Brutally Honest

Palin movie does well on opening day... unless you read The Atlantic

We'll come back to The Atlantic but first, to Yahoo's Associated Content:

Just on the face of it, it would seem to have been the biggest risk in marketing history to roll out a documentary about a politician with less than stellar poll numbers on the same night that the last Harry Potter movie was scheduled to be released.

But, by all accounts, "The Undefeated," the Sarah Palin biop, which was placed in limited release in ten screens across the country, did surprisingly well.

According to the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the theater in Grapevine, Texas, a suburb near the Dallas/Fort Worth area, at least one Friday evening showing actually sold out.

Gateway Pundit reports similar sellout or near sell out crowds seeing "The Undefeated" in Georgia, Orange Country, California, Houston, Orlando, and other markets.

"The Undefeated" was heavily marketed in social media, with regular updates on Twitter and Facebook. The below the radar strategy seems to have paid off, at least for the first night. The question arises, however, has the movie developed enough word of mouth buzz to develop legs, as film marketers call it, so that audiences continue to show up?

Time will bring the telling. 

Speaking of telling, this related piece by The Atlantic, filled with typical liberal snarkiness, is pretty telling in and of itself:

Sarah Palin Movie Debuts to Empty Theater in Orange County

When the clock struck 12:01 am today, AMC theaters in select cities were permitted to start showing "The Undefeated," a feature length documentary about Sarah Palin. As it happens, I'm visiting my parents in Orange County, Calif., home to one of just 10 theaters where the film is being rolled out. Watching it didn't interest me so much as going to interview folks who decided to attend. I figured I'd meet some nice people, perhaps run into someone who knows my grandparents, press five or six Palin fans on why they like her, and convey their worldview. It's my experience that the grassroots doesn't fit the caricature of its champions or its detractors.

In the parking lot of The Block, an outdoor mall in the City of Orange, I worried that arriving 45 minutes early was cutting it too close: it took 20 minutes to find parking, and folks were lining up scores deep outside the theater box office. Our airport is named after John Wayne. Ronald Reagan remains a hero to many. Even Richard Nixon's association with this place is treated as a point of pride. When I was growing up here, a local hotel broadcast the Rush Limbaugh program everyday in its restaurant. I should've known there'd be a big turnout, I thought.

As I approached, however, I realized that most people present were dressed in costume. The crowd was either showing ironic solidarity with Christine O'Donnell, the tea party candidate who is not a witch, or else everyone was there to see the Harry Potter movie playing on a majority of the theater's 30 screens. Without any way of telling Palin moviegoers from Potter fans dressed up like muggles, I'd have to pay, go to the assigned theater, and look for interviewees.

I hurried through the teenage hordes, bypassed a concession stand that sold 1,020 calories of soda for $5.25, and entered theater number 30, hoping I'd have ample time before the previews to talk to some people. But inside, the theater was empty. I sat there alone for 20 minutes, at which point an usher stuck his head in the door, gave me a quizzical smile, and said, "How come you're not watching Harry Potter?" Then he left me by myself again, and without any good answer.

The Atlantic chooses to attend a midnight showing of the movie and report breathlessly that behold, no one showed up. 

Which piece do you think will get an airing on regular media outlets later today?  The former or the latter?

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Sarah Palin: "I do believe that I can win"

An interesting piece up at Newsweek:

'I believe that I can win a national election,' Sarah Palin declared one recent evening, sitting in the private dining room of a hotel in rural Iowa. The occasion for her visit to quintessential small-town America was a gathering of the faithful that would have instantaneously erupted into a fervent campaign rally had she but given the word. Instead, it had been another day on the non–campaign trail, this one capped by a sweet victory: she had just attended the premiere of a glowingly positive documentary about her titled The Undefeated.

“The people of America are desperate for positive change, and deserving of positive change, to get us off of this wrong track,” she told me during a conversation that lasted late into the night and, inevitably, kept returning to the subject that has titillated the media and spooked Republican presidential contenders for months: her political intentions. “I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it has to be me, or it can only be me, to turn things around,” she said. “But I do believe that I can win.”

...

Family has been elemental to Palin’s national political identity from the moment she was introduced as John McCain’s running mate in 2008, accompanied by her outdoorsman husband, Todd, and four of their five children, including their youngest, Trig, who’d been born four months earlier with Down syndrome. The press’s fascination with this picturesque brood quickly turned so darkly speculative that candidate Barack Obama threatened to fire anyone in his campaign found participating in the conjectures.

Yet Palin, who is 47, now hinted that her family would not try to dissuade her from entering the race. “My kids know that life isn’t supposed to be easy, and it’s certainly not fair,” she said. “And they know that, even on their end, they have to make some sacrifices for the greater good.”

Track, the eldest son, who was deployed in Iraq during the 2008 campaign, is now married and running the family’s commercial fishing business in Alaska, living quietly out of the public eye. Willow, who turned 17 last week, seems amenable (“As long as her truck’s running, she’s fine,” Palin said), and Piper, who is 10, is a seasoned campaigner. Bristol’s all in. That leaves Todd, who sat in on part of the interview. “Do I want her to run?” he said. “It’s up to her. I mean, we’ll discuss it. But she’s definitely qualified to run this country. And she’s got a fire in the belly to serve.”

The whole thing is worth a gander and I'll officially go on record stating I want her to run.

It'll make for an interesting race... and I'm completely confident that she'd do much better... much, much better, than the current occupant.

Run Sarah, run.

Sarah Palin: "There are important lessons we can learn from all of this"

Sounds to me like she's on the verge of an announcement:

First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action, bringing everyone to the table, and with a servant's heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power. It means bucking the status quo, fighting the corrupt powers that be, serving the common good, and leaving the country better than you found it. Most of us don’t see a lot of that real leadership in D.C., and it’s profoundly disappointing.

But let me tell you where real hope lies. It’s not the hopey-changey stuff we heard about in 2008. Real hope comes from realizing how God has blessed our exceptional nation, and then doing something about it. We have been blessed with natural resources, hardworking entrepreneurs, and a Constitution that preserves the greatest form of government ever devised by man. If we develop those natural resources, allow our entrepreneurs to keep and invest more of what they earn, and adhere to the time-tested truths of our Constitution, we will prosper and endure.

Read the whole thing... I'm sure Obama and his people are doing so and stroking out.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"My Name is Morgan Freeberg and I'm a Sarah Palin Fan"

My name is Morgan K. Freeberg and I’m a blogger.

Hi, Morgan!

Also — as of today — I am going back to being a Sarah Palin fan. Today concludes an experiment I have been doing. More on that below.

I’m the founder, CEO, chief fry cook & bottle-washer at House of Eratosthenes, colloquially known as The Blog That Nobody Reads. There is a reason why we have named ourselves after a guy who lived twenty-two centuries ago; it has to do with a measurement produced by that ancient, accurately stating the circumference of the Earth.

Now, you know how liberal college professors like to say something like “we don’t teach ‘em what to think here, we teach ‘em how to think?” And then it turns out to be a load of crap, of course. Well, our name is all about borrowing a page from that book. See, to live two centuries before Christ and conduct such an exercise without the benefit of space ships or satellites or really long tape measures or really tall ladders, you can’t be thinking just any ol’ way.

But if you think the right way, you can accomplish some amazing, mind-boggling things. Even without the space ships, satellites, tape measures or ladders.

Today, we live with some powerful influences that dissuade us from thinking in this productive way; and, because of this, meaningful achievements are beyond our reach as a society, beyond even our vision of what might be possible, that ought to be well within our grasp. I believe in this matter regarding the former Governor of Alaska, our situation is roughly akin to a man struggling to recover a grasp on the edge of a cliff as he dangles over an abyss, rejecting the efforts of one rescuer, frantically searching for some other who has yet to materialize. It’s as if he’s saying “no, I don’t want some pretty woman rescuing me, I’d rather fall.”

Many’s the time I’ve heard a Palin hater say “I don’t have a better candidate in mind, but I’m hoping one will emerge.”

Their thinking is that she will screw this whole thing up. Nominate Palin, they say, and it’s four more years of Obama — guaranteed. This is because she’s some kind of a “lightweight.” Well, how do we know she’s a lightweight? And here is where the thinking falls apart; this is where it is shown to be a different brand of thinking, than that which can figure out the size of the Earth two centuries BC. We know she’s a lightweight because…we just do. Because that’s what everybody says. Bandwagon fallacy all the way down the line. Also: These stories just keep coming out over and over again. Bad decisions that she made. Television interviews handled ineptly. Things she doesn’t know about world history.

It’s only when you

1) Dig down into the details of the stories as they come out, and
2) Activate and maintain your long-term memory, remembering what really happened

…that you can make the determination: Just about everything that suggests it’s beyond Sarah Palin’s ability to handle something, is a crock, or is based on something that is a crock. I say “just about” because, like anybody else, Palin does have some fails. However, I have noticed a great majority of these fails have occurred within those very few weeks that she was a VP candidate, within a campaign that was not handled by her. In fact, that campaign was handled by people who weren’t fond of her. See, again: details. If they change the situation, then it’s worth knowing what they are.

People who hate Sarah Palin, or think she’s likely to fail, don’t know her. They’re ignorant. I don’t mean that as an insult, I mean it as a neutral observation of fact. I ask them if they’ve read any of her books, which are not priced out of the market; in this Age of Amazon, they are readily available and can be had for a song. The answer always comes back toward the negative, and furthermore, they haven’t taken the opportunity to hear her side of the story about anything. I quote them things from her books, and for this, they make fun of me. That’s their response to everything, to make fun. And at that point, I have to ask: Does it even matter what facts they do have & don’t have, if they think like lunatics?

We live in a universe that is logical, which means you can measure the size of planets by peeking into water wells. It is a truly amazing universe. But it doesn’t permit you to know anything worth knowing, if you think in a diseased way with the “I laugh at it, it therefore becomes untrue” technique. In this universe, you have to think like a responsible grown-up before you can know anything.

In keeping with that, though, one week ago I recognized that I need to live up to my own hype. That meant conducting some honest experiments, evaluating the strength of positions I didn’t find palatable, and it also meant being receptive to the outcome, whatever it might be. The Palin haters have all these arguments to present about her various deficiencies that have to do with — that rely completely upon — third parties. These people won’t approve of you if you like Palin. Those people over there will be convinced you’re as stupid as she is, if you support her. She will lose the election. If she is nominated no one will show up to vote and Obama will get a second term.

Nobody seems to be able to find something wrong with her, it seems, without speaking out in proxy for somebody else.

So I decided to put it to a test. Does liking Palin have an effect on what others think? Can I win some new friends, maybe, by renouncing Palin and making it known that I am open to another candidate?

Therefore, I put up a post last weekend declaring that I am no longer a Palin fan. I linked to it on Facebook, so that people there would know I am now a reasonable, intellectual, respectable human being who doesn’t like Sarah Palin. On June 4 I joined the swelled ranks of people who don’t have the slightest clue who the nominee should be, but gosh darn it it can’t be her! Judging by how much talking they do and how loud they are, it seems to be a big group.

Also, I put together a list of requirements of what we are looking for, for this candidate who is more acceptable than the Governor. I came up with twenty-five. It ended up being a very silly list, because I based it on these various complaints I’ve been hearing that supposedly make her unacceptable. Requirement Number One is that the “good candidate” should be a man, or a woman who is very ugly. Obviously, pretty women, for some reason that I have yet to understand, are absolutely unacceptable.

Today ends the experiment. I am ready to annonce the results.

Number of new friends: ZERO.

Number of honest compliments I have received, for seeing the light that Palin is unacceptable: ZERO.

Number of new additions that have been recommended for my silly list of candidate requirements: ZERO.

Number of corrections I have received for silly requirements on my silly list that shouldn’t be there: ZERO.

Number of likes on my Facebook posting: ONE…not from a Palin hater, but from a Palin fan, who I suspect saw the irony of what I was doing. So I guess that wouldn’t count.

Number of friends I expect to lose by liking Sarah Palin again: ZERO. Hey, I try to think like Eratosthenes, but I’m still human. We all like to see the world through rose-colored glasses.

Conclusion to my experiment? I wouldn’t be able to avoid this even if I wanted to: Palin haters don’t care about the Republicans nominating a “better candidate” who would “stand a better chance” or who might be missing “all this baggage.” They don’t care about any of that; it’s all a smoke screen. They don’t have any new ideas to offer here and they won’t have any.

They are a bunch of bitter scolds. Nothing more. They just like to bitch and complain. Probably because of what Palin reminds us of, every time we think about her. They find all that stuff unpleasing so they make fun of it, in hopes that it goes away. It is no more complicated than that.

I suspected that much before. Now that I have taken my one-week sabbatical from being a Palin fan, I know for sure.

I know for sure because I thought like Eratosthenes. Now I will grant you that this it outside of my field of expertise; a professional software engineer in Sacramento really doesn’t have any business trying to figure out who does & doesn’t have a chance in a presidential election. But then again, a library administrator in Alexandria doesn’t have any business figuring out the size of the Earth.

I don’t perceive things to form opinions that will win me friends. No responsible thinking adult does; not with the questions that really matter. It’s got to do with how you think when you gamble the first of your million dollars, versus how you do your thinking as you gamble with your last dollar. Well, even if you do like to think with bandwagon fallacy, like you have a million bets you can afford to lose, and form your inferences to make friends — guess what? You can’t make friends this way. I’m not speculating on this. I gave it a more than fair try. Someone get the word to the Republican delegates?

My name is Morgan K. Freeberg and I’m a Palin fan.

And yes, as a matter of fact, I am serious, and I do know what I’m doing. I know that much very well, thank you. I made sure.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes, Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Sarah Palin: "File this under 'WTF'"

The woman is giving it to Obama time and time again.  She's a one person opposition party:

As Governor I fought the Obama Administration’s plans to cut funds for missile defense in Alaska. So imagine how appalled and surprised I was to read this article by former Clinton CIA Director James Woolsey, appropriately titled “Giving Away the Farm,” concerning President Obama’s latest bizarre actions relating to missile defense. 

President Obama wants to give Russia our missile defense secrets because he believes that we can buy their friendship and cooperation with this taxpayer-funded gift.  But giving military secrets and technologies to a rival or competitor like Russia is just plain dumb.  You can’t buy off Russia.  And giving them advanced military technology will not create stability.  What happens if Russia gives this technology (or sells it!) to other countries like Iran or China?   After all, as Woolsey points out, Russia helped Iran with its missile and nuclear programs. Or what happens if an even more hardline leader comes to power in the Kremlin?  

We tried buying off the Kremlin with technologies in the 1970s.  That policy was a component of “detente,” and the hope was that if we would share our technologies with them, they would become more peaceful.  Things, of course, didn’t work out that way.  The Kremlin took western technologies and embarked on a massive military building program. History teaches that peace comes from American military strength.  And a central component of that has always been technological superiority.  Why would President Obama even dream of giving this away?

...

Why is it that President Obama seems to work so hard to give things to our enemies, while at the same time asking friends and allies like Israel to make sacrifices? 

During these tough economic times when we are facing massive deficits and a competitive global economy, does President Obama really want to give away technologies that the American taxpayer paid lots of money to develop?  Giving away our missile defense secrets won’t make us safer.  What it will do is create a situation where we are facing an arms race with ourselves. Russia gets access to our technologies, and we are forced to spend even more money because of the need to stay ahead. Does this make sense to you? Me neither. File this under “WTF.” 

- Sarah Palin

Some might say she's not Presidential material and I believe we'll be debating that fully soon enough but I'm telling you it's hard to find anybody that's bopping Obama upside his big-eared head as hard and as often as she is.

More power to her.  Quite literally.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Sarah Palin's bus tour: "A rolling menace"

Thankfully, journalists are out there sounding the alarm:

Sarah Palin’s bus is plastered with a mock-up of the U.S. Constitution. But her entourage — both the three-vehicle motorcade that includes the bus and the smaller, two-SUV version she uses for smaller events — hasn’t been very respectful of traffic laws.

They speed. They run red lights and stop signs. They make last-second lane changes to get off the highway, sometimes without signaling.

So do the reporters following them.

Journalists in the caravan trailing her “One Nation” tour bus describe the experience as harrowing, a rolling menace careening up the East Coast in hot pursuit of the former Alaska governor who declined to provide any advance itinerary of her tour over six days on the road.

As they left the clambake she attended Thursday in New Hampshire, Palin’s two-SUV caravan traveled at 52 miles per hour in a 35 mph zone as it peeled away from the hosts’ neighborhood. Both cars blew through a stop sign about a mile later. They did 70 mph in a 55 mph zone on I-95 — and then, after they got off, without signaling, flew right past a flashing sign informing them they were going 45 mph in a 35 mph zone.

And that was after they had already stormed the major cities — and just missed driving through a tornado on the road into Boston.

Yet more substantive reasons to dismiss Sarah Palin.  She's a rolling menace and presumably, women and children and minorities are her likeliest victims.

She must be stopped and thank God the media are there to do their part.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Disagreeing with The Anchoress (UPDATED)

It's rare for me to do so, in fact I can't recall offhand when I've last done so, but I surely do here:

You know what? I don’t like game-players, I just don’t. I especially don’t like them in politics, which is why I like so few politicians, any more.

And it seems to me that Sarah Palin is going out of her way to play a game, here, and I can’t say I’m admiring it. I know some do. I know some feel that the press has treated Palin very badly, and so she’s entitled to treat them badly, too.

...

Palin is ducking and dodging them, not telling them where she’s going; she’s playing cat-and-mouse. And some people like it, admire it; they’re diverted by it.

Well…Sorry…I’m not. I think what she’s doing now seems childish and spiteful, and frankly if I want to vote for childishness and spitefulness in 2012, I can vote for Barack Obama.

Palin is a Christian, and part of our Christian adventure — and it is admittedly a hard part of it, sometimes — is to respect the inherent human dignity in other people, even if (and here’s where the rubber meets the road for the Christian) those same people are incapable of respecting the inherent dignity in you. To make buffoons of the press by walking out the front door while they’re waiting out the back is one thing — that can, once in a while, even seem like a merry, Beatlesque trick — to put reporters in a position where they’re not sure where they’re heading, when they have equipment and travel considerations as well, becomes a bit more risky. Lugging equipment into unplanned territory can invite real problems and even be dangerous. Palin — Chris Matthews’ opinion to the contrary — is not stupid. She is savvy enough to know all of this. And she is Christian enough to know that playing fast-and-lose with people, especially when it’s just to get a little of your own, back, is a step too far. And it’s small.

Wrong.  Plainly wrong.

Palin is taking control of the meme as best she can.  Palin is turning the tables on these media pimps and whores who are interested in doing nothing more than finding that which they can use as a bludgeon.  Palin is attempting to show that they don't wield the control they think they wield.

More power to her.  She's manipulating the manipulators... and I think it's grand... moreso, I think it proves that she's no where near as stupid as the manipulators would like us to think she is.

UPDATE: The Anchoress in email reminded me of the last time we disagreed... it was a small, tiny little dustup over communion... but thankfully, that ended well.

Sarah Palin: Biker Babe

This taken at the Rolling Thunder Memorial Day ride in our nation's capital:

More pics at the link... more fodder for the Palin haters.

Stand by for Palin Derangement.

"Mr. Bailey has an axe to grind and abandoned truth in his book"

We're beginning to find out more as to Frank Bailey's "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin" and surprise, there are serious questions as to the veracity of much contained therein:

In their first comments about the book since several media outlets obtained a leaked manuscript in February, two sources close to Palin disputed several of the anecdotes in the book, including his claims of illegal coordination with the Republican Governors Association and that he has seen Palin’s deposition in the so-called “Troopergate” case, which is sealed. Palin’s camp also insists that some of the Palin emails printed in the manuscript are framed to distort events — for example, the emails Bailey includes to show the former Alaska governor’s reaction to her oldest daughter’s pregnancy are about rumors that circulated before Bristol actually became pregnant.

Palin aides also pointed to previous ethics charges against Bailey during his service to the ex-governor’s administration, as well as an ongoing investigation by the state attorney general’s office over the emails Bailey included in the book. Additionally, SarahPAC spokesman Tim Crawford highlighted Bailey’s book cover, which is a modified image. The original photo was of Palin standing next to other governors at an RGA event, not next to Bailey.

“Frank Bailey was the only member of the Palin administration to be found to have acted unethically – twice,” Crawford said. “He is currently under investigation again by the state attorney general. Then, as the administrator of certain email accounts, he acted unethically by appropriating account information he was entrusted to protect.”

“Gov. Palin suspended Bailey and refused to hire Bailey when he sought a position on her vice presidential campaign staff and later with SarahPAC. Mr. Bailey has an axe to grind and abandoned truth in his book. The cover of the book tells this story, two completely different photos twisted and Photoshopped to create a fraudulent image. The book belongs on the fiction shelves.”

Along with so much that is written about the woman by the media. 

The Palin hatred is severe and is sure to increase should she throw her hat into the Presidential ring for 2012.  And that hat may very well be on the verge of being tossed if these reports are any indication:

Shortly after Republicans swept last November to a historic victory in which Sarah Palin was credited with playing a central role, the former Alaska governor pulled aside her close aide, Rebecca Mansour, to discuss a hush-hush assignment: Reach out to conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon with a request. Ask him if he would make a series of videos extolling Palin's governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was this abdication, Palin knew, that had made her damaged goods in the eyes of some Republicans who once were eager to get behind her potential 2012 presidential campaign.

The response was more positive than Palin could have hoped for. He'd make a feature-length movie, Bannon told Mansour, and he insisted upon taking complete control and financing it himself -- to the tune of $1 million.

The fruits of that initial conversation are now complete. The result is a two-hour-long, sweeping epic, a rough cut of which Bannon screened privately for Sarah and Todd Palin last Wednesday in Arizona, where Alaska's most famous couple has been rumored to have purchased a new home. When it premieres in Iowa next month, the film is poised to serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin's prospective presidential campaign -- an unconventional reintroduction to the nation that she and her political team have spent months eagerly anticipating, even as Beltway Republicans have largely concluded that she won't run.

We'll learn soon enough.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"Sarah Palin doesn’t use teleprompters, she doesn’t use Orwellian double-speak"

That from The Anchoress' coverage of Sarah's recent speech in Wisconsin:

I finally got to watch the video of Sarah Palin’s speech, which is up in two parts at Hillbuzz.

Gotta say it — Sarah Palin doesn’t use teleprompters, she doesn’t use Orwellian double-speak that is so preposterous even Jon Stewart has to call it out; she is not contemptuous of her audience, as the president increasingly appears to be, she has enough wit to grab a phrase and have fun with it, (“so yeah, we’re here, we’re clear, get used to it!“) and, most importantly, the former Governor of Alaska is coherent.

The only thing coherent about Obama, lately, is how obviously he does not care about the reality of the lives of ordinary Americans — whether they have jobs, whether they can afford to fill up their gas-tanks, whether inflation is going to buckle their knees, whether they want to get off “the oil nipple” or not, whether they approve of us giving money to other countries, so we can buy the oil they’re drilling.

Finish with her.  Pass it on.  Read the whole thing while understanding that The Anchoress has been quite balanced in her coverage of Ms. Palin, unafraid to mingle critiques with praise.

Crossposted at Wizbang.