Dan Calabrese: Very Bright Moron Nate Silver’s Advice to Sarah Palin

Yesterday Nate Silver, some uninformed clown with whom I was unfamiliar, wrote a piece in which he, ostensibly, dispensed some sage and much needed advice to Governor Palin. In reality, his piece amounted to nothing more than a standard Palin hit-piece laced with most of the discredited mainstream media talking points against her thinly veiled as fatherly advice from someone far more knowledgeable than she. Presumably, were Governor Palin to heed the advice of this self described "rational progressivist", whatever that is, any obstacles that remained in her path would suddenly be removed and she would be free to move on to bigger and better things.

I thought about fisking this piece of...er...journalism yesterday but the constraints of time prevented me from doing so. Fortunately, Dan Calabrese, to whom we have linked many times in the past, has done so today in a piece for the North Star National. Here are a few excerpts from Calabrese's excellent smack down of Nate Silver:

I hate to pick on Nate Silver, although I don’t hate it that much, but every once in a while someone writes a piece that is so steeped in everything wrong with “smart” conventional thinking, it simply has to be used as an object lesson.

[...]

Among other things, Silver explains to us that Palin “just ain’t that bright.” OK. By contrast, I would glean from this piece that Silver is a very bright moron, which is to say that he has a very intricate understanding of notions that are wrong.

[...]

Nate, Sarah Palin knows you think the manner in which she wrote her notes is dumb. She doesn’t care, and she’s mocking you for caring about something so trivial. Just like a very bright moron would.

Somebody needed to tell Palin that using the term “death panels” was probably not going to help her personally at a time when she was trying to demonstrate to her critics that she could be credible about policy.

Um, Nate, do you ever pay any attention to the actual development of policy? Or do you only pay attention to politics and MSM headlines? You do know that Palin’s statement was correct, don’t you? You do know that the operative passage was quietly (although not quietly enough) stripped from the bill after Palin’s comments, don’t you? You do know that Palin’s statement about the death panels helped galvanize the opposition that appears to have brought down the bill. Don’t you?

Oh, that stupid Sarah Palin! How can super-smart people like Nate Silver take her seriously on policy? How, oh how? Well, there is the fact that the actual policy in question is now going nowhere, thanks in no small part to Sarah Palin talking about death panels. That might be regarded as a serious policy achievement. But not by the likes of very bright morons like Nate Silver, who know that conventional wisdom scoffed at Palin for what she said, but don’t understand what actually happened as a result of what she said.

The rest of Silver’s piece can be summed up as sounding like it was written by a college sophomore who fancies himself as the next Bob Shrum, which, come to think of it, is a very moronic thing to hope to be, in a bright sort of way.

But here is the key fact that Silver is completely incapable of ever understanding, let alone appreciating:

Sarah Palin doesn’t care what he thinks. Sarah Palin doesn’t care what the well-connected think. Sarah Palin doesn’t care what people like Joe Scarborough think, he being the former congressman and MSNBC host who declared today that “top conservatives” are upset with Palin for supposedly not studying the issues, even though she actually receives briefings daily on key issues.

Read the rest of Calabrese's piece here. It's a great read and well worth your time.