I had quite a laugh about that. I mean, yeah, if the President of France were calling, wouldn't someone have told her in advance? Good thing she didn't gush about France too much, since her side really doesn't like that country.

She doesn't know who's prime minister of Canada. I guess that's no surprise, but still.

She either agrees with Sarkozy that Quebec is proximal to Alaska (something like 2000 miles away at its closest point) and pretends to know who he's talking about when he says that someone (who isn't the Premier of Quebec) is the Prime Minister of Quebec.

I guess the first can be explained away by not wanting to embarrass Sarkozy and the second...

This is a non-issue, all in all, but if Palin had any credibility left with her I-can-see-it-from-my-house foreign policy credentials it would've been shot today.

"Meanwhile that's one seriously incompetent staff she's got. No one thought to call the French Embassy and check this out?"

You ain't kidding. I mean when all was said and done they didn't really get her to say anything absurdly stupid or offensive, but they weren't really pushing that hard, just sorta toying with her. What if they had done it more like a Borat or Bruno style interview where they really push you to say something offensive? Its possible that she wouldn't fall into the trap, but what if she did? What if they had her on tape saying something racist or perhaps agreeing with something racist that the callers said?

They're really lucky that those guys were just calling to mess around and not try to get something juicy out of the call because it could've been very ugly. What the hell was her staff thinking? I mean if someone calls me saying the president of a foreign country is calling, I'm gonna do some due diligence before I actually believe it. Granted, I'm not a VP candidate and a foreign leader is unlikely to call me, but still.

Wow. Just wow.

A few jokes you might have missed:
-both the name of our Prime Minister and the name of the premier of Quebec were wrong;
-Johnny Halliday is a French pop star (who now lives in L.A., at least part of the time, if I'm not mistaken);
-the title of the song that Carla Bruni "wrote" for Sarah Palin translates as "lipstick on a pig" (actually, a sow, to be more exact).

There were a few more howlers that I can't remember.

She didn't recognize that the names of both the PM of Canada and the Premier of Quebec were wrong. The French lines were pretty funny too - Carla Bruni's song title was Lipstick on a Pig...

the title of the song that Carla Bruni "wrote" for Sarah Palin translates as "lipstick on a pig" (actually, a sow, to be more exact)

True, though the exact word used there, "cochonne", is clearly used in context to mean "dirty girl".

Not buying, here. More like the Masked Avengers are spoofing us. Did they get Tina Fey to play the part, or is there another stand-in doing SP?

On the other hand?

Funny either way.

I never thought I'd say it, but I feel a little sorry for her. I've never been a fan of prank calls, because I can easily imagine how I'd respond in the same situation. Honestly, what was she supposed to say to the guy? It's not like "Sarkozy" was talking policy and expected her to do the same. Indeed, he was saying all sorts of crazy stuff, and she seemed to be doing her best to humor him for a lot of the call. Assuming she actually knew the prime minister of Canada (a reach, I know), was she going to correct him over the phone? After the reveal at the end, I actually thought she handled the first few seconds pretty well. Certainly I'd have been using multiple 4-letter words at that point.
Lest we get too smug, I can easily imagine an analogous conversation with Obama, who'd also probably smile and nod at some of the crazy stuff.

Having said all of that, I'll agree that it takes some majorly incompetent staff to drop the ball like that, and I'd assume a few heads will roll over this one (assuming this whole call is legit in the first place).

"Meanwhile that's one seriously incompetent staff she's got. No one thought to call the French Embassy and check this out?

I guess they're not that into vetting...

"Meanwhile that's one seriously incompetent staff she's got. No one thought to call the French Embassy and check this out?"

You can't really put all this on shoddy staff work. These guys have been quite successful at talking their way past call screeners.

Including per Wikipedia
Queen Elizabeth, Jacques Chirac, Bono, Mick Jagger, Bill Gates, Formula One driver Jacques Villeneuve, and Donald Trump.

Masked Avengers wikipedia link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masked_Avengers

"You can't really put all this on shoddy staff work. These guys have been quite successful at talking their way past call screeners.

Including per Wikipedia
Queen Elizabeth, Jacques Chirac, Bono, Mick Jagger, Bill Gates, Formula One driver Jacques Villeneuve, and Donald Trump."

Wow, I have to say, I don't think they were particularly funny, but thats pretty impressive.

And Ari makes some decent points, considering how weird it was, she didn't come off terribly - I mean even if she did know the correct names of the Canadian political leaders, it would've been awkward for her to correct the French Prime minister over the phone assuming she really believed he was the French prime minister. The thing that amazes me is that this was a recipe for disaster for Palin. As I wrote earlier, if these guys were a bit edgier, as opposed to just goofballs, they might have tried to do the Sascha Baron Cohen thing and get her to say something terribly offensive. Had she done that, I don't think she'd be garnering a whole lotta sympathy right now, no matter what.

The other French comment they made after the hunting from helicopters was something like "tuer les bébé phoques”, which translates to "kill baby seals".

i think it was real because: wow... the poor girl was ready to cry. She says: "have we been pranked'" and then a pause and when her voice comes back asking for the call letters its shaking. I can just here her thinking "i just blew it". I felt so sad for her. She is playing such a high stakes game.

Fluxisrad:

The meaning of "cochonne" just struck me this morning. Chapeau !

Not buying, here. More like the Masked Avengers are spoofing us. Did they get Tina Fey to play the part, or is there another stand-in doing SP?

The call is real; Palin put out a statement about it.

if the President of France were calling, wouldn't someone have told her in advance?

Listening to the call, I'm pretty sure they did expect the call. The pranksters apparently spent several days setting this up, which makes it all the more shocking that the Palin people fell for it. I mean, they had days to check it out!

Could it be that Palin's McCain team handlers helped set her up? I mean if they think she's a whack job and an diva, maybe they figured they would have some fun before throwing her under the bus?

The thing that gets me is that these guys sound nothing like Sarkozizi. I instantly knew that their voices were not that of the President of the 5th Republic, simply from watching interviews with him on television.

If Sarah Palin had half the foreign policy experience that I did (and I'm a librarian!), she would have known this was a prank. The woman can't tell the difference between a Montreal radio clown and the President of France. She also couldn't name Jean Charest or Stephen Harper, even though Alaska is much closer to Canada than Russia!

It's true because her campaign released a statement afterward acknowledging it.

"The Palin campaign issued a statement in response.

"Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in being targeted by these pranksters. C'est la vie," she said."

I felt sorry for her, like I did when Heart, Bon Jovi, Survivor and most especially Van Halen said she couldn't use their tunes.
Sheesh, she gave her oldest son Van for a middle name in their honor.
Poor ditzy eighties chick with her mall bangs and big hair.
The reason this prank worked is not so much that she is dumb...but she is intellectually impoverished. There were all sorts of codes she didnt get in the convo.
The only reference that I have found to any reading she has done is to liking the "Little House" books when she was young.
That is probably what has largely informed her "Big House on the Prairie" thinking about the real and unreal America.

More evidence of staff incompetence: clearly, no French-speaking Palin aide was listening in, in case of a need for clarification or translation. If one had been listening, the prank would have been blatantly obvious early on from the parts in French -- if not from the accents. These guys faked a thick French accent in English using North American English vowel sounds that would come naturally to a bilingual Quebecker, but not likely a Frenchman.

The fact that no one is surprised that she sounds so idiotic says it all. The woman has no credibility. My grandfather often told me that fools are easily fooled.
You betcha.

I think she's an idiot and wouldn't dream of voting for anyone other than Obama. Still, I kind of felt sorry for her on this. It's her staff's screw-up, not hers. Yeah, she was incurious and said mostly dumb stuff as you'd expect, but what could she do except be polite? Just in case it actually was Sarkozy, I don't think she could have challenged him to prove himself once the call got through. I think Biden's take was the best: the same people who vetted her must vet her phone calls. Aside from that, though, I don't see this as a strike against her personally.

The French accent the guy used who was playing Sarkozy was just so phony. He sounded more like Peter Seller's as Inspector Clouseau. The baby seal hunt was preposterous. How could anyone fall for this prank? Oh yeah, Palin is clueless and in her own little world.

What I find most interesting is that she decided she was on a first name basis with the President of France about 20 seconds into the call.

She did a decent job being inoffensive but she had nothing to talk about to him about. She clearly has no knowledge of international affairs to draw from that she could use in a conversation.
And there's no way she would have kept going with the conversation if she knew who the prime minister of Canada was - she'd have known it was a prank, chuckled, and proceeded to ask them who they were or what radio station they were from.

I felt sorry for her on a personal level, but it's the kind of thing I feel when Joe the Plumber is clearly way out of his depth and being manipulated. It would have hurt her campaign if we didn't ALREADY know how utterly unqualified she is. Yeah, she sounded approachable, but she's thoroughly ignorant on a level that staffers can't make up for. People aspiring for the job she seeks should never be starstruck, no matter who is on the other end of the line.

Sarkozy's English is notoriously horrendous. Go to google.fr and type "Sarkozy anglais" to see the clips!

Also, the lipstick on a pig joke was priceless.

Aw, the video there doesn't work, but the audio is still online at an assortment of places

whoops, that should have included a link to the audio here:

http://www.entertonement.com/clips/38067/Sarah-Palin-Gets-Pranked-On-a-Radio-Show

whoops, that should have included a link to the audio here: http://www.wow-powerleveling-wow.com