Tag: Teleprompters

Palin Used Teleprompters to Deliver NRA Keynote Speech

Jon Ponder

Palin at NRA in convention in Charlotte with two teleprompters in view
Palin at NRA in convention in Charlotte on May 14, 2010, with two teleprompters in view
After sneeringly referring to President Obama as “a charismatic guy with a teleprompter” in February, Sarah Palin apparently required two of the prompting devices when she delivered the keynote address to the National Rifle Association convention in Charlotte yesterday.

It’s unclear whether she has used teleprompters in the recent past, and if so, how often — but in February, during her appearance before a tea party conclave, she was caught red-handed, so to speak, with crib notes written on the palm of her hand. Around that same time, during a Fox News softball interview, she said she didn’t want to be the leader of the tea bagger movement because, “It’s much bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter. It is the people’s movement. It’s about the people and I’m proud to be a part of this.”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, when she was the Republican vice presidential nominee, Palin was a serial user of teleprompters. We posted a gallery of photos of Palin using teleprompters at about 20 separate events on Pensito Review’s Facebook page .

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Palin Has Become The Very Thing She Sneered at in ’08: A Celebrity

Jon Ponder

 

One of the McCain-Palin campaign’s strangest moves in the 2008 campaign was the release of an attack ad against Barack Obama that attempted to marginalize him by casting him as a celebrity. It even made visual references to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Since then Sarah Palin has been on a long strange trip — from losing the United States vice presidency to quitting halfway through her term as governor of Alaska, from landing a phone-it-in gig as a propagandist on Fox News to publishing a best-selling ghost-written memoir, and from making $125,000 per year as governor to charging $100,000 per gig on the rubber chicken circuit.

Now ABC News is reporting that since she walked away from her job as governor in July 2009, Palin has raked in $12 million.

Sarah Palin is not the only failed politician out there cashing in on political stardom, of course. She has largely co-opted Newt Gingrich’s playbook. After being forced out as House Speaker because he was having an extramarital affair with a staffer at the same time he was leading the charge to impeach Pres. Clinton for having an affair with a staffer, Gingrich has built a lucrative career writing books, giving speeches and as a Fox on-air propagandist based entirely on a perpetual tease that he might run for president — despite the fact he has a less than zero chance of winning.

Like Gingrich, Palin is unelectable, and like Gingrich, she is manipulating the media by dangling the possibility out there that one day she might just give it a go, and run for the big chair. What the heck.

But she is no longer a politician. She’s too dense, incurious and inarticulate to be a real pundit. To call her an author defiles the word. So, besides “half-term governor,” what should we call her?

Simple. Sarah Palin is a celebrity.

For example, a copy of the celebrity rider to Palin’s speaking contract that ennumerates her demands and requirements from event hosts was found in a trash can and released to the media. According to the rider (PDF), Palin requires:

  • First-class airfare or a “private aircraft [that] MUST BE a Lear 60 or larger (as defined by interior cabin space) for West Coast Events; or, a Hawker 800 or larger (as defined by interior cabin space) for East Coast Events and both are subject to the [Sarah Palin’s] approval. [Palin] reserves the right to change the flight plans at any time.
  • Ground transportation must be “SUV(s) from a professionally licensed and insured car service. lf SUV(s) are not available, black town cars may be substituted. WSB [Washington Speakers Bureau] will arrange all of [Palin’s] ground transportation. Only representatives of [Sarah Palin] or WSB are to meet [her] at the arriving/departing airport.
  • [Palin] reserves the right to participate in private business including but not limited to book or political events during their visit. For any other event which is subject to media coverage, the [event host] will be advised of such event. For international events, [Palin] also reserves the right to visit privately with the host government’s Head of State, Head of Government, Ministerial-level officials, the U.S. Embassy and others as necessary. [Sarah Palin] reserves the right to accept the invitation of host government to overnight at an official residence.”
  • Unopened bottled still water (2 bottles) and bendable straws are to be placed in or near the wooden lectern. A representative of WSB or [Palin’s] party will open the water at an appropriate time prior to [Palin’s] participation in the program. No Plexiglas or thin lecterns please. If [Palin] is seated on-stage at a table customer to ensure that the table is skirted
  • Questions from the audience must be pre-screened.
  • No autographs.

One possible omission: Palin also requires a teleprompter, which she likely requires to be hidden from view — unlike the 20 or so photos of Palin with teleprompters we dug up.

Tina Fey caught the spirit of Palin’s new status in a parody on Saturnight Live last week, in which she, as Palin, announced that she was starting her own broadcast channel, similar to Oprah’s.

“Ever since I won the Silver Medal in last year’s vice presidential election,” says Tina Fey in another portrayal of Sarah Palin, she has done her best to connect with everyday Americans.

“It just seemed like the next logical step was to launch my own network,” Fey said on Saturday Night Live — with a premier “network” report about the “Obama death panel” declaring that her daughter’s ankle injury was too costly and that they would have to put her down.

Given she’ll never be president of the United States, maybe Palin’s strategy is go for something bigger: Maybe she wants to become an Oprah Winfrey-style celebrity empath and impresario for the tea-bagger set.

CPAC: Pawlenty Read His Lie about Obama’s Use of a Teleprompter from a Teleprompter

Jon Ponder

photo-pawlenty-telemprompters

Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty joined the teleprompter wing of Republican Hypocrisy Caucus during his speech at CPAC on Friday when he used a teleprompter to promulgate the hoax that Pres. Obama uses teleprompters more than other politicians. Worse, however, Pawlenty’s attack against the president was quickly determined to be a lie:

“President Obama was in a grade school classroom speaking to elementary school children and he was using a teleprompter,” Pawlenty said Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he added. “That’s not a joke. That’s a real story.”

Actually, it’s not. The tale spread by bloggers over the Internet and in some media, including the Comedy Channel’s Jon Stewart, blended together two Obama appearances Jan. 19 at the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, to make it appear he used the teleprompter when speaking to a classroom of 30 pupils.

In reality, Obama sat on a chair and spoke with the pupils without the device.

In a different classroom, he used the teleprompter to give scripted remarks on education to television cameras.

At CPAC just one day earlier, Marco Rubio, Florida’s tea bagger candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, read what was supposed to be a joke about Obama and teleprompters from a teleprompter.

But neither of these new members of the GOP Hypocrisy Caucus can hold a candle to the chairwoman, Sarah Palin, whose promotion of the Obama teleprompter hoax at the tea bagger ball in Nashville earlier this month prompted us to catalog 20 separate incidents in which she used teleprompters during her campaign for vice president in 2008.

The Meaning of the Myth of the Obama Teleprompter

Trish
That’s just CRAZY funny

I wondered what was up when I read two letters to the editor of my local independent weekly stating that Pres. Obama is dumber than a box of hammers, and without a teleprompter, he is a gibbering idiot.

Immediately I suspected a FOX News meme but an internet search turns up numerous repetitions of this sentiment on rightwing blogs. One is even entitled, “Barack Obama’s Teleprompter’s Blog — Because There Is No POTUS Without TOTUS.” Its logo is shown.

Others echo the idea that Obama’s intelligence is a fraud.

  • The Weekly Standard: “Yes, Obama can turn a phrase better and do more with a Teleprompter than any other modern era politician. But does his special skill set here actually mean anything, or is it instead the political equivalent of a dog walking on its hind legs–unusual and riveting, but not especially significant?”
  • Politico: “‘It’s just something presidents haven’t done,’ said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who has held court in the White House since December 1975. ‘It’s jarring to the eye.'”
  • TelePrompterPresident.com, recommending a film called The Obama Deception: “The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order.”
Racism is at the heart of rightwing disbelief that a black man would be as stunningly brilliant and yes, articulate, as Barack Obama

At least one folk tale did start with FOX News. Thank one John R. Lott, Jr., senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, writing on the FOX Forum.

While people who watched Obama’s first national press conference noticed his use of a teleprompter to give his initial presentation as well as in answering questions, the media and late night joke writers completely ignored it. The American Spectator notes that in many events “…down to many of the questions and the answers to those questions … [t]eleprompter screens at the events scrolled not only his opening remarks, but also statistics and information he could use to answer questions.”

Apparently, Obama is looking to install a computer screen into the White House podiums so that, according to one Obama advisor, “It would make it easier for the comms guys to pass along information without being obvious about it.” [Emphasis added.]

The Daily Dose investigated those charges specifically.

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