Posted by Tania Kindersley.
In Hong Kong for a speech, Sarah Palin matched the verbose Colonel Gaddafi in length if not eclecticism. But she did have her own controversies to offer. It was not out of control banks or excessively impenetrable derivatives or even original sin (pace Rowan Williams) that caused the economic meltdown: it was The Government. ‘The Government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who could not afford them.’ Damn right. There was Dick Cheney, at his secret location, on the blower to recalcitrant mortgage lenders saying: do subprime or else. ‘The marketplace,’ continued the former governor of Alaska, ‘didn’t fail, it became exactly as common sense would expect it to.’ Parse that, you lower 48 rubes.
Despite insisting that her talk be closed to the press, Palin did not account for the power of Twitter. She was live-tweeted by a character called cellomonkey. Sample lines: ‘Nukular!!!’; ‘wow, palin is lashing out against china "we hope for china to rise responsibly"’; ‘palin attributes asian economic prosperity to american commitment to security in the region’; slightly inexplicably ‘palin has found herself a spot on hu jintao’s to do list’; and, magnificently, ‘the guy next to me is reading a macro strategy report’.
When told of the length of the speech, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said: ‘Ninety minutes, my God, that’s half a Castro.’
I wonder that she's let out alone without supervision... and I'm not sure the lady, with her take on world geography, is quite the person to be announcing about the world economy in China. Goodness knows where she believes she is... or where her no-doubt-gleeful advisors told her where she is...
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