THAT DAMN TURKEY INTERVIEW: SORRY, I'M NOT APPALLED

I'm no Sarah Palin fan, but my reaction to the local TV interview she gave with turkey slaughtering taking place in the background is more or less like John Cole's:

While I can think of better photo ops, this is kind of a silly uproar. How exactly do folks think their food gets to them? Your t-bone is not born in shrink wrap.

This isn't killing wolves from airplanes, a so-called sport that seems to appeal to out-of-state macho-man wannabes. This, for a lot of us, is dinner.

And Tim Blair has a point: what's taking place is death, but there's no visible blood.

As an adult, you have to think about this as part of the process of deciding whether it's morally OK to eat meat. You can't pretend it doesn't exist. (I eat meat, so I've made my decision; I certainly understand coming to the other conclusion.)

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It almost seemed possible at first that this was a calculated act on Palin's part -- and if so, it would be the one moment in which she actually almost lived up to her acolytes' hype: She lives in Alaska and you don't. She can field-dress a moose and you can't. You understand things that can be learned by sitting a desk, you citified pantywaist, while she understands things that are elemental.

Except that she's goofy and seemingly oblivious through the whole thing. The Sarah Palin we've seen for the past three months never got on her moral high horse without telling us, in no uncertain terms, that she was on it. If this is a subtle dig at her opponents, it's really subtle. And her spokesperson says she's "unhappy about it."

If she were smart, she'd use this -- turn it back around on her critics -- as a way of firing up her base once again. But she's not that smart. She knows how to vent wingnut talking points, but she still doesn't know how to deploy them strategically. She had a chance here, and she blew it.

Conclusion: she's still not ready for prime time; someone who was ready for prime time either wouldn't have done this interview in this setting at all or would have turned it to her advantage.