My wife, brother-in-law, and I went to New York yesterday to see my sons, visit the new Museum of Modern Art, and spend inordinate amounts of money in New York restaurants. As we were driving home my wife received a text message from my younger son, to the effect that Sarah Palin had fallen for a prank call from someone pretending to be French President Sarkozy. We got a big kick out of the news, but by the time we got home we had talked ourselves into believing that the whole thing was probably a hoax, and that even Sarah Palin couldn’t be stupid enough to fall for something like that.
Nonetheless, despite arriving home late and bleary eyed, we rushed to our computers to find that the news was, in fact, true. For those of you who have not yet heard about it, here’s the youtube:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcEiR01QK7o[/youtube]
The pranksters are a couple of Canadian disc jockeys, who have pranked others, including Sarkozy, in the past. One must wonder if they always drop such broad hints that they are a sham. Among other things, they identify a Canadian rock star as a Sarkozy adviser, and mis-identify the premier of Canada, not to mention the fact that it’s unlikely that Sarkozy would brag to Palin about how good his wife is in bed.
Palin is now saying, despite earlier statements from her campaign implying the opposite, that she knew it was a prank all along. I’d also read some commentary to the effect that at least toward the end, she realized it was a prank. I listened a couple of times and I can’t see any sign of that. Certainly, if she thought it was a prank, she should have known instinctively that it was being taped, and she should never have played along without revealing that she was in on the joke. The Obama campaign’s response:
“I’m glad we check out our calls before we hand the phone to Barack Obama,”
This is what we’ve come to in the final days. I for one am overdosed on polls, though I keep going back for more. My wife is worse. Everyone, I think, is just holding their breath.
And now for something completely different. A few pictures from the MOMA, for those interested. Click on any one for a larger view.
Update: Apparently I mis-identified the Canadian rock star. He is a French rock star, which I think is an oxymoron.
