sarah palin is a disney movie

sarah! sarah! sarah! sarah! sarah! . . . i mean . . . rudy! rudy! rudy! rudy!

when i first saw this movie, i remember feeling all inspired. wow. rudy is just like me. i want to be like rudy some day. rudy wasn't some notre dame insider, but rudy showed the world he was just as great as any of those experienced and trained players who deserved to be on the field.

that movie was so inspiring.

about a week later something hit me: rudy sucked at football. he was terrible. he wasn't qualified to play in that game. he shouldn't have been qualified to play in any football game. the moral of the story was that if you are really bad at something and keep on trying and failing at it, eventually people will feel sorry for you and give you a chance. if you don't completely screw up that one chance they give you, they'll treat you as if actually accomplished something important when in fact you didn't do a single thing.

cut to sarah palin. after last night's debate some are acting like she actually accomplished something major. some have been touting that she won the debate. really?

stop and think about it people.

the only thing sarah palin accomplished last night was that she managed to not completely make an utter fool of herself. she didn't win in any normal sense of the word. the only thing she beat was the pathetically low expectations everyone had of her. after her last few series of interviews she would have had to trip while walking onto the stage, fall flat on her face, and try to debate with a wad of toilet paper stuffed up her nose to plug up a nosebleed in order to drop below the bar she set for herself.

rudy at least managed to get a sack in his game. what did palin manage?

she dodged question after question, explicitly refusing to answer some. her logic (or lack of it) while addressing climate change were cringe-worthy. her constantly repeated campaign lines about 'change' and 'maverick' were quickly pointed out by biden to be hollow and meaningless - she had the audacity to criticize biden for talking about the past with the bush adminstration, not realizing that 'change' is meaningless without a context of what we are changing from. her stats were often either flat out lies or logically fallacious. she kept touting herself as an 'expert on energy' but failed to show she knew anything about it. and half of her criticisms she threw out against obama were logicallly critical of her own running mate - she criticized obama for voting against a bill for funding troops even though mccain did the same; she criticized obama for not wanting to drill more in alaska's protected forests even though mccain refuses to drill there as well; she criticized obama for votes for taxes that mccain also voted similarly on. it seemed like she got so caught up in the excitement of being in the spotlight that maybe she thought she was running for president.

for any of you that think she did a great job in the debate, give it some thought. read the transcript of the debate where you might be less enchanted with her cute-as-a-button looks and joe-just-like-us-six-pack demeanor. try to avoid her uses of darn it and other catchy colloquial phrases. check to see if she has any substance.

if palin had been anyone whose expectations weren't set so low, this debate would have been seen as a unanimous win by biden. if romney, lieberman, or anyone else had performed like palin nobody would have been saying they did a great job.

like rudy, you will discover that she is unqualified to be playing on the field. sure it might look fun and inspiring to see her running around excited to be allowed to play, but think about it. would you really want rudy actually playing on the team? do you want him on your defense when the game is on the line? are you going to take the risk of rudy playing backup when the starter gets injured?

no you don't.

matt damon was right.