Stupid Is As Stupid Does - Part the Second

When I compared Palin and Hasselbeck to Lucy and Ethel, I thought I might be exaggerating. Now that I've forced myself to watch Hasselbeck open for Palin, I realize that I wasn't far off. Grab a bottle of Tums™ and watch the hilarity and hijinks.



Who the fuck wrote this opening for her? I was waiting for them to start stuffing chocolate bon-bons down their blouses.

And after the whole idiotic wardrobe kerfuffle, why would they bring it up again? Here's why:

Ensuring that news of the Republican National Committee's sartorial spending spree will remain in the headlines for at least one more news cycle, Sarah Palin on Sunday sounded off on the $150,000 wardrobe that was purchased for her in September, denouncing the report as "ridiculous" and declaring emphatically: "Those clothes, they are not my property."

A senior adviser to John McCain told CNN's Dana Bash that the comments about her wardrobe "were not the remarks we sent to her plane this morning." Palin did not discuss the wardrobe story at her rally in Kissimmee later in the day.

They completely ignored the McCain campaign's wishes to let sleeping dogs lie and not mention the $150,000 Nieman Marcus and Saks shopping spree and inserted it into their stump speech before getting bitchslapped and omitting it later on.

The View starts in 7 minutes. I've never said this before, but I can't wait to tune in and watch the fireworks, although I'm guessing that Behar and Goldberg will treat Hasselbeck with kid gloves for fear of making her cry again.

UPDATE (11:27am):

I was right. Barbara Walters took control of the first segment and they had a calm discussion about Hasselbeck's appearance, including the "accessories" line from her speech.

For those of you who couldn't stomach watching the video above, the line was, "I'm actually personally most impressed by her accessories. You know, like the flag pin that she wears in honor of her son and our military men and women fighting abroad... no they didn't list that accessory and its value in their reports, did they? You know why? Because they know it's priceless." (I just vomited a little in the back of my throat.)

Hasselbeck says she brought up the wardrobe "scandal" because she wanted to diffuse it and end it right then and there. Of course she didn't realize that the story was dying down and she only helped to keep it in the spotlight... which they did for yet another day by featuring it on The View.

Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar were very, shall we say, respectful and insisted that this was an issue not because it was sexist, as Hasselbeck claims, but because this is what people latch on to. Whoopi cited examples of Bill Clinton suits, Nancy Reagan's wardrobe, how people were deriding Hillary Clinton's wardrobe and that she couldn't dress well (which drew a smile from Hasselbeck if you were paying attention) and John Edwards' haircut.

Behar argued the point that Palin could have refused the clothing because of the fact that she is trying to portray herself as the Wal-Mart hockey mom. Walters didn't blame Palin, but the Republican National Committee for the shopping spree and since Palin has too many things to think about, clothes isn't one of them. Fair enough.

Can we drop this non story now? I'd rather concentrate on things like Palin's (and surrogates) touting of an "agreement to build" a $40 billion natural gas pipeline that hasn't been built, hasn't even started construction in fact, and has experts agreeing that it may never get done.