Sarah Palin: “We Gotta Stand With Our North Korean Allies”

[mistersandman]

Sarah Palin’s choosing sides in the conflict between North and South Korea–and picking Kim Jong Il?

Couldn’t be. But there she is on Glenn Beck’s radio show saying just that: “This speaks to a bigger picture here that certainly scares me in terms of our national security policy. But obviously we’ve gotta stand with our North Korean allies.”

The host helpfully corrects her, “South Korean allies.”

The scrambled tongue moment–as that’s surely what Palin will say it was–does bring up a charge made in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book, Game Change, which portrays Palin as dangerously uninformed–a candidate for the vice presidency who didn’t understand that Korea was divided:

 

She knew nothing. She had to be taken through World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and Palin was not aware there was a difference between North and South Korea. She continued to insist that Iraq was behind 9/11; and when her son was being sent off to Iraq, she couldn’t describe who we were fighting.

Now, in fairness to Sarah Palin, she’s got a lot on her plate right now–a book tour, a reality show, and a daughter who landed in third place on Dancing with the Stars–so remembering arcane international details like which country has a lunatic dictator with nuclear weapons and which one has American troops can be difficult.

Maybe it’s time to make some notes on her palm?

--------------
Source

This is pretty much a travesty.  This is not the time for the potential GOP presidential candidate to be making these kinds of diplomatic mistakes.  Without significant political maneuvering, we could find ourselves embroiled in a nuclear conflict.

Comments

[hnsnrachel]

To be fair to Sarah Palin, her comments in the build up to that slip makes it clear that she was talking about South Korea and that it's a slip of the tongue. It's still not a great thing to say, but less a sign of not knowing her stuff and more one of those moments everyone has, even Obama with his "57 states" claim. Even though I'm a democrat, I feel sorry for Palin when she gets jumped on with so much more anger and derision than i've really ever seen heaped on any other politian than maybe Hillary Clinton once people had decided that she couldn't win the nomination even though mathematically she actually could. Palin should have thought for just a second longer before she answered the question, knowing her propensity to have words she doesn't really mean come out, but I think it's far from the news story it's being made into (as were most of the silly things Obama said). They all do it, not just her.

[hnsnrachel]

Oh, and your source has twisted Game Change. What it actually says, from the book in front of me, is:

"Palin couldn't explain why North and South Korea were separate nations." Not being able to explain why and not knowing they're different at all are completely different things, and one is much worse than the other. And, IMO, when the media twists things as important as these stories to make a point that isn't actually quite there, that's at least as dangerous as any slip of the tongue, and Palin seems to suffer more from this than anyone else. It has the opposite effect on me than the media is aiming for, just as it does on Jon Stewart. I just end up feeling bad for her.

[mistersandman]

Yikes. Really? Thank you so much for bringing that up. I feel horrible. I won't delete this post, but I certainly won't use this source again. If you listen to the recording (Dreamwidth had trouble embedding it), it really is an easy slip of the tongue. She was speaking very quickly.

[mistersandman]

I'm not sure what to feel about Sarah Palin. She gets a lot of crap for what she says, and rightfully so in most cases, but I have to wonder if a man would have to endure the sort of scrutiny and the tenor of the criticism that she receives.

[hnsnrachel]

Well, I have an unhealthy fascination with her, I will admit, but I do think there have been so many occasions where she's gotten way more crap than she either deserves (refudiate, for example, where I have to wonder why it was even made an issue), or than almost anyone else would get for the same or similar slips/claims. We seem to have a worrying wish to push female politicians back into "where they belong" when women deserve to have the same say as men do. It just happens that Palin can make it particularly easy to criticize her and doesn't necessarily help herself. But I think in many ways she has a lot in common with Obama (and in the tenor of criticism of her, like Hillary, has anyone ever claimed a male politician was "shrill" and tried to make it seem like that's a valid reason to jump on them?), and he was almost instantly embraced, where from the start, people wanted to find a way to discredit Palin. She just made it an easy and seemingly fun thing for a lot of people to do.

[hnsnrachel]

Yeah. You shouldn't feel horrible about it, it's just one of those things. We have a tendency to trust the media, even though most of us know that we shouldn't really. I think it's just that it gets hits to criticize her (and there are definitely valid reasons to do so), so changing the wording to make the point they want to make is an easy decision for them, since most people aren't likely to pick up on it when it's such a small difference in wording but huge difference in meaning. I only knew it because I had just used it as a quote in a paper on the 2008 election.