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Watching Sarah Palin being interviewed is always a little like watching an incoherent art-student film or something from a William S. Burroughs fantasy. It obviously comes from a completely different planet in a different quadrant of the universe.

For example, among the things you learned by watching Palin on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night were the following nuggets:

-- Palin still is unhappy with the McCain campaign for not having smeared Barack Obama enough with phony association-game stuff about Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright -- you know, issues Americans really cared about.

-- She seems to have been watching a lot of Glenn Beck, though, because she practically repeats Beck's favorite talking points about Obama's supposedly nefarious associations.

-- Palin says "it wasn't negative campaigning and it wasn't off-base to call someone out on their associations." Hmmmm. Well, when Max Blumenthal and I did just that with Palin over her lengthy far-right associations, she completely freaked out.

-- Obama is "dithering" in Afghanistan. And evidently, if Palin were president, the only people she would listen to regarding the use of troops would be generals. Civilian advisers? Fuggedaboutit.

-- The reason she "blew" the question in the Katie Couric interview about what she read? She was irked by Couric's "arrogance." Apparently it's arrogant of media folk to ask national politicians softball questions that every other politico on the planet can readily answer.

-- What does she read? The first publication she cites is NewsMax. Yep, that NewsMax: The folks who, in the late 1990s, were peddling "Y2K apocalypse" theories and Clinton "New World Order" conspiracy theories. The same NewsMax that recently published a piece extolling the virtues of a military coup in order to remove Obama.

One thing that I think will become obvious in the coming weeks: Palin will not risk any more Katie Couric interviews. She will be completely ensconced only with friendly interviewers like Hannity. Oprah will have been her most risky interview.

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Do ya think? Not only did Anita Dunn take a really strong stand for President Obama over the Roger Ailes run FOX Noise Propaganda Network, she also called out the conservative-teabagger movement in its entirety.

Dunn: A week ago many conservative commentators had been rejoicing in the fact, celebrating in the fact that the United States didn't get the Olympics, one week later they seem to be somewhat bitter at the fact that an American President was awarded the Nobel peace prize. So I think people will draw their own conclusions abut the reflexive negativity on the part of some commentators regardless of what happens...

Dunn held back no punches and stated fact. That's nice to see.
Howard Kurtz was pretty comical with his questions, but he was trying to provide some pushback, I guess.

KURTZ: You were quoted this week in Time Magazine as saying of Fox News, it's opinion journalism masquerading as news. What do you mean, "masquerading"?

See what I mean? But he did have to ask that.

DUNN: Well, you know, Howie, I think if we went back a year ago to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that, you know, it was a time that this country was in two wars, that we'd had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election, what you would have seen would have been that the biggest story, the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and something called Acorn, when the reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.

Yep, that sums up FOX Noise. Then she delivered the knockout punch.

Think Progress writes:

Last month, President Obama appeared on five Sunday morning talk shows, including Univision’s Al Punto. He rejected Fox, however. Dunn revealed this morning that Obama did not appear on Fox because of its reflexive, partisan opposition to Obama. Obama will go on Fox in the future, Dunn said, but when he goes on, “he’s going on to debate the opposition.”

And then after Kurtz asked her if the president would go on FOX ever again, she said this too:

Dunn: That when he goes on FOX, he understands he's not going on, it really isn't a news network at this point, he's going to debate the opposition and that's fine.

The opposition, I loved that.

Howard asked someone from FOX to appear on Reliable Sources, but they refused and instead issued their usual statement. They'd rather have BillO speak to his audience than have anybody debate the facts -- especially, of course, on another network. FOX gives their usual argument that while they do have news, people really rely on their opinion programs. That's stunning really. MSNBC has their lefty hosts too, but during the day, you'll hear all the news and not MSNBC's opinion version of the news.

Kurtz did his best to find a few reporters that he thought weren't corrupted by Ailes so he mentioned Major Garrett. Do you think he's fair...Please say he's fair...Oh please oh please oh please. And Anita then calmly explained why they didn't go on Chris Wallace. Good for her.

And I told Major quite honestly that we had told Chris Wallace that having fact-checked an administration guest on his show -- something I've never seen a Sunday show do. And, Howie, you can show me examples of where Sunday shows have fact-checked previous weeks' guests, and I'd be happy to see those. We asked Chris, for an example, where he had done that to anybody besides somebody from the administration in the year 2009. And we're still waiting to hear from him.

She didn't stop there.

Dunn: Let's be realistic here, Howie. They are widely viewed as, you know, a part of the Republican Party. Take their talking points, put them on the air. Take their opposition research, put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network they way CNN is.

Kurtz did his best to try and get her to differentiate between the Beck's show and their little news nuggets, and she wouldn't back down. Where's the John Ensign coverage? she asks Howie. Hmmm, you won't see it much -- if at all -- on FOX. And that's only one example out of thousands.

h/t ThoughtProfiles's:

A juxtaposition of the past and current use of McCarthyism.

A must watch. They did an excellent job with this mash up. Maybe someone could get George Will to watch it.

In tonight's debate, John McCain seems set to "go there" on Ayers, goaded into it by Obama's plainly saying that McCain had until now been too chicken to say it to Obama's face.

It's quite possible Obama has a range of rebuttals ready. It's not as if he doesn't have plenty of examples of McCain's dodgy friendships to choose from. He's also probably hoping McCain loses that famous temper, messily, on live TV in front of millions - the obvious followup being ads of McCain snarling and the simple question "would you trust this man with America's nukes?"

But McCain also has another problem with "going there" - sheer hypocrisy from his campaign. As Bill Scher points out, Rick Davis penned a Boston Globe op-ed back in 2004 in which he urged Bush and Kerry to pressure their supporters not to engage in smear campaigns. He wrote as campaign manager for McCain's failed primary bid, which crashed after a Bush camp smear about McCain having fathered "an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge."

It's not necessary, however, for a smear to be true to be effective. The most effective smears are based on a kernel of truth and applied in a way that exploits a candidate's political weakness.

...Campaigns have various ways of dealing with smears. They can refute the lies, or they can ignore them and run the risk of the smear spreading. But "if you're responding, you're losing." Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.

Back then, Davis described such smear campaigns, designed to keep voters from considering candidates stances on the issues, the "blackest of the dark arts". Don't you just love the smell of sheer hypocrisy in the morning? McCain's connection to his lobbyist chums are certainly far closer than Obama's to Ayers.

We got a preview of how tonight might play during the primary debates:

Crossposted from Newshoggers