Sarah Palin defends embarrassing North Korea gaffe by revising history, attacking Obama, and disrespecting America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Facing widespread ridicule (justifiable, given her history of ignorance, even if the what she said was understandable in context) over her North Korea gaffe, Sarah Palin has taken to Facebook -- it's either that or Fox News, the two places she can spin her lies and hurl her venom without being challenged -- to defend herself.

And she does that by revising history, claiming that she "corrected [herself] seconds after [her] slip-of-the-tongue" (she didn't) and attacking President Obama over his gaffes, as if somehow making fun of him lets her off the hook, as if he isn't a deep and serious thinker, which she most certainly is not.

Everyone makes mistakes. I said that in my post on Palin's gaffe. But that's not the issue. The issue is that Palin has proven to be, if I may be kind, an ignoramus. Time and time again, I wrote, what she reveals is that she doesn't think, let alone think seriously, about anything other than the marketing of the Palin brand. And her public utterances are nothing more than a string of shallow, self-aggrandizing talking points and ignorant assertions. She doesn't just make gaffes, she speaks without thinking, and without ever having thought about what she's talking about. She's a mouth without a brain, and she can't hide that with all the lipstick in the world.

Responding to her Facebook post, Andrew Sullivan hit the bull's-eye, as he usually does with Palin:

This may be a smart-ass retort; it may be useful inoculation against a potentially damaging gaffe; it may even be a well-researched blog-post, but what it isn't is anything approaching the kind of character we expect in a president. A simple respect for the office she seeks would not reflect itself in these increasingly callow, sarcastic, cheap jibes at a sitting president. But sadly, like so many now purporting to represent conservatism, there is, behind the faux awe before the constitution, a contempt for the restraint and dignity a polity's institutions require from its leaders.

There is no maturity here; no self-reflection; no capacity even to think how to appeal to the half of Americans who are already so appalled by her trashy behavior and cheap publicity stunts. There is a meanness, a disrespect, a vicious partisanship that, if allowed to gain more power, would split this country more deeply and more rancorously than at any time in recent years. And that's saying something.

America, simply, cannot afford Sarah Palin. Behind the smirky smile, behind the glittering winks, behind the phony all-American facade lurks an ugliness that is rotten to the core. She may try to keep it hidden and she may not even acknowledge its existence, but she just can't hide it. It's who she is.