VIDEO Watch Sarah Palin’s debut on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly

Sarah Palin made her first Fox News appearance since officially joining the network earlier this week, sitting in with Bill O’Reilly on The Factor January 12th. I usually have little to no tolerance for the partisan political bibble babble infecting our cable “news” stations, but Bill O’Reilly is one of those folks that has the ability to be rational and nonpartisan at times, and his sit down with Sarah Palin was no exception.

Bill O’Reilly handled that perfectly! He was uncompromising and didn’t let Sarah get away with that vapid generic judgmentalism we hear so often from both the left and the right. Palin finished up her little soap box speech about Americans feeling betrayed and bamboozled by the administration they elected, as evidenced by Obama’s lowering poll numbers, and O’Reilly says, “But isn’t it true that no human being could lower the unemployment rate at this point? I don’t like the massive spending, I think it’s going to bankrupt the nation, but I’m saying to myself, ‘If Sarah Palin and John McCain were in could they bring unemployment down under 10%?’ And I’m not sure you could.” Palin then goes off on some sort of conservative nonspeak speech about empowering the people and not limiting business…

And later on Palin makes reference to campaign promises that Obama has broken and O’Reilly interrupts to say “There are always promises made, you know that.” These are things that seem obviously true, but usually aren’t part of the bickering on either side of a political conversation.

And maybe it was just me, but I think there was a bit of sly sarcasm with his overly exaggerated questioning of the left’s “fear” of Sarah Palin. He began with a bunch of clips from other news networks addressing Fox News’ signing of Sarah Palin. Most all of the comments didn’t really sound fearful, they were just saying Palin isn’t very smart. Then, O’Reilly follows that up with the overly exaggerated questioning of the left’s fear that I mentioned: “It’s almost funny that these people feel that you’re such a threat to them. It’s almost amusing, is it not?” How is that not backhanded? The only way it could be amusing that the left is fearful of Palin is if there’s nothing to fear, right?

Anyway, I enjoyed Palin’s debut way more than I thought I would and I have Bill O’Reilly to thank for that. Maybe Bill like the grandma from Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” but instead of this quote:

“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

It would be this:

“He would of been a great political commentator,” The blogger said, “if it had been Sarah Palin there to interview every minute of his show.”

And that’s saying a lot because most political commentators wouldn’t have been any good with Palin across the table or someone there to shoot them every minute of their lives.

Subscribe to Starcasm by Email