6.16.2010

Obama's speech: Geronimo hit NY Times dean's list again

The tiny following of this blog knows that Geronimo and Larned Jetmore like to see if they can smuggle politically incorrect observations into the NY Times commments section, and still get the editors to make it an Editor's Choice, by brute force of making sense.

This time, Geronimo swung for the fence, and offered a favorable comment about the widely reviled Sarah Palin. You may have heard of her.


You guessed it--the NY Times highlighted the comment. It was way down the list, #733, but they still read it and chose it. Coincidentally, same day, I met a screenwriter who'd worked on Gunsmoke, and wrote The Witness.

You want to know how English majors entertain themselves? That was a pretty good day in the land of serendipity.

733.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
Geronimo
California
June 16th, 2010
12:12 pm
Very surprising to see the contrast in direct-experience depth and credibility between Pres Obama's highly crafted performance, vs Sarah' Palin's fire-breathing rant on O'Reilly, where she talked about her fights with Big Oil, conveyed a lot of understanding about how their organizations drift off-pattern, fail in their management chain of command, and have so many layers that the execs may even think they're telling the truth, while the reality is the sum of a lot of corner-cutting. She was very conversant with the simultaneous and contradictory demands of 1) not trusting what Big Oil execs tell you, but confirming and pushing back on everything they assert, while 2) never letting that make you believe that you, as the government, are better qualified to do the job than they are.

Let's not forget that for decades, Todd Palin has been earning his living on a rig pretty darn close to what blew up. Thirty years or so of real=time stories from different crews, combined with the governor's meetings with the senior management of the companies where Todd was a peon, gave her a 360-degree perspective on oil company corporate culture that came across dramatically more credible than the president.

Never expected it, not a fan of Palin, wouldn't want her as president. But, I spent 40 years in technology R&D, where grand ideas are abundant, yet someone with a command of the facts always trumps the grand idea. It was simple tonight: Palin was more credible than the president. Never, ever thought I'd say that.
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