In 2006, when the wireless and mobile technology boom was in full blossom, I did an interview with The Futurist in which I prophesied that we would look back on the Bush administration with nostalgia--the good old days when we could admire or admonish presidents on policy, vetoes, and executive decisions. My point was, that truth and fact would cease to matter much in a marketing culture thanks to datamining and GPS and the seamless ego-based messages programmed into the commercial gadgets on our person that appeal 24/7 to our consumer tastes. The Palin-Couric interview is a prime example of that. Some of her answers were on point; more than a few were jumbled to the point of being pathetic, as excerpted here and in a link I will provide below with Jack Cafferty so you can see how it was said on air. But before we endorse or condemn Palin, affirming our beliefs, pro or con, let's view all this from another perspective--the journalistic one. The Independent states that the author of the piece, David Osborne, one of two Independent reporters on "the campaign trail" in the United States, "reports" on the Palin interview. Where's the dateline then? His hotel room in New York City? Where's the sourcing? In his mind? If Palin's flubs are so apparent to everyone, here and elsewhere (and to me, as well), why not do a little reporting? In a world of affirmation rather than information, people concerned about governance keep waiting for citizens to wake up to the news with their coffee, and when they don't, we wonder why. Answer: We're living in an age of distraction, of which Palin appears emblematic ( http://www.wfs.org/Dec-janfiles/Futureview_JF08.htm ). We hear what we want to hear, and literally tune out what we don't; then we blame the messenger--the lazy or biased journalist--rather than using those same digital tools to find data to inform us (admittedly, a difficult matter; try getting a transcript of the CBS interview and see all the fabricated ones posing as the real thing [as if it needed a bigger dose of the surreal]). Access the CNN clip of Cafferty talking about this same interview that David Osborne does here. Look at it objectively focusing on Cafferty and Couric and their body language rather than Palin and imagine what a viewer who dislikes journalism sees and hears. In the Couric interview, when she presses Palin for a response on examples of McCain opposing regulation, the GOP VP hopeful says, "I'll try to find you some, and I'll bring them to you." A journalist sees this as evasion; a voter these days, as neighborly. Now switch to Obama and this unbelievably professorial statement during the debate with McCain: "In the meantime, we've got challenges, for example, with China, where we are borrowing billions of dollars. They now hold a trillion dollars' worth of our debt. And they are active in countries like -- in regions like Latin America, and Asia, and Africa. They are -- the conspicuousness of their presence is only matched by our absence, because we've been focused on Iraq." When I heard this trochaic phrase--"the conspicuousness of their presence is only matched by our absence"--my first thought was, well, he's lost most of the American public at this point, probably because he still reads. I've covered dozens of candidates and celebrities just like Palin in the course of my journalism career. She falls in the extrovert category: Give her a crowd of adoring supporters, and time to organize her thoughts to appeal to them, and she's unbeatable. Put her one on one with someone who not only reads but reports, and we get English as a second language translated into Greek and then back into English again. The question is, in her upcoming debate with Joe Biden, known for putting his foot in mouth when it matters most, such as his comment about Obama being "articulate, bright and clean," will Palin falter in front of a live audience of the adoring and scornful?