Monday, October 06, 2008

Defending the wink

Mitch, who is unrivaled in . . . well, let's just say he's unrivaled . . . has the vapors over Nick Coleman's column making fun of Sarah Palin and her winking and mugging for the national audience during the debate last Thursday.

Obviously, the wink was meant for Mitch. Or maybe Rich Lowry:

A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

"Hey, I think she just winked at me!" Rich, er, ejaculated. Right there on the couch. And Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin? Now there's a match made in heaven! Anyway, that wink clearly wasn't meant for the filthy liberal Nick Coleman! Sarah has standards you know.

It's not that Mitch is arguing that Sarah Palin is so chaste; it's just that he would rather think of her as unchaste with somebody like Mitch. And in doing so, Mitch reveals what Sarah Palin is all about, and it isn't foreign policy or economic policy experience.

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