Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Opinion

Robert Schlesinger

The Sarah Palin Broken TelePrompTer Myth

September 04, 2008 05:54 PM ET | Robert Schlesinger | Permanent Link | Print

Reader Comments

RE: teleprompter

That last lint "...Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, or Clinton might have." There was a reported incident where the teleprompter broke/malfunctioned during a Clinton speech (I am not too sure about the other 3) and he continued to give his speech off of memory.

xO

All Good Realationship should start out with a LIE

Consider how insecure one must be to lie about a false teleprompter malfunction at the RNC during a rally in Canton Ohio. How insignificant is it that you can see Russia from your house, or stop over for refueling on the boarder and say you entered into Iraq? As insignificant as the shallow purchase of a tanning bed to look good and the paranoia that prompts one to say it's because you have S.A.D - a very serious illness. So is Sara Palin saying to the American people, she has a mental disorder caused by seasonal depression? Or is she saying she is not on medication as prescribed by most physicians who treat S.A.D?

She continues today with more lies, stating she will show financial accountability of money spent so the American people will know where their money is going when she is VP, but as it stands now, she refuses to show her income tax statements as Biden, McCain and Obama has already done, or show any documents or co-operate on the bi-partisan investigation of troopergate.

But wait! Surely she knows even more about the world financial market than Obama or Biden. After all, she's been living inside her Alaskan Igloo running a densely populated city Government for 20 months now. That is, before being plucked out the gem of America’s heartland (remote Alaska)for her cosmetic appeal to update John McCain's antiquated Washington insider image.

Ask John about his friends, the Keaton 5 back in 1989, he knows a thing or two about finances too.

Teleprompter

The teleprompter is just a tool to aid memory and presentation. It does not put words in speakers mouths - it just presents a pre-written script to them. The prompter follows the speaker and not the speaker the prompter (my wife runs a premier teleprompter company). The teleprompter cannot be held responsibly for what Sarah Palin said good, nor bad. It seems that Palin's teleprompter may not have been on the ball if they were getting ahead of the speaker (possibly they had a bad audio feed or something and could not hear her properly - who knows), but that is as far as their responsibility goes; they did not write the speech and they did not improvise on it.

Why are you changing the subject?

The issue is not that Palin didn't give an extemporaneous speech, or that you don't think Obama is a good extemporaneous speaker. The issue is that Palin lied about the teleprompter malfunction. It became part of the Palin mythology that began with her acceptance speech at the RNC.

Let me repeat for clarity: the problem is not the teleprompter or its use. The problem is the lie.

"What he means is..."

Ummm, "Wes of NC," Truman and Nixon were not Democrats.

Haters

Why all the Obama hate. This article had nothing to do with him. He has done good without a teleprompter. On Bill O. Obama wasn't given a chance to respond before Bill started yelling. You try to get your point across while a crazy, overrated, conservative idiot is interupting you with moronic ideas.

uh

To be honest, I don't think that's even worth blogging about. Find more interesting topics

Its either 1 of 2 things

Its either a flat out lie, and I don't know why she feels the need to lie to the American pubic that the teleprompter was broken whenit wasn't. Or the republican party assumes the American people will be so enchanted that she can speak off the cuff. The answer is that it is both.

Can someone please explain the reasoning?

re: What he means is . . .

To the tool who wrote the comment below, when was Nixon a Democrat? I don't remember that . . .

What he means is...

he THINKS a Democrat would have done it better. However, I've seen what happens to Obama when he doesn't have a teleprompter, and we'd have seen a lot of "Uhhhs" if this had happened to him.

to mit of NH

Regan had the seciond largerst tax increase next to Bush 41.

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Robert Schlesinger is a deputy editor at U.S. News and World Report and oversees all opinion editorial content. He is the author of White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters.

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