From my diary on Daily Kos:In Pudd'nhead's latest Stump The Candidate video, Couric quizs Pudd'nhead on The First Amendment.
Although, Pudd'nhead snows Couric with her mastery of historical quotations, her minders might want to teach Pudd'nhead a new quote:
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
-- English Proverb
Someone close to both Pudd'nhead and McCain should acquaint them with these famous lines:
Oh! What a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
-- from the poem Marmion by Sir Walter Scott
Recently there have been revelations that Pudd'nhead gets reimbursed
by the State of Alaska for the travel expenses of her appearances and
speeches before various church groups all over Alaska.
And there are also, floating around the internet tubes, videos of
those events which show Pudd'nhead getting the church groups to pray
for her election victories, or her favorite ballot issues, or other
political issues.
No doubt all this evidence of Pudd'nhead mixing church and state affairs prompted Couric in the latest Pudd'nhead and Couric Comedy Show interview, Couric asked Pudd'nhead to comment on the meaning of the First Amendment.
In her rambling non-responsive response, Pudd'nhead stands separation of church and state on its head and props it up with what she thinks is a folksy Jeffersonian quote:
Katie Couric: Thomas Jefferson wrote about the First Amendment,
building a wall of separation between church and state. Why do you
think that's so important?
Sarah Palin: His intention in expressing that was so that government did not mandate a religion on people. And Thomas Jefferson also said never underestimate the wisdom of the people.
And the wisdom of the people, I think in this issue is that people have
the right and the ability and the desire to express their own religious
views, be it a very personal level, which is why I choose to express my
faith, or in a more public forum.
And the wisdom of the people, thankfully, engrained in the
foundation of our country, is so extremely important. And Thomas
Jefferson wanted to protect that.
Unfortunately, Pudd'nhead must have misremembered her Cliffs Notes. No one has yet been able to turn up any record of President Jefferson ever saying anything like that regarding separation of church and state or any other topic.
But something very similar to that bogus Jefferson quote was written by the famous writer and satirist H.L. Mencken:
No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has
ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses
of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
Or maybe Pudd'nhead is misremembering another famous Mencken quote:
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of
the American people. People can easily be persuaded to accept the most
inferior ideas or useless products.
Both of those quotes seem more appropriate than the bogus one Pudd'nhead told Couric.
I think when they meet face to face on Thursday, Biden should ask
Pudd'nhead whether she simply got confused and meant to quote Mencken instead of Jefferson, and didn't really mean to fabricate a quote out of whole cloth.
Ironically for Pudd'nhead, Jefferson frequently criticized
government officials who used religion to justify or support their
actions, and H.L. Mencken frequently satirized ignorant public frauds,
fundamentalist chistians, and journalists.
There are of course other potential sources for Pudd'nhead's bogus Jefferson quote. Perhaps Pudd'nhead borrowed her words from P.T. Barnum who is credited with saying:
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
And given that Pudd'nhead reads all the papers, there's no doubt that she's also familiar with that famous ficitional American Dilbert who infamously said:
You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
But seriously, the most likely source of Pudd'nhead's talking points must be from that famous GOP asshat Newt Gingrinch, who said.
So I start with two basic principles. Now one of them formed by
Joseph Napolitan who was a great Democratic consultant in the 60s. He
wrote a wonderful book called The Election Game and How to Win It. And
he said, never underestimate the intelligence of the American people, nor overestimate the amount of information they have. ...
Pudd'nhead has spent a lot of time in Cheney's secret undisclosed
location getting a quick education in politics, common sense, common
knowledge, etc etc.
She's probably being force fed, directly or indirectly from Gingrich
and others, hours and hours of interview tips, and cute sayings, and
historical drival, and gallons and gallons of treacle.
Obviously, her head has been overfilled and now it's all just an
overcooked treacly mess just looking and waiting for any opening to
spew forth.
So when Couric said "Jefferson", Pudd'nhead made the connection to
Napolitan (they sound alike) and that totally bogus Jeferrsonian quote
just lept out of her mouth.
