Palin and the First Amendment

I have never understood Sarah Palin's appeal. She dresses well, which is what you'd expect from a former beauty pageant contestant. Other than that, I can't name anything about her that positively impresses me. In particular, her education and intellect are substandard. Yet she insists that she is qualified to weigh in on substantive political, economic, and social controversies, in spite of her educational and intellectual deficiencies.

Here's an embarrassingly obvious example of why Palin cannot and should not be taken seriously: an analysis of her comments about Dr. Laura Schlesinger's decision to end her radio show. According to the article:

Sarah Palin jumped in and tweeted, “Dr.Laura: don't retreat ... reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")"

That was soon followed by a second tweet:

“Dr.Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles,so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice, America!)"

As the analysis, written by Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center, bluntly notes:

Though Palin speaks frequently of the need to protect the Constitution and elect politicians who understand it, in this case she is misreading the [First] amendment and how it works. ...

“Congress shall make no law” — the first five words of the First Amendment — say it all: No government body can limit our rights to speak out. In this case, there’s no government action, just public outrage and pressure.

This is hardly the first time just in the past decade that this limit on the First Amendment has had to be explained. If Palin reads as widely as she says she does, then she has got to be dumb as a rock because she missed this point the last dozen times it came up.

The more cynical reading of Palin's complaints on Schlesinger's behalf is that Palin is perfectly aware that the First Amendment does not apply to Schlesinger's situation, but is counting on her audience not to know that. If that's the case, I'll restate my objection to Palin thus: her deliberate inflaming of the passions of less educated people in the service of what she knows are bad causes shows that her ethics are substandard, and her dishonesty disqualifies her from weighing in on substantive controversies.

Palin's quoted tweets, by the way, read just like her speeches. They're brief, provocative remarks fired into the air to rouse her supporters, but that turn out to be nonsensical. They read like bumper stickers an artificial intelligence program would have churned out, if the AI were optimized for stringing boilerplate phrases together without regard for cogency.

Hmm. An AI ... I wonder ...

Is Sarah Palin a rogue Eliza program?

Nah. Eliza makes more sense.