Sarah Palin’s tough-girl image a tad unsettling

By Peter Gelzinis
Friday, September 12, 2008

Sarah Strangelove.

She may not be too clear on the Bush doctrine, but the gal who can gut a moose and shoot wolves from a chopper knows that “Ya just can’t blink, Charlie,” not when you’re looking out across the Bering Strait with your finger on the nuclear trigger.

About five minutes into her maiden seance with ABC’s Charlie Gibson last night, I found myself growing nervously nostalgic for Sarah Barracuda. A week ago, she was “just your average hockey mom” from a one-horse town in the Klondike.

Now she’s making these threatening chirping noises about field-dressing Vladimir Putin if he doesn’t shape up. “We gotta keep an eye on Russia, Charlie.” You betcha, sweetheart.

Even those folks who’ve been smitten with John McCain’s girl from the north country appeared a bit freaked out by her Strangelovian views on bringing the cold war back, one more time with feeling.

This post from one jittery blogger: “The interviewer led you down that path, Palin . . . let’s avoid these answers. No leader should get onto national TV and speak about a war with Russia. Russia has the nuclear button just like we do. They are no Iraq or Iran or some weak country.

“By the time your nuclear (war)heads hit their mainland, their nuclear missiles will be 15 minutes away from our country. May God give wisdom to whoever the next president is, and preserve us from self-inflicted harm.”

I always had the feeling that the kind of change John McCain’s May/December arrangement was veering toward was a trip back to the future. But I didn’t think it would really go all the way back to those dark days of mutually assured destruction and diving under the school desks. What’s next . . . real-estate sharks pushing bomb-shelter condos?

And all of this gloom and doom delivered with a wink, smile and voice straight out of “Fargo,” on the one day that people paused to recall a nightmare and dare to imagine a better world.

For a moment yesterday, we caught a glimpse of what happens when life trumps politics. Gone was the partisan bile. Suddenly, it wasn’t about a Democrat and a Republican shouting from opposite ends of the red-blue divide.

There was just Barack Obama and John McCain, standing side by side in silence at the hallowed spot in lower Manhattan where nearly 3,000 of their fellow Americans perished at the start of a workday seven years ago.

Unfortunately, such moments don’t last long. Less than 90 minutes after Barack Obama, John McCain, his wife, Cindy and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the quarter-mile trek up the ramp from wound in the heart of New York City, ABC News issued the following blurb across the Internet ether.

“EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY.”

It’s strange that Sarah seemed ambushed by the Bush doctrine question, considering she’s been in a kind of nonstop, lockdown tutorial with a team of George Bush’s recycled policy wonks.

Maybe they just tried to cram too much history, too many facts and figures and funny-sounding names into this hockey mom’s pretty noggin.

The other day I listened as an irate reader gave me his quick-and-dirty analysis of the world. “The world is an evil, dangerous place,” he said. “And nobody gives a (expletive, expletive) about hope. What the (expletive) is hope gonna do? Lemme tell ya something, this is a red country. And hope just doesn’t cut it here. Apparently, in a world like this, we don’t need wisdom. We need anger. Most of all, we need an angry frontier woman who rides onto the international stage with a shotgun slung over her shoulder, eyes that won’t blink and a finger poised on the trigger of annihilation. I feel safer already . . .
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1118553

unaware of the consequences of an unwise decision. "Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread."

Great talent you got there. :thumbsup:

The consequences of this election are so important that many of us may be showing communication skills beyond our norms.

It's a disaster that she is not being forced into more spontaneous interviews.

is the same spirit that got black people lynched not too long ago. :scared:

ribbons. More than half of Palin's sentences were cut mid-stream.

WHY do her this favor?

a positive quality she possessed! "She won't be afraid to make the tough decisions!!" :scared: