Palin and the Teleprompter - New Palin LIE breaking tonight - she winged her speech (but she didn't)

[Pirate Smile]

Palin and the Teleprompter
September 15, 2008 8:42 PM

At a fundraiser in Canton, Ohio, this evening, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had an interesting description of her speech to the Republican convention.

“There Ohio was right out in front, right in front of me," Palin said. "The teleprompter got messed up, I couldn’t follow it, and I just decided I’d just talk to the people in front of me. It was Ohio.”

This struck many of us -- who, as she spoke, followed along with her prepared remarks, and noted how closely she stuck to the script -- as an unusual claim. (Especially those of my colleagues on the convention floor at the time, reading along on the prompter with her, noticing her excellent and disciplined delivery, how she punched words that were underlined and paused where it said "pause," noting that "nuclear" was spelled out for her phonetically.)

Please note: few people who work on TV will ever bad-mouth a teleprompter. And Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., works with a prompter not infrequently.

But it's different to use one, and to use one but imply that you weren't.

Was Palin doing that tonight?

McCain-Palin campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds says no, and disputes any notion that Palin was implying that she ad-libbed the speech by saying she "couldn't follow it" on the teleprompter, so she "just decided I’d just talk to the people in front of me."

McCain-Palin spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker says, "She was off the prompter at points."

Bounds says anyone who thinks Palin was implying that her speech was ad-libbed is unfairly reading into her remarks. Whether she was reading the speech or had it memorized, she delivered it and delivered it well, he says.

I should note that, after Palin's speech, some conservative bloggers reported that sources close to McCain had told them that the teleprompter had broken and Palin "winged it."

"The teleprompter did not break," wrote Politico's Jonathan Martin. "Sarah Palin delivered a powerful speech last night, but she did not 'wing it'..."

Says Martin, "Perhaps there were moments where it scrolled slightly past her exact point in the speech. But I was sitting in the press section next to the stage, within easy eyeshot of the teleprompter. I frequently looked up at the machine, and there was no serious malfunction. A top convention planner confirms this morning that there were no major problems."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/palin-and-the-t.html

Wall Street Journal has the story too:

Palin Tells Debunked Teleprompter Tale

Elizabeth Williamson reports on the presidential campaign from Canton, Ohio.

“Country Club First” read a lonely protestor’s sign, lampooning the McCain campaign’s Country First mantra, as the Sarah Palin motorcade swung past. On Monday afternoon Gov. Palin and her entourage tooled through neighborhoods still without power in storm-stricken Stark County, Ohio, where she attended a fundraiser at the Brookside Country Club.

The governor’s first “funder” raised just under $1 million. Gov. Palin raised questions among the traveling press — confined under police guard for most of her three-hour visit inside a club boardroom — by telling her patrons the Tricky Tale of the Teleprompter Triumph.

As recorded by a reporter allowed to observe the 35-minute fundraiser appearance, this was the first time Gov. Palin herself relayed the story of how a fouled-up teleprompter forced her to ad-lib big swaths of her acclaimed acceptance speech at the Republican Convention Sept. 3.

But that story has been largely debunked. Reporters who saw the equipment that night say –and the party has not denied — that any teleprompter issue was minor at most. In the days after the event it was touted — on a hush-hush, off the record basis — by top Republicans as a way to show how swift-thinking is their newest star, despite her avoidance of any and all unscripted moments on the trail.

Gov. Palin’s telling was a Canton crowd-pleaser: “There Ohio was right out in front, right in front of me. The teleprompter got messed up, I couldn’t follow it, and I just decided I’d just talk to the people in front of me,” she said. “It was Ohio.”

Like the Alaska jet put on eBay and her pit-bull opposition to pork like the Bridge to Nowhere, the T.T. of the T.T. is great theater, but not quite, not entirely, true.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/15/palin-tells-debunked-teleprompter-tale/

[anonymous171]

1. So THIS is why they are hiding her from the media.

She's a pathological liar.

[begin_within]

2. Ohio?

I thought the RNC took place in Minnesota.

[Connie_Corleone]

5. The Ohio delegates were sitting up front at the convention.

On edit: Of course, that's if she is telling the truth about that.

[Pirate Smile]

9. Somebody better check. She was sucking up to her audience in Ohio tonight but we really can't

believe a single word out of her mouth.

[Eric J in MN]

6. She probably means that she saw delegates from Ohio in front of her. NT

NT

[madaboutharry]

3. There is something mentally wrong with her.

She just makes shit up. There is a psychological term for people who need to embellish and exaggerate.

[five_horizons]

8. Yes, I believe the scientific term for that is "a Republican"

[C_U_L8R]

4. it was so obvious she was reading

right left right left

what a fucking liar

[tridim]

7. She has Biden envy.

[Olney Blue]

10. They just keep shoveling it.

[CitizenPatriot]

11. If she could see Ohio

does that mean she has foreign policy experience?

she may have refueled there as well.

[AwakeAtLast]

15. And waved to a few Indiana troops from across the border.

:D

:rofl:

[HughMoran]

12. How can this congenital liar continue this charade?

This is so embarrassing for our country - she needs to go.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. Oh look another republican serial liar. How unusual. nt.

[vanderBeth]

14. Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies

That's all that comes out of her mouth.

[ComplimentarySwine]

16. As I recall hearing about the prompter...

I believe that what I heard was that the teleprompter kept scrolling even while she was waiting for people to stop applauding. I believe that I heard that this also happened during the former NYC mayor's speech. It seems to me like she still could have read and memorized the few words that scrolled past while she was waiting, even if she didn't get to see them in front of her in real time. :shrug:

[TheDonkey]

17. OK, she's a pathological liar. Good God.

[krkaufman]

18. When are the media going to put the same emphasis on Palin's web of lies ....

... that they did on Hillary's few Bosnia sniper fire exaggerations? Hillary was excoriated for a "pattern of embellishment", "resume padding", "insecurity", etc, but Palin's lies are simply reported in isolation and the larger pattern of obvious image manufacturing is ignored.

[anonymous171]

19. Because according to the press: Hillary=Evil and Palin= A Heavenly Angel

[krkaufman]

21. Right. Which is why it's killing me that Hillary isn't mocking Palin as having her own ....

... "Bosnia sniper fire problem, on steroids." Hillary framing Palin in this light would go a long way to generating the necessary narrative of Palin as a manufactured image, propped-up on lies and exaggerations.

[FVZA_Colonel]

20. It's interesting to note that claims were made that McCain's teleprompter broke the next night,

this should have been taken with a grain of salt from the start.