I heard Charlie Gibson's commencement address at the elite New York high school, the Dalton School, last June. The tone was: aw shucks but I went to Princeton; I'm just an ordinary guy, I did poorly in economics, but I'm no dummy either. I had the impression that he did the address partly because his wife was lately head of school at Spence. Almost as fancy as Dalton. The same community. Upper East Side New York. And Gibson's on the Princeton board.
I believe that Gibson secretly judges Sarah Palin, as well he should. That is the tone of the interchanges I've seen so far. A quiet gotcha. He seeks to make clear that she has no clue what the Bush Doctrine is, and he absolutely nails the fact that she will not second guess Israel's prerogative to fold spindle mutilate Iran. He asks her about this three times and gets the same rote answer, We can't second-guess Israel. Scary. He seems silently appalled. He pushes her around a little on Iraq too. I have to believe that Gibson has quiet elitist prejudices (i.e., snobberies) that are coming to bear, and a good thing, too. This woman's a dope on foreign policy, hasn't got a clue. And she made inquiries about banning books at the Wasilla library. If you love education as much as Gibson does, this is scary. In his quiet way, he's putting his body down.
