Funny, She Doesn't Look Shrewish

Well, actually she does. I watched Sarah Palin's acceptance speech this morning, and it was about what I expected. You don't get elected governor of a state without having basic speaking skills, and after all she was a sportscaster and has a degree in communications. Her timing was pretty good, especially considering she was speaking to a crowd who had been robbed of three days of convention fun and they had a lot of steam to let off. Heck, just the ovation when she walked onstage was about 5 minutes long.

The speech was not particularly rousing, and she did not resort to the rabble rousing ploy of repeating the same catchy phrase over and over, but there were a truckload of zingers which she delivered very well. I think she put Obama in his place handily.

A fair chunk of her message was in support of small town civil servants and small town people. This struck a particular chord with me, because like her, I got my start in the news biz in small cities and towns. Astoria, Oregon, pop. ~ 8,000. Omak, WA, pop. 2500 (5000 if you add Okanogan and the rest of the county I covered), Raymond, WA pop 2500. One thing I found out is just because people choose to live in a small town doesn't mean they couldn't hold there own elsewhere. I think Palin is one of these.

There were a couple of hard core right wing statements she made, and the wild response from the delegates scared me. But I loved the pit bull joke, and she really wowed the crowd. After this speech, no way is she going to be Eagleton-ed, and I think Biden has his work cut out for him.