(1)

To recycle the old saw, some people are born bimbos, some achieve bimbohood and some have bimbohood thrust upon them. And then there’s our Sarah, who effortlessly manages to belong to all three categories at the same time.

There’s simply no avoiding it, though I have, in fact, scrupulously avoided using this word for the longest time (in my own defense, I have no idea why; just a simple oversight, actually; taking a leaf from the McCain-Palin book, I’m dressing up my error as high-minded scruple).

Just for fun, I looked up the dictionary definition of “bimbo”. Dictionary.com offers up “a foolish, stupid, or inept person”; the American Heritage Dictionary has it as “a woman regarded as vacuous”; WordNet surprised me with “a young woman indulged by rich and powerful older men”.

That last one is surely the etymological version of Biblical prophecy? It was foreshadowed in the ancient texts scratched out on flattened bark and chiseled on stone by celibate scholars working for no pay by candlelight, that a young woman would be royally indulged by a rich and powerful and really old man, all the way to a vice-presidential nomination, and she would be known unto us as a bimbo.

Proofs of bimbohood, of course, are legion at this point. Palin is a bimbo, and Gibson and Couric are her prophets.

Taking just the latest ones as our text, let’s start with the Supreme Court proof:

The Palin aide, after first noting how “infuriating” it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.

There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.

That’s evidently just sloppy writing by Politico. She wasn’t asked to discuss major Supreme Court decisions, just to name a few. And she couldn’t even name Brown vs. Board of Education or Bush vs. Gore. Or the Miranda ruling. Anyone who’s ever watched TV for entertainment should be able to come up with Miranda, no matter how vacuous or foolish or stupid or inept they are.

Next up: gotcha journalism by amateurs. When graduate student Michael Rovito asked Palin in Philly on Saturday night whether U.S. forces should be prepared to cross the Afghan border into Pakistan, Palin responded by contradicting McCain’s stated position and trotting out Obama’s position instead: “If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should.”

This is a position that McCain has repeatedly mocked. Just in Friday night’s debate, McCain had castigated Obama for making such statements: “You don’t say that out loud.”

So how come Palin made the same statement the very next day? I see only four possibilities here. Did Palin not watch the debate (that is to say she was watching all the debates at the time; see below), or did she not understand a word of what she heard, or did she not remember a word of what she understood? Or is it just that her IQ is significantly lower than her age?

And finally, the newspaper proof:

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where it’s kind of suggested, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?” Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.”

How impressive is that? She reads all the ruddy newspapers! People have mocked her for being unable to name a single one, but cut her some slack, folks. If you read all the newspapers, could you name them? Would you even know where to start? No, you too would be reduced to implying that Alaska is part of Washington, D.C. (which is why there’s Alaska and then there’s the rest of Washington, D.C.). She was flustered, see? Because Couric had just totally tricked her into revealing that she’s actually one big colossal nerd.

Like I said, impressive. I don’t know what it took for her to be crowned Miss Wasilla in her youth, but that response alone is enough for me to crown her The Unquestioned Queen Of Bimbos, Throughout The Universe And For All Time.

(On a point of critical appreciation, she totally won my heart by how she took that gotcha question, and in that last three-sentence riff, expanded it from a personal attack on her vacuousness to an unpardonable insult to the great state of Alaska.)

At this point, my Swami Sarabeth personality insists on emerging briefly, with this prediction. Either in tomorrow’s debate or sometime in the next week, Sarah Palin will defend herself against charges of vacuousness by saying: “My opponents and critics have called me vacuous, and of course I’m not vacuous at all. Everyone knows that nature abhors a vacuous, and as you can see (strikes classic bimbo pose here, left hand on hip, right hand behind head, both elbows sticking out jauntily), nature doesn’t abhor me at all (optional ass-wiggle). Not only that, nature doesn’t abhor Alaska or the rest of the Grand Canyon.”

Sadly, my crystal ball does not show me whether this will be greeted by deafening applause.

(2)

This gem, on global warming, was left on the cutting room floor, and is offered without comment:

Couric: What’s your position on global warming? Do you believe it’s man-made or not?

Palin: Well, we’re the only Arctic state, of course, Alaska. So we feel the impacts more than any other state, up there with the changes in climates. And certainly, it is apparent. We have erosion issues. And we have melting sea ice, of course. So, what I’ve done up there is form a sub-cabinet to focus solely on climate change. Understanding that it is real. And …

Couric: Is it man-made, though in your view?

Palin: You know there are – there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, these impacts. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate. Because the world’s weather patterns are cyclical. And over history we have seen change there. But kind of doesn’t matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is: it’s real; we need to do something about it.