Tina Brown is the very avatar of elite MSM opinion. So when the Daily Beast creator, late of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, derides Sarah Palin as ignorant, it's safe to assume she's expressing a view harbored in many a liberal media breast.
On today's Morning Joe, while admitting a grudging regard for her appeal, Brown claimed Palin's confidence is based on "total ignorance."
Hosts Joe Scarborough [who last week took his own shot at Sarah's smarts] and Mika Brzezinski, if not precisely leaping to Palin's defense, did respond with some skepticism.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: We saw some fascinating polls that actually showed Barack Obama and Sarah Palin fairly close, meeting, the LA Times says, meeting somewhere in the 40s. Do we all have a blind spot about Sarah Palin?
TINA BROWN: I think what people are responding to is that great sort of vitality, confidence. It doesn't matter that the confidence is based on a kind of total ignorance. The fact is, it's a vitality about it that people like. A kind of unequivocal, in-the-present, raw visceral quality that she has. And I think the reason that people are responding quite so profoundly is that we do have a president who does start to feel rarefied, unpassionate, with no bottom line. And I think the sort of juxtaposition of those two things is making the excitement about Palin perhaps even greater.
SCARBOROUGH: You say based on, quote, total ignorance. What do you mean?
BROWN: I mean that I think that it doesn't really matter that she doesn't know much about anything. She has this --
SCARBOROUGH: Do you know that?
BROWN: Well, she has this--everything that I've seen, read, watched, it doesn't seem to me that she has much substance to any of her arguments. It's really just about hating the others in a way. But it works for people who almost don't really care. I think they just feel, she's an alternative, everything else is too confusing. We're living in a very confusing time. Nobody really understands health care. Nobody really understands immigration. Nobody understands anything. And she just says, you know, [slaps her hands] I don't like it, I'm against it, no taxing, all these things. Very clear, black and white. And it --
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Tina, with all due respect, don't you think there's a possibility the media is misreading her message and how she translates with people? Something we were talking about earlier.
BROWN: I think they underestimate how profound the connection is. I don't think it's just a celebrity connection. I think that profound connection is about the great discontent Americans rightly feel and how they've been stiffed. And so Sarah Palin is beginning to be the candidate of 'you were stiffed,' and it's a populism she could ride very far.
