Sarah Palin Presides Over Turkey Murder: Station Conversation

Another week, another video of someone famous screwing up on the Internet. But what leads to the popularity of these videos — is it just schadenfreude or something deeper? Jill Weinberger and Liz Shannon Miller discuss in today’s Station Conversation!

Liz: Oh, good morning Jill! And what a good morning it is.

Jill: You seem very chipper today.

Liz: There’s something about watching someone make an awkward faux pas that puts a spring in my step.

Jill: It’s the schadenfreude. Very good with morning coffee.

Liz: Exactly. And today I woke to find that Sarah Palin’s mastery over the mainstream media continues to be subpar — after pardoning a turkey, she did a short interview right in front of a big turkey killing device.

Jill: Oh, Sarah. She’s so pretty.

Liz: In a presiding-over-turkey-genocide kind of way, yeah. The winter chill and poultry blood in the air gives her a natural blush.

Jill: I mean, there’s no doubt this is just dumb of her to have done. But most of the people having a conniption over her terrible slaughter-focused interview will be having several delicious servings of turkey come next Thursday, and it’s not like those turkeys committed hari kari for the honor of their people and the delight of American palates.

Liz: Wow, way to be a buzzkill. Next you’ll be telling me something like Miss Teen USA South Carolina not getting out an answer to a question isn’t comedy gold. It is awkward and cruel comedy gold that makes me feel guilty. But that only diminishes my laughter slightly.

Jill: Poor, dumb Miss Teen USA South Carolina. Sure, she’s an idiot, but that was a hard question for a beauty contest. In that, if you ask a Miss Teen USA candidate why 20 percent of Americans can’t find the country on a map, what the hell is she going to say? She can’t say it’s because our country has the worst educational progress of any developed nation, and she can’t just blame the citizens and say we live in a nation of idiots. Neither of those responses is going to scream “Patriotic and wholesome teen! USA! USA!” There’s no generic “I love world peace” answer to that question.

Jill: Wow. I am certainly on a kinder, gentler kick when it comes to inadvertent online video targets of scorn. Maybe it’s the season getting to me.

Liz: Wow. This is really weird. Let’s test some other online video trainwrecks, see if this is universal. Umm… David Hasselhoff drunk on the bathroom floor?

Jill: Drunken Hasselhoff is just sad and kind of gross. Although that re-edit of it into the Wendy’s ad was mean but still kind of funny. Plus it made me crave a hamburger. So I may have a weakness when it comes to malicious re-edits. I’m not proud.

Liz: Okay, then. Michael Richards using racial slurs?

Jill: Hmm… okay, I’m reaching here… Substance abuse issues combined with panicked-tanking-comedian-syndrome and a desperate desire to remain relevant to pop culture?

Liz: Okay. Star Wars Kid?

Jill: Star Wars Kid! The worst of all. Total humiliating private moment sold out to the universe. Although, again, I think some of the mashups are really funny. Apparently, my empathy and indignation are limited exclusively to first-generation works. I’m not as kind and gentle as we previously thought.

Liz: That’s good. I find that reassuring. For a while there it was like I didn’t even know you.

Jill: Yeah. But then again, there was a moment there when I felt like a much better person. That’s gone now.

Liz: I’ll be honest. I do have a lot of empathy for some of these people, but with the exception of Star Wars Kid, these are all examples of people who have actively put themselves in the public eye and been embarrassed as a result. I mean, that was the entire point of the Hasselhoff thing, as I recall — that he told his daughter to release the tape if he started drinking again.

Jill: True. I think the difference for me with the Palin and Miss Teen SC things is the proportion of the reaction in relation to the snafu. I mean, compared to other Palin stuff, this is kind of ho hum. And honestly, a beauty queen answering a stupid question stupidly?

Liz: I suppose that it’s all about the cultural zeitgeist surrounding each person. Like, for fans of watching people making mistakes, this video is just the latest episode in the Sarah Palin Screws Up On Camera Show.

Jill: My thing is just, yeah, things are mockworthy, and I enjoy mocking a LOT, but at what point to we turn into kind of bloodthirsty predators? Just the ease of online sharing makes everything bigger than it is, ’cause you just know that 30,000,000 people watched something. You don’t necessarily know that ALL of them are all, “HAHAHASTUPIDGIRLHAHAHA.”

But there is, in my opinion, at least one thing that is okay to mock ad infinitum. Celine Dion singing AC/DC.

Liz: She can crash onto her giant piles of money. No sympathy here.

You are right about the sharing — it does create this mob mentality that blows stuff out of proportion.

Jill: It’s like the one kid who gets pantsed at the talent show in third grade, exposing his SpiderMan underoos, and then everybody calls him Spidey until he graduates college.

Liz: The entire internet is just one big playground of mean kids, mainly because most of the people on the Internet were tortured by said mean kids in real life.

Jill: That’s true. Vengeance is ours! You’re on your own, Star Wars Kid!

Liz: I just hope that Star Wars Kid has a laptop of his own now and sits and watches and laughs all day long.

Jill: Star Wars Kid actually had to go away for a while. Like, AWAY away. I’m thinking he maybe quit the Internet. But it’s a nice thought. Maybe he just has fifteen monitors in his house running Palin and Miss Teen SC on loops all day long. And he laughs and laughs and eats cookies and is very very happy.

Liz: I like that.

Jill: I feel better now. ‘Course the turkeys are still on their own. But that was written in the book long before Sarah Palin came along. November, not a good month for turkeys, however you slice it.

Liz: But a pretty good month for online video. Let us give thanks.

Jill: Amen, sistah.