Taylor Armerding
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Stupid Sarah is at it again.
She's the gift who keeps giving to all of us much more intelligent liberals. Just last week, Sarah Palin called on Muslims to "refudiate" the construction of a mosque at ground zero in Manhattan.
And aren't we all having fun with that. It's national news — even international. The BBC did a good five minutes on it on NPR last week. It's even better than "misunderestimate," which was unassailable proof that George W. Bush was not only too dumb to be president, but barely smart enough to tie his shoes.
Sarah's so stupid she lives in Alaska, instead of New York, Chicago, Boston or San Francisco, where the smart people live.
She is just further proof that all Republicans are stupid. Notice we didn't say "retarded" — even Rahm Emanuel has been to re-education camp, and doesn't use such an insensitive term anymore. But, we don't have to say it for you to know what we mean.
The thing is, though, there is a little wrinkle. We have to magnify her smallest mistakes. We have to get everybody talking about Stupid Sarah — it's a good thing we have the mainstream media on our side — so they won't notice some of the minor, insignificant, completely understandable little slips that our heroes, President Obama and Vice President Biden, have made.
You know, like when Obama was campaigning and confused Sioux City with Sioux Falls, and called Sunrise, Fla. "Sunshine."
Shhh! No big deal. Everybody does stuff like that. It does not for a moment undermine his prodigious intellect.
Or, remember (actually, try not to remember) when Obama claimed that his uncle had helped liberate Auschwitz. Yeah, it was the Soviets, not the Americans, who liberated Auschwitz. His uncle was at Buchenwald. But hey, who can keep those concentration camps straight anyway? Move along. Nothing to see here.
Or when he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed 10,000 people: "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed."
The actual death toll was 12. But quit nitpicking numbers. Are you trying to say 12 people wasn't a tragedy?
Or, there was that time when he was talking about how intensely he'd been campaigning.
"I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go," he said.
But, you know, you get tired and disoriented when you're on the road all the time. Remember, Sarah couldn't even explain a simple thing like "the Bush doctrine." Figuring out how many states there are is waaay more complicated than that.
Or, people don't need any reminders of when he said, "On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong."
No big deal. He was probably just recalling that iconic line, "I see dead people," from "The Sixth Sense."
We have to divert people's attention from Biden too. We can't let anybody remember when he told Katie Couric that when the markets crashed in 1929, "Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"
Don't remind them that FDR wasn't president then, nor did television exist.
Don't remind anyone, either, that after he was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Biden called him, "Justice Stewart."
We can't have anybody remembering when Obama was pushing Obamacare and declared, "The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system."
Or when he said, "Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's."
Or when he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "You're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith...," and Stephanopoulos had to remind him that he meant, "Christian faith."
Those things would only be stupid if Sarah Palin had said them.
Don't remind anyone that when he was campaigning in Portsmouth, N.H., about a year ago for government-run health care, Obama ended up arguing against it.
"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right?" he said. "It's the post office that's always having problems."
Don't remind anyone about how when former British prime minister Gordon Brown visited Obama early in his presidency, Brown gave his counterpart a pen holder carved from the timbers of HMS Gannett, a sister ship of HMS Resolute; the commissioning certificate of HMS Resolute; and a seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill. And how, in return, Obama gave Brown 25 DVDs that don't work in Great Britain.
The thing is, you could be the smartest, most articulate person in the world, and if people were following you around, recording every word you said outside of your bedroom and bathroom, they could easily find plenty of stuff to make you look stupid.
But we can't let the people realize that. We have to make them think only Republicans are stupid.
Just keep repeating, "Stupid Sarah, Stupid Sarah ..."
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Taylor Armerding, an Ipswich resident, is associate editorial page editor of The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover. He may be reached at 978-946-2213 or at tarmerding@eagletribune.com.
