{"id":10060,"date":"2008-09-28T20:14:07","date_gmt":"2008-09-29T01:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/?p=10060"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:53:19","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:53:19","slug":"is-palin-pulling-a-felson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2008\/09\/28\/is-palin-pulling-a-felson\/","title":{"rendered":"is Palin pullin’ a Felson?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> . . “Fast Eddie” Felson and “Slow Sarah” Palin<\/strong> . . \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

T<\/strong><\/em>wo of the big stories on the Sunday morning tv news shows — the much-lamented death of Paul Newman<\/a> and the much-savaged interview of Sarah Palin<\/a> — blurred for me today. <\/strong><\/em>Talk of Newman’s career brought to mind his famous character “Fast Eddie” Felson from the 1961 movie “The Hustler<\/em><\/a>,” and the encore “The Color of Money<\/em><\/a>” (1986). And, all the commentary on Palin’s faltering performance in her one-on-one with Katie Kouric<\/a> reminded me that the Great Pre-Debate Low Expectations Game is in full swing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> H<\/em>ustlers are willing to lose a bit to lower expectations and lull their opponents into overconfidence.\u00a0 Sarah Palin probably plays a pretty good game of pool, and she just might be pullin’ a Felson in anticipation of her really big-stakes match next Thursday, in St. Louis, at the Vice Presidential Debate<\/a> with Sen. Joe Biden.\u00a0 She’ll be heading to the podium next Friday with expectations lower than a snake’s belly, and heading toward the level of a gopher’s behind.\u00a0 If Gov. Palin convinces the nation she can either <\/em>walk or<\/em> chew-gum, she will be hailed as passing muster and vastly out-performing the predictions of pundits across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

B<\/em>eating the odds and expectations seems to be what the debates are all about in the media.\u00a0 Sarah Palin will surely surpass all expectations — perhaps rising to the heady heights of mediocrity.\u00a0 Joe Biden’s my candidate, and I sure hope he isn’t underestimating his Republican opponent.\u00a0 If Joe’s feeling cocky, he probably should watch the YouTube videos of the First Game<\/a> and the Final Game<\/a> between Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats.<\/p>\n

The TinyURL for this post is http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/PalinFelson . For more, see the Daily Kos<\/em> posting<\/a>, “watch out for the Palin expectations trap” Sept. 28, 2008; and find a video of the entire 2006 Alaska Gubernatorial Debate at The New Argument<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Speaking of Debates, don’t miss our finger-puppet “presidential debate redux<\/a>,” which asks a lot of questions Barack forgot.]<\/p>\n

update<\/em><\/strong> (October 3, 2008): Darn right. She didn’t run the table, but the oft-winking Gov. Palin exceeded all those low expectations and stays in contention for the big prize. (See New York Times<\/em>, “The Vice-Presidential Debate<\/a>“) As David Brooks said today, in “The Palin Rebound<\/a>,” “By the end of the debate, most Republicans were not crouching behind the couch, but standing on it. The race has not been transformed, but few could have expected as vibrant and tactically clever a performance as the one Sarah Palin turned in Thursday night.”<\/p>\n

grown wild
\nthe spot where I buried
\nthe last of my pets<\/p>\n

flickering buzz
\nof the pool hall sign
\nsummer night<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026 by John Stevenson<\/a> –\u00a0 The Heron\u2019s Nest<\/em> (December 2007<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"\" p.s.<\/em><\/strong> Paul Newman has long been my favorite actor from my parents’ generation — even before I could relate to his character in Nobody’s Fool<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 The f\/k\/a<\/em> Gang is going to eschew further posting this evening and curl up on the futon with a tape of his 1982 movie “The Verdict<\/a><\/em>,” which is near the top of every “best films about lawyers” list I’ve ever seen (e.g.<\/em>, our prior post<\/a>).\u00a0 You will indeed be missed, Mr. Newman.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . “Fast Eddie” Felson and “Slow Sarah” Palin . . Two of the big stories on the Sunday morning tv news shows — the much-lamented death of Paul Newman and the much-savaged interview of Sarah Palin — blurred for me today. Talk of Newman’s career brought to mind his famous character “Fast Eddie” Felson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[555,1414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-haiku-or-senryu","category-qs-quickies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-2Cg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12165,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10060\/revisions\/12165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}