I thought the 'from my ass I can see Belgium' line was priceless.

Jean Charest is in fact the premier of Quebec. You could look it up. Stef Carse, though -- not PM of Canada.

Johnny 11: yes, I know; all I meant was: he's the premier of Quebec, and whatever the guy said, he did not say that.

Is it really so obvious she caught on? It seemed to me she always plays straight up to the end (whatever is going on in her mind), but I can try listening again.

Heh, how much you wanna betcha that Drudge puts this up? (Anyone who had any pretense of being an informal, hip "review" of breaking news of interest, with snark often included, would *have to* feature it, that will tell us as if we needed to know ...)

"we could kill some baby seals"
That is just too awesome to be allowed. Wouldn't you know it, Rachel's not on tonight. I can't wait to see Ms. Maddow smirk about it.

I do not want to make fun of Sarah Palin over this.

Whaat?

That sounds like the soft bigotry of low expectations to me.

Can you imagine what would happen if Joe Biden fell for this?

And I'm sorry, but we are still being asked, by the McCain campaign, by the media, and by the Republican Party, to take seriously the notion that this person is qualified to be the second-highest officer in the Executive branch, who would be both the person to assume the office in the event the principal (a 72-year-old former torture victim with a history of aggressive cancer) and (if history is any guide) the putative heir to the party's presidential nomination.

For crying out loud, can you imagine the potential disaster that might ensue if she were on the phone with a real world leader, especially at a time of crisis?

And yeah, bad staff work (or no staff work) obviously had something to do with this, but it ain't the staff who ultimately gets on the phone and does the negotiating and makes the decisions.

Shouldn't she have considered the implications of a putative phone call from the leader of a major foreign nation to a vice-presidential candidate of one party barely three days before the election? Shouldn't she have wondered why there wasn't more preparation, e.g., involvement by the State Department? Shouldn't she have asked who screened the call, or whether anybody checked with the French embassy? Shouldn't she at least have had somebody else on the line who spoke French?

Make fun of her? That's too kind! My God, we're lucky they didn't ask to buy back the Louisiana Purchase! They could have told her it was a chair-and-table suite in the Map Room, and she probably would have agreed!

Instant Karma. She deserves every last second of this humiliation for the smears she has made against Obama. Furthermore, this underscores how she is SO not ready to be president much less VP.

These guys are pros. I am far from a Sarah Palin fan, but for her to fall for this is not all that embarrassing. If she takes it all in good humor, the incident shows she can laugh at herself. Her running mate seems incapable of that.

Funny bit: He said the French equivalent of "Joe the Plumber" is "Marcel the guy with bread under his armpit".

Mudge,

It is a total embarrassment for Palin and doesn't speak well for our country that we have such an idiot even close to the two highest offices in the country.

She is a national disgrace.

To defend Mudge a little, and I'm not Sarah Palin fan either, but these guys even pranked Jacques Chirac once, so they're good.
I did like the bit about "I can see Belgium from my ass." Or was it house, sounding like ass?

The actual statement was not "Le rouge à lèvres sur un cochon" but "du rouge à lèvres sur une cochonne". This is an important difference, because in Quebec's speak it would roughly translate as "lipstick on a sl**T". Not very nice.

Well, it was a bit of a cruel joke to play on a dim bulb but it sure proved that she's got the brains of a "chick" -- jut what all those Un-plumbed Joes want in their women.

He said "I can see Belgium from my house." but with the thick accent the house sounds like ass. I enjoyed the Johnny Hallyday remark, who looks about as alive as Keith Richards.

I'm quite certain the ass/house thing is hidden in the accent on purpose.

Just got off the phone with some relatives in white, rural Missouri who always vote Republican. They're voting for Obama this time.

I can't see the video.

I think it's fine to laugh at Sarah Palin. It was a really funny practical joke.

Look, the poor woman was the butt of a practical joke. Anyone could be. Let's give her some slack.

Has it not occurred to anyone that she may simply not have the intellect to understand that she's not qualified for the job? Like maybe the way all those people buying mortgages couldn't comprehend that the houses they purchased were out of their league? We treat them as victims, yet dump on Palin. Or maybe the way people accept promotions to jobs they're eminently not qualified for, and then fail at them?

In my state, Idaho, letters are coming in to our leading newspaper championing Sarah Palin, and they are pathetic. The people writing clearly don't appreciate what's involved in being a president, or many other jobs and positions that require superior intellect.

We have so demeaned intelligence in our society, mocked it, demeaned it, dismissed it - is it any wonder that those not gifted don't have any comprehension of how much those who are gifted contribute to our society, or our very civilization?

Indeed, in our society, it's politically incorrect to call one person smarter than another. It's like being a racist if you do. Smarts aren't valued in America, so it's no surprise that those without them aspire to positions that seem absurd to those with them.

I felt a little sorry for Palin here, she seemed so eager to be sold a bill of goods. Been there, still embarrassed. However, I do expect her to come out tomorrow and say she knew it was a setup and she just played along for laughs. It seemed so obvious that it was an amateur setup, but then again, I've heard countless French speak English, and Sarah probably hasn't.

Not to mention that when he "sings" the song Carla Bruni supposedly wrote for Palin, he sings "Joe the Plumber" to the tune of "Joe le Taxi"

Sarah Palin continues to refuse to release her medical records. Why?

McCain, Obama and Biden have released their medical records, to varying degrees, but Palin adamantly refuses to divulge anything about her medical history. Why?

I doubt that there would be anything shocking healthwise, so it must be something else she is seeking to hide.

Maybe, that she got an abortion?

Just a guess.

But Palin is definitely hiding something from her medical past, and the only thing that makes any sense is that she probably got an abortion in the early 1980s, something that she doesn't want anyone, especially her fanatical religious fundamentalist anti-abortion followers, finding out about..

It seemed so obvious that it was an amateur setup, but then again, I've heard countless French speak English, and Sarah probably hasn't.

The accent was certainly a put on French accent. But it was a French accent put on by a French Canadian. French Canadians speaking in English do sound quite different from French people speaking in English, but the distinction between a French Canadian doing a fake French accent in English and a French Canadian speaking English in their normal French Canadian accent would have to be a distinction that would go by most people.

Vox arf...

What is amazing here is the back story.

Republicans have fought against voting rights and equal pay for women. Basically, they are the daddy party that could never abide the thought of a woman as President.

Now their champion is a woman with the functioning cortex of a spent pitbull. Watching them having to defend her overt stupidity is simply beyond surreal. It's like walking into a kennel and all the dogs are suddenly barking in French. Surely this has got to be one of the most dissonant moments in the history of American politics.

On the other paw...
Having embraced Palin, they will never again be able to advance the "woman can't lead" argument.
Such is the way progress is made in Dogpatch in particular, and the country in general...

I don't think she ever caught on. At the end, when she was handing the phone back to her staff (after they revealed the joke), you could hear Palin was very confused. She was trying to explain to her staffers what she had just been told and was quite obviously unsure of what just happened.

No doubt she was immediately racing through the previous four minutes to make sure she didn't say anything stupid.

She had no idea it was a joke until they told her.

I don't think she ever caught on. At the end, when she was handing the phone back to her staff (after they revealed the joke), you could hear Palin was very confused. She was trying to explain to her staffers what she had just been told and was quite obviously unsure of what just happened.

No doubt she was immediately racing through the previous four minutes to make sure she didn't say anything stupid.

She had no idea it was a joke until they told her.

Did anyone else notice she annunciated her "G's"? When talking to the president of France she uses, more or less, normal English; when talking to the rubes she tries to sound as much like a hick as possible.

Wasn't Hillary savaged over something like this in the primaries? If Obama or Biden tried talking like a hillbilly, they'd be pilloried for it. Or as Palin would say in hickspeak, "Look at him tryin' to talk like one o' y'all. I don't go aroun' talkin' one way in front a one awwdience and another way 'front uh 'nother."

we have no open thread, so i'll pretend.

Hot off the press Iowa Poll by Seltzer. Iowa - where Palin is wasting the day before the election - is now +17 for Obama.

Yes we can.

Sarah should dye her hair blonde.

Maybe this counts as damning with faint praise, but I was actually impressed with how she handled herself overall. She didn't say anything too embarrassing (for example, she was careful to say about her presidential chances, "Maybe in eight years). True, she didn't catch all the wrong names, but, apart from maybe Stephen Harper, I don't know if she _should_ have. And the statement from her staff strikes the right tone -- "C'est la vie" is a nice touch. I expected much worse. I think she's despicable, but this was one of her _better_ moments, IMHO.

Oh, right, the Hustler thing. I have to assume she didn't hear that. (I'm surprised she understood "unt" as "hunt" immediately.)

Hey, Ted76, @22:51,

I used to dye my hair blond, from 'bout 16 to 'bout 22. The only reason I did that was to cover up for my As in most subjects and make myself more acceptable to my male peers (my Ds in math and physics were OK). What would Palin be covering up with *her* blondness?

I do think she caught on. In any case, she sure played it smooth, handled everything well..used it to her advantage--put in a good word for 'Joe the plumber' as the symbol for middle class and so forth. But maybe this is because by now she has her talking points down.

Sure wish the pranksters would have asked her more about her views, about Obama--does she really think he's a terrorist? And is it true that a vote for Obama is death to Israel (as Joe the plumber insists?). There's a lot they could have asked her that would have made the conversation a whole more interesting!

But if she insists she didn't really know this was a prank...well, then that does make her handlers look very incompetent for not screening. And it does make her stupid for believing that very bad fake accent.

Anyone with any smarts would have caught on as soon as they heard "Sarkozy"'s ridiculous accent.

Anyone with any smarts would have caught on as soon as they heard "Sarkozy"'s ridiculous accent.
Posted by: Virginia on November 2, 2008 at 12:23 AM

So very true.

And though it is obvious Palin is an idiot it has me thinking about her view of the job and the way business is done.

To quote right wing ex whitehouse reporter gay hooker Jeff Gannon "detached from reality" seems perfect.

The funny thing about "on peut tuer des bébés phoques" (we could kill baby seals) is that the word "phoque" is a homonym for "f*ck".

"Du rouge à lèvres sur une cochonne" is literally "lipstick on a sow". "Cochonne" is a common word in Québec for a woman of loose morals. That cracked me up, big time.

This was not a good thing. A lot of decent people, regardless of political orientation, would object to it. If the McCain campaign makes an ad out of this, selecting a segment carefully, it could make Palin seem like a sympathetic victim and it could hurt politically as well.

I don't think this kind of thing should be encouraged through publicity. When that pranking television show was on, my husband and I got a 2 am phone call telling us that his brother was dying of AIDS. We sat up for hours, crying, before we tried calling him and found out it was a prank call.

If we offer these calls any legitimacy, this is the consequence some of us will suffer.

Stef Carse is the Quebecois equivalent to Billie Rae Cyrus...was actually a somewhat big deal in the early 90s and does Vegas shows now I think..The dude in the linked video isn't him...Also, there is no such thing as Prime Minister of Quebec...only Premier. The guy they referred to as 'Prime Minister of Quebec' (Richard Z. Sirois) is the radio show's producer/former radio host/comedian. This reminds me of Talking to Americans with Rick Mercer talking to Bush before the 2000 election

http://video.canadiancontent.net/40797659-talking-to-americans-the-bush-episode.html

A follow-up on my feeling that Sarah "Barracuda" Palin is not releasing her medical records because to do so would reveal that she had an abortion years ago.

I figure that the optimum time frame for Sarah "Barracuda" Palin to possibly have gotten an abortion would have been during that period when she was competing in Alaskan beauty pageants, and "The Barracuda" wouldn't have allowed anything to get in the way of her quest for the crown...like an unwanted pregnancy.

If she has nothing to hide from the American voting public concerning her past medical history, then Sarah "Barracuda" Palin shouldn't hesitate to release her complete medical records. On the off-chance that they do release her medical records by Tuesday, if there are any gaps, like during her beauty pageant contestant years, then by inference we'll know that the McCain/Palin campaign is trying to hide something she did while a young maverick from their ardent religious fundamentalist anti-abortion base today, something that could prove very detrimental to their chances of winning on Tuesday.

Oh, and any abortion that Sarah "Barracuda" Palin got back then would have been purely a "vanity" abortion, meaning that her life wasn't in any danger from possible pregnancy complications, a "vanity" abortion she wanted simply because being pregnant would have made her look fat and probably ruined her beauty pageant aspirations.

"She had no idea it was a joke until they told her."

And even then she wasn't sure.

Here is the full transcript of this.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/11/palin-punkd-the.html

Not knowing who the PM of Canada is - her closest border neighbor is an abomination.

To whomever it was that couldn't watch the video, here is a link to the audio as well as the video.

http://tpzoo.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/sarah-palin-gets-to-talk-to-nicolas-sarkozy/

I know a little French, but I had trouble understanding the comics. Therefore, I can't blame Palin for not understanding any of the jokes. What was telling, however, was that she sounded like a teenie-bopper being led back stage by a rock star. Not exactly presidential.

exlibra

Sarah was easily hoodwinked, maybe blonde headiness could divert attention to other unimportant stuff.

I thought she handled herself fairly well. One can only imagine all the other heads of state getting their first phone call from GWB, sitting there thinking, "what the hell is this, do I cut off what I think is a prank or would I be pissing off the head of the world's largest army?"

I'm not sure how she could have avoided the prank ("OK, before I talk to you, how high is the Eifel Tower and who won the Battle of Agincourt????"). If you are talking to someone who might be serious but is saying some odd things, you tend to give them the benefit of the doubt for the first few mistakes or odd statements. The whole thing was overly cruel.

Nonetheless, I loved the line about "I can see Belgium from my house."

If it's 3 AM and the White House gets a prank call, who do you want answering the phone?

One of the Ottawa papers reported that a Palin staff member did not know how to spell Sarkozy. When you don't know a lot, it does help to surround yourself with people who do. We don't need more of the same.

That said, the level of her conversation was that of a 12 year old gushing. Didn't sound like a world leader to me.

I spent half the call wondering if it was really Palin, because she really couldn't be that stupid, could she?

"That said, the level of her conversation was that of a 12 year old gushing. Didn't sound like a world leader to me."
I agree, those who defend her performance have dreadfully low standards in what to expect from someone who could be president. She did giggle and simper like a young teenager. If she had any sense at all, she would have realized there was something strange about the conversation, put down the phone like the line had been cut.

if there are any gaps, like during her beauty pageant contestant years, then by inference we'll know

Oh give it a rest, oracle!! A "gap" in her records? Palin was in her early 20's. A typical healthy woman in her twenties might see her doctor once a year for an annual pelvic.

Your silly theory, which you've spammed on several websites, is ridiculous.

if there are any gaps, like during her beauty pageant contestant years, then by inference we'll know

Oh give it a rest, oracle!! A "gap" in her records? Palin was in her early 20's. A typical healthy woman in her twenties might see her doctor once a year for an annual pelvic.

Your silly theory, which you've spammed on several websites, is ridiculous.

if there are any gaps, like during her beauty pageant contestant years, then by inference we'll know

Oh give it a rest, oracle!! A "gap" in her records? Palin was in her early 20's. A typical healthy woman in her twenties might see her doctor once a year for an annual pelvic.

Your silly theory, which you've spammed on several websites, is ridiculous.

The guy who is claimed to be premier of Quebec is Richard Z Sirois, who was a member of the Quebec's comedy group "Rock et Belles Oreilles" and is currently a radio host.

Hey, wouldn't impersonating an official like Franck Louvrier be actionable?

BTW, it shows how totally phony Drudge is, that he doesn't feature this prank call to Palin - it was clearly the type of story he would carry if he was honest.

Ugh...

I can't believe the posters here who think it's their business to know whether or not Sarah Palin had an abortion.

Perhaps the reasoning is that it would show her hypocracy on that matter. So, if you have the right reason, you have a right to know a woman candidate's medical history in order to see if she had an abortion?
Think about that.

I recently heard someone say that(some) lean-left blogs have become the equivalent of right wing talk radio. I can see their point.

I can very easily imagine the detailed speculation (like that of the Oracle, above) directed at a Democratic woman candidate - by one of fringe right wing sites.

As for the prank call, well plenty of politicians have been the target of such. It just seems to go with the territory. You CAN fool some of the politicians some of the time.

Sarah got punked by her own staff! They knew. Wallace handed her the phone.

Back to Franck Louvrier for a sec. I learned here that he is Sarkozy's real communications advisor.
Without that knowledge, I thought that Frank Louvrier as a "wink" to Joe The Plumber was already funny (l'ouvrier = the worker).

This reminds me of what I heard this Saturday on NPR's "Wait, wait, don't tell me" about Joe The Plumber setting up John McCain: "What? Didn't McCain hear that the plumber was coming between 9:00am and 3:00pm".
That was funny.

Surprised no one caught this. Hendrix was an international star during the Johnson administration, and dead before the end of Nixon's first term. The Hallyday opening mentioned occurred in 1966. A year later, JHII was far more famous than JHI has ever been.

To "C": perhaps she's covering up a mental illness? Maybe we might want to know something about that, eh? Think Sen. Eagleton, McGovern's VP choice he had to withdraw because of metal illness treatment in Eagleton's medical records.

The medical records of Sarah P would also reveal if any of her children are not hers.

The medical records of Sarah P would also reveal if any of her children are not hers.