Next step; make him Caucasian.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | July 12, 2010 6:13 PM
Note, too, that much like "nucular", "Conservibary" is, in fact, not spelled wrongly. It's not missing an "r", "Frreedom" took it*.
* Because that's what Real American® Frreedom™ is; the God-given right to take stuff that belongs to somebody else.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | July 12, 2010 6:17 PM
I thought that was commbyounism.
Posted by: asdf | July 12, 2010 6:37 PM
The Tea Party at Sea: Is it too much to hope that, instead of tea, they'll dump all the speakers and guests of honor overboard?
Posted by: dcsohl | July 12, 2010 6:38 PM
Is that what happened to Michael Jackson?
Posted by: dogmeat | July 12, 2010 6:39 PM
That's like a backwards version of the Titanic... the tragedy is that the ship doesn't sink...
Posted by: dogmeat | July 12, 2010 6:41 PM
I should add that Jackson's claim about never hearing the word "fuck" until she worked on SNL is patently ridiculous. Jackson also claims that she's read the bible "all the way through."
I simply don't believe her. This is the kind of statement hysterics make; it's the sort of casual lying they engage in without considering it dishonesty.
Life itself is play-acting for a hysteric. Nothing is deeply processed and nothing really counts. If a claim suits their purpose in the moment, because it gets them attention or because they think it makes their position or their story more dramatically compelling, then it's fine to say it, no matter how untrue the claim. They have no genuine, deeply felt convictions. It’s all stimulating, superficial, childish, seductive, dramatic enactment. They have what some people describe as an "as-if" presentational quality.
Palin and Jackson are cut from the same cloth. For example, it is utterly ridiculous to claim that with a high-risk pregnancy, leaking amniotic fluid, Sarah Palin finished a speech in Texas and then made the arduous trip from Texas to Alaska to deliver her baby in a local clinic. That's absurd. While I don't assume the pregnancy itself was a fraud, the drama of the leaking amniotic fluid is just the kind of exciting fiction a hysteric loves to invent in the moment of telling a story. The drama is everything; it makes them bigger than life.
In the Palin 2012 thread, 386sx said that Sarah Palin is like a cartoon. Exactly. The dramatic presentation is cartoonish. The forced, ill-timed, coquettish, vixen-winking for the camera, the almost random recitation of provocative but disconnected phrases, she's a hawkey mawm which is a pit bull with lipstick, a mama 'grissly' bear, she's going rogue, she's a maverick--all of it--along with her indifference to substance, is an act--a highly stylized cartoon.
The need for dramatic play acting is also behind Palin's need to identify with a biblical figure. It's part of the play-acting and increases the drama of the role she's playing.
To me, the scariest and most dangerous thing about Sarah Palin is the fact that she is play-acting. To someone like Sarah Palin, the presidency, the vice presidency and a governorship are dramatic roles, not jobs with enormously consequential responsibilities that demand serious respect for reality. For Sarah Palin these roles don't really count. That's why she could resign her governorship so easily. Serious to Sarah Palin is wearing a pair of glasses that make her look-like her idea of a librarian. Looking like she takes books and ideas seriously is all that matters. Reading, like reality, is quite boring. Seriousness is nothing but a role.
That may be fine for a professional actor or performer. Hysterics are somewhat overrepresented in the acting and performing world. It is not fine when the stakes are high and the consequence for humanity are very serious.
Posted by: Dr X | July 12, 2010 7:12 PM
I think that's not a good assumption; it may be true for many, even for the majority of, women, but calling it "absurd" goes too far.
I had a student who, in hard labor, insisted on being driven to the school, thirty minutes from the nearest hospital, to find out what she had made on a test. Unable to walk, she sent her husband in to find me, and sat in the car until my office hours started. I knew a biology professor who taught a class after her water broke: no mere leak involved. After being in an auto accident with a ten-day-overdue breech baby, I finished my day's work.
I knew a woman who would not abort her baby with known disabilities, but who also took care to leave the infant's survival "in God's hands" by making careful arrangements to avoid doing anything at all that would provide human aid to help the child to survive should it be born in distress. I have no doubt that had she been in Palin's position, she would have done exactly as Palin did.
It just isn't so that real women always follow the example of movie characters and rush off to the hospital at the first sign of labor or a water leak. And it also isn't so that they always go to the hospitals with the best, or even good, care even when they can afford it.
Posted by: JuliaL | July 12, 2010 9:12 PM
I must be tired. Before someone asks me what sort of car the overdue breech baby was driving, I'll correct the sentence above to say, "After being in an auto accident while pregnant with a ten-day-overdue breech baby, I finished my day's work."
Posted by: JuliaL | July 12, 2010 9:15 PM
Dr. X, are you using the term "hysteric" in the traditional sense, or do you mean it more in the sense of "histrionic?" I ask because I recently ended a relationship with someone who is, in all likelihood based on my own research into the area, a borderline/histrionic personality, and your analysis fits this person like a glove.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | July 12, 2010 9:42 PM
Sadie, I mean histrionic personality.
Posted by: Dr X | July 12, 2010 9:53 PM
Ship of Fools.
Posted by: wheatdogg | July 12, 2010 10:07 PM
I'd like for every American adult to have to read and consider Dr. X's post @ 40.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 12, 2010 10:23 PM
I've been told that the story is ridiculous by a physician. Sarah Palin claims she contacted her Alaska physician who told her to come home for delivery. That's bullshit. No physician would advise someone in such a condition to leave a major American city that has hospitals offering the best medical care possible, to go through the ordeal of waiting in an airport, boarding a plane for a 3400 mile, 6.5 hour flight, locked in a plane cabin, all to come to a small, rural clinic to deliver after a high-risk preganancy. Finishing a day at work, or driving 30 miles out of the way, does not cut off access to relatively quick emergency care. Getting on plane, traveling 3400 miles at 11,000 feet, potentially putting herself 2-3 hours away from emergency care, while potentially diverting the flight of jumbo jet, isn't remotely like the scenarios you've described.
The physician who labeled this scenario ridiculous offered two alternative explanations to "she lied:" 1) she wasn't really pregnant (I doubt that) or 2) she is so grossly irresponsible that it would be fair to infer murderous wishes toward her child.
Given SP's personality, I'm comfortable asserting the histrionic drama explanation, rather than faked pregnancy or murderous feelings toward her baby. It is thoroughly typical of a hysteric to promote a ridiculous drama with a fiction of this sort.
Posted by: Dr x | July 12, 2010 10:24 PM
The physician who told me that Sarah Palin's story is ridiculous is apparently not the only physician to come up with the three scenarios I described at 47. Check this guy out (the link below this paragraph). The striking similarity between his comments and what I was told by a physician friend in Chicago is uncanny.
http://ohiosurgery.blogspot.com/2010/06/palin-pregnancy.html
Speaking of consensus, I have yet to speak with any clinical psychologist who didn't arrive at the same analysis of Sarah Palin that I offered. Within minutes of watching her on video, her personality type is evident.
Posted by: Dr X | July 12, 2010 11:01 PM
Laugh if you want, but I'm kind of sad to see where Victoria Jackson has ended up. I always liked her cute, sweet dumb-blonde routine on SNL.
Until proven otherwise, I'm gonna go with her being a kind of deep-cover poe. A Donnie Brasco in drag.
She'll come in from the cold someday, and then we'll laugh and laugh....sigh
Posted by: Amenhotepstein | July 12, 2010 11:02 PM
I guess it takes all kinds. She was like every stereotype of a bimbo: blonde, childish, shallow, saccharine, and dumb as a turd. It wasn't an act. If she wasn't playing the bimbo, she was wretched, until SNL gave her nothing else, unlike Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn, who had to up the slack left by Jackson's lack of range.
Posted by: Aquaria | July 12, 2010 11:49 PM
Dr X, thanks for your thoughts on Palin. They sound completely convincing to me but I am left wondering why she would tell a lie that would lead any reasonable person to conclude either the 1) or 2) options you have above. I assume that people who love her believe a santized version of 2) where she was brave rather than murderous but how exactly does that make her seem like a good person?
Posted by: Hemulen | July 13, 2010 4:23 AM
Andrew Sullivan gets several ob/gyn's perspective on Palin's story about Trig's birth: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/palins-medica-2.html
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 13, 2010 6:55 AM
I feel like Rush Limbaugh should be the president...
When someone speaks of Limbaugh in a glowing manner, that's the sign that you're talking to a fool and you should stop.
Posted by: William George | July 13, 2010 7:20 AM
@34: Glenn Beck is always spewing off about how unions are evil, and then turns around and hypocritically praises MLK. Does he know what MLK was doing in Memphis the day he was shot?
Posted by: Ray C. | July 13, 2010 7:23 AM
@ Hemulen
It doesn't make her seem like a good person. The lie is often spontaneous, invented to create drama in the moment of telling a story, not to make the hysteric seem like a good person. It's told to create excitement and drama. I said:
Posted by: Dr X | July 13, 2010 7:39 AM
thanks Dr X, I think that I made the same mistake I always make - trying to assign reason to the actions of people who are not governed by reason. I guess I was also wondering why her adoring public don't view her story of her childbirth with horror (assuming they believe it). Is that also a consequence of her appearing bigger than life? Beyond criticisim or doubt?
Posted by: Hemulen | July 13, 2010 8:48 AM
Vicki J.--for those times when "Batshit" ain't KKKrazee eunf!
Posted by: democommie | July 13, 2010 12:06 PM
Dr. X,
So you believe that Sarah Palin is a histrionic personality who would just never, never, never have acted other than completely rationally in the matter of choosing a hospital for the birth of her high-risk child, and could never have acted without seeking and following the advice of a wise, ethical doctor? And of course all, all doctors everywhere are entirely enthical and would never, never have collaborated with a high-profile figure like Palin to deliver her child in a hospital that could not provide extraordinary care for an infant born in serious distress? Because doctors just don't act like that, ever?
And while Palin made a huge public production of refusing to abort, this histrionic woman could never possibly have deliberately chosen to drag out getting attention for her high-risk child? Such a woman would have taken great care not to do anything that might divert the course of a jumbo jet? And Palin just innocently happened to be in the neighborhood of a low-service hospital when the child suddenly became immediately due, without time to get to a better hospital?
I'm sorry, but your claim that Palin did not knowingly avoid getting immediate attention at the best hospitals, at the first signs that labor would be starting within a matter of hours, a claim based on nothing more that the unsupported assertion that women, all women, just don't ever, ever act that way, is itself absurd.
Perhaps you thought I was arguing that Palin is not a histrionic personality. I wasn't. I think your analysis is a good one. But it does not follow that such a woman would never act in the way that Palin appears to have acted, deliberately delaying care for her high-risk child until she could get into a medical atmosphere where she herself was likely to receive all the care she needed, while nothing extraordinary could be done to help the newborn.
As for your assertion that acting as I have described constitutes "murderous intentions," are you actually saying that every parent who has declined medical interventions for a child born with serious problems is "murderous"? Perhaps you are. But I think you will find that not everyone agrees with that. Many parents in such a situation are upfront about declining medical interventions. It is, however, precisely the sort of histrionic personality that Palin may well be - one who creates a story sympathetic to her while she takes no responsibility for negatives - who would behave as she did while leaking amniotic fluid. You are right that the drama is everything. And oh, what a drama the loss, or potential loss, of that child would have been, as everyone desperately tried to save it, calling in perhaps for the Air Force to come transport it somewhere for special treatment!
Your analysis of her personality is sound. Your conclusion that a pregnant woman with that personality would never, ever, try to set herself up as a grieving, "oh, the poor thing" figure who bravely bore a disabled child only to gain national attention in a frantic race to save it, or to lose it in a sort of national tragedy, is not. You appreciate the drama of a leaking-fluid story; you are overlooking the much greater drama of an almost-lost or did-lose the baby story. And no, Palin's followers would not have accepted any criticism of her behavior had the baby been lost; she would have been proclaimed a brave, suffering mother.
Posted by: JuliaL | July 13, 2010 1:13 PM
@ Julia
So you would like to add a 4th possibility to the 3 listed at #40. To reiterate: 1) a faked pregnancy, 2) a murderous wish toward her child 3) typical histrionic fabulizing to create drama around herself or 4) impulsiveness and given to acting with reckless disregard for the safety and well-being of others.
Posted by: Dr X | July 13, 2010 2:03 PM
"Jackson also claims that she's read the bible "all the way through.""
erm, why not? there really are people, myself included, who have done that--i otherwise agree with your post, however.
as for jackson herself, i'm going to say the same thing i said when i first saw her video: "it's a parody,right? it has to be--she can't really be that stupid and still dress herself."
Posted by: andrew | July 13, 2010 3:59 PM
Andrew, I would have a hard time believing that Victoria Jackson has read a single issue of TV Guide "all the way through," let alone the Bible.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | July 13, 2010 4:03 PM
Ditto Sadie @ 61. Reading the entire Bible is a tough slog and I see zero discipline out of Ms. Jackson.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 13, 2010 4:38 PM
No. Your possibility #3 works quite well. Where you and I apparently disagree is the question of whether such a personality both shares the usual moral and practical judgments about other people's welfare and also has the self-control to put others' welfare first. In addition, a good argument can be made that non-interventionist medical care is actually in the best interests of a particular child born with certain severe problems.
As far as I can tell, your argument plays out like this:
For a pregnant woman with a personality like Palin's, it's all about the drama. Therefore Palin definitely would:
1) claim that her amniotic fluid had been leaking for many hours before she went into active labor (thus resulting in some confused news references and considerable blog criticism about someone who would perform a public speech and take a long airplane flight while leaking fluid before any active labor)
But, your argument continues, Palin definitely would not:
2) knowingly risk going into active labor during a speech (potential big headlines and newscasts: "Meeting halted while audience waits breathlessly for Palin to deliver baby in a room just offstage")
3) knowingly risk diverting a jumbo jet (potential big headlines and newscasts: "Palin baby born in the air," "Jet diverted while ambulances rush to the scene of the landing")
4) knowingly risk delivering a high-risk baby in a low-service hospital (potential big headlines and newscasts: "Air Force jet rushes to transport sick Palin baby" alternative potential big headlines and newscasts: "After cruel treatment by liberal press, Palin suffers another terrible tragedy")
I just think a person with the personality you describe might be quite capable of going for events 2, 3, and 4. Even if you personally think Palin is too reasonable and self-disciplined to go for those, it is not absurd to think that she might.
Posted by: JuliaL | July 13, 2010 5:12 PM
Amenhotepstein@49:
I'd like to think so. I always sort of liked her SNL persona - blowsy, ditzy, but also kind of sweet, too. Unfortunately, there's nothing in her background to suggest that there's a subversive bone in her body.
On a related note, tomorrow night I'm going to see my favorite SNL actress in this format: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkJRYEe9nUs
Posted by: Cliff Hendroval | July 13, 2010 7:50 PM