“More Power to the C Student”
April 27, 2011
That could be Sarah’s 2012 campaign slogan, previewed last night in her interview with Greta Van Susteren, FOX News’ resident Scientologist.
“What the heck is wrong with asking the President of the United States to disclose what his college thesis was, what some of the Harvard Law Review papers were that he wrote? I don’t care about his grades. I don’t care if he was a C student. You know, more power to the C student. What I care about is what goes into his thinking today?…A lot of that could be reflected in the writings that he produced as a college and a grad student.”
That got me wondering about college theses. Has anyone ever asked Sarah for hers? Do you suppose the University of Idaho required her to write one before awarding her a degree? Wouldn’t it be fun to read that?
Do you suppose Sarah’s college writings offer clues into the roots of what passes for her “thinking” today?
Forget Trig’s birth certificate: Trump should demand to see Sarah’s college thesis. He could send his investigators straight from Hawaii to Idaho.
William Shatner could give it a live reading, with bongo drum and bass accompaniment.
Posted in Donald Trump, Joe McGinniss, Obama, Sarah Palin, The Rogue, Uncategorized | 
Tags: idaho university, scientology, van susteren
37 Responses to ““More Power to the C Student””
I think you are giving her too much credit. I am not sure she really graduated from college. Now, it took me 25 years to get my first degree, and I am not proud of that, but it’s the truth. I don’t think Ms. Palin could ever speak the truth. She can’t remember which tale she tells, so she just keeps on telling tales.
In any of your research, did you get information about Sarah Palin’s college career? Her grades, transcripts, did she really graduate?
What a fool Palin is. She is so jealous of this BLACK president. He is everything she isn’t. Right Sarah?
Most undergrads don’t write a thesis unless they are shooting for an honors degree. I think we can rule that out.
This coming from a woman who attended four different colleges just to get her Journalism degree not to mention she has two adult children without a college education or serious career aspirations. She’s bitter beyond words and her attacks on Katie Couric who has used her Journalism degree to make a positive impact eats away at her.
I’m so ready for this charlatan to fade away. John McCain needs to be kicked in the backside repeatedly for releasing this mess onto the lower 48.
Since you mention college, here’s a comment I made on other blogs today. The article is by Jesse Kornbluth.
Babygate goes to Harvard: Sully is Harvard Magazine cover story.
http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/worlds-best-blogger?page=all
Relentless Heterodoxy
ANDREW SULLIVAN DID NOT SUPPORT John McCain in 2008. The torture
flip-flop would have been enough of a reason. Then McCain added Sarah
Palin to the ticket. The combination of her scant government
experience and “raw political talent” terrified Sullivan—and with only
two months between her nomination and the election, he started
hammering.
“I was told: ‘Don’t touch this, it will hurt your reputation,’” he
says. During a campaign when most pundits were, at worst, quizzical
about Palin, Sullivan filled his blog with questions she was never
going to answer. Did he pay a price? “I have become more of an outlaw
in this town because I couldn’t hide my amazement from my peers—I’ve
definitely become more alienated from mainstream media.”
Since the election, Sullivan has continued to press for clarification
about a rumor the mainstream media won’t touch: that Trig is not
Palin’s son. Sullivan hasn’t flung any accusations at Palin; he’s just
pounded her ever-changing stories about Trig’s birth, and her
unwillingness to provide a birth certificate for him. In the heated
conversation that surrounds all things Palin, nuance has been lost—and
Sullivan has been cast as a crank who takes pleasure in badgering a
woman who may have no political future. His response: “Early on, I
figured out that anything I write about her can only help her, but I
don’t care about that. The job of a journalist is to find the truth.”
http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/from-the-blog-cave
Sarah Palin
I asked an intern to go back and double fact-check the 12 documented
lies that Sarah Palin has told on the public record. These are not
hyperbolic claims or rhetorical excess. They are assertions of fact
that are demonstrably untrue and remain uncorrected. Every single one
of the lies I documented holds up after several news cycles have had a
chance to vet them even further….So for the record, let it be known
that the candidate for vice-president for the GOP is a compulsive,
repetitive, demonstrable liar.
Nope, no thesis required to graduate. But then, do we know Sarah actually graduated? She can’t seem to remember what her degree was in any more than she can remember where Trig was born.
She was a dismal student, of course she doesn’t care about C marks. If she got anything higher she probably flirted with the professor. All of whom don’t remember this memorable twit with such a big mouth. You would think they would recall someone this mouthy, opinionated and brash..
Graduate?
Did she actually even attend any of these schools at all?
As the world greatest projectionists I believe that Sarah is doing what she does best. (Actually she’s really isn’t good at it as everyone knows she’s doing it). Poor little tot just scours the blogs too much about how, shall we say, unintelligent and uneducated she sounds. Thus, the grades of the President. Who cares? I believe in the end he graduated with honors and was Law Review. And I believe he wrote something in his book about not starting out as the greatest student. Funny how this didn’t matter with George W or McCain who was third from the bottom of a class of eight hundred were in the fray.
It’s another one of those dog whistle racist calls. You know, black men can’t be smart and achieve anything on their own. Of course Trump has proved you can be handed the world and still end up as a joke. And Palin proves you can be mediocre and lazy but still make millions if there are enough stupid people who will give you their money.
Trump gets into college because of HIS father’s money, Palin surely doesn’t get in on smarts, so it stands to reason with the Shrilla from Wasilla and Donald the Carnival Barker (thank you Mr. President) that the President must have gotten in because of affirmative action. So what if he did? Affirmative Action could get you into college, but it couldn’t keep you there if you sucked. Right Miss five schools Palin? The group that has most benefited from affirmative action is white women. Oops Sarah. Now that would make sense out of why you were ever even in these national conversations. If only Sarah could discern anything–she’d know that. And if only Donald would get his comb over out of his eyes and stop his media whore mongering he’d get his hypocrisy too.
I’m confused. What’s a “college” thesis? What does she mean? Is she referring to a senior thesis assignment? A thesis paper written for a particular class? A dissertation? Okay, what was her dissertation, research, senior thesis, senior project, etc.?
Oh heck, what was her academic internship? No, junior sports anchor at Channel 2 in Anchorage reporting on dogmushing is NOT an internship.
Or is that a subtle suggestion that she has advanced degrees and research experience? Revealing her uneducated ignorance and lack of familiarity with university-level academia, yet again.
Come on, Sarah Palin! Tell us what your “college thesis” was!
Sarah didn’t write a thesis. Hell, she can’t even manage Facebook.
I can’t think of any other individual who is so truly blind the irony she lives out daily. Can anyone be so self-righteous that they truly cannot see the double-standard by which they live?
I’m a curious American, Sarah. How about answering a few of my questions? Oh wait, you haven’t pre-screened them. You don’t do unscripted.
Joe, I sincerely hope that you thoroughly investigated Palin’s college years. I do not believe with all the skipping around she could’ve accumulated enough credits to qualify for a degree. No one from college remembers her. She never, ever talks about college, only high school. I think her degree in communications/journalism (depends on what day it is) does not exist. I have a feeling that the reasons for the multiple transfers was flunking out.
Barack Obama. Columbia University – intense, eight-student honors seminar in American Foreign Policy with professor Michael Baron.
Wrote a senior paper on nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union, an “analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States.”
According to the professor, it was not a polemic course [controversial argument, as one against some opinion, doctrine, etc], it was a course in decision making and how decisions got made. Baron said. “It wasn’t a position paper; it was an analysis of decision-making.” (NBC News)
Stupid woman. There’s no “thesis” as an undergrad degree requirement. You just take the classes, dummy. You have to write a LOT of papers in those classes. There might be a “thesis” paper. Maybe not.
Columbia University Political Science undergrad:
“Honors Program
The department offers an honors program for a limited number of seniors who want to undertake substantial research projects and write honors theses. The honors thesis is expected to be approximately 60–75 pages in length and of exceptional quality. Honors students perform research as part of a full-year honors seminar (POLS C3998-C3999 , 8 points total) during their senior year, in place of the seminar requirement for majors.”
Jeez, Greta, you’ve been to college. Why don’t you help that woman, instead of making her look so incredibly bad on your show all the time?
My child just did. No honors program at his college (private). It appears there that all seniors do a thesis project, presentation, and final paper or book. It depends on where you go, and when you went.
I’d guess, as you suggest, most public schools do not require a senior thesis unless the student is in an honors program; especially way-back-when, when SP was in college. No way $P was an honor student.
Palin’s Thesis from Idaho?
It’s written on the back of cocktail napkin in red lipstick, with a hint of Bailey’s.
Excellent.
Pam, don’t be ashamed of it taking 25 years to get your degree; I don’t know what your story is … but I started college at 18, finished two years, married at age 20, tried to continue, but we had very little money, my parents were poor, I was not on a scholarship, so I dropped out so hubby could finish. Bottom line, then I had two children, money was still tight, I had to go to work. Then one day, when taking my children for swim lessons on the very campus I had started college on, I could not take it anymore and went on to discover that if you worked for the University, you could take classes for free. I resigned my job, got a job at the University, and finished my degree, one or two classes at a time. I was 38 when I got my degree but I have it! One university, many wonderful and supportive faculty, administrators, and staff!
Maybe the “D” or 2.0 GPA student, Quitler, is confusing term paper with thesis? Yeah, she would admire someone with a “C” average (or is she confusing letter grades with GPAs, too?). Not that she ever wrote either type.
I want to see her diploma. And she claims she “had to work” to pay her own way through school (“beauty pageant money”), even while there were grants, scholarships and loans out there that would help a worthy student. But as I recall, you had to maintain a “C” average to keep them.
Actually, in a major interview early on, Chuck Heath bragged that they didn’t pay for any of their children’s education. That they all got loans.
Malia Litman called the college, they confirmed she attended and graduated.
Is not the Harvard Law Review available in libraries ? Even, I suspect, in libraries in Alaska!
For what it’s worth, I was at Columbia same time as Barack Obama. I don’t recall seeing him there and I suspect he’d say the same for me. It’s a big school.
But I will say that a “senior thesis” WAS most certainly a requirement to graduate. On the undergrad level, at Barnard College, which is where women went back then, we most certainly had to write a “thesis”. Columbia College might have had a different requirement, but we’d have to check. (those are the two main undergrad colleges in that university.)
Then, in graduate school at Columbia, for my Master’s degree, I ALSO had to write a thesis. It is not a dissertation b/c it is not a PhD. But for a Master’s, most definitely we wrote a thesis. As well as for undergraduate.
And yes, Sarah, I got an A on mine. Department heads had to approve all A’s. Not many people got them. (and maybe that leaves C students envious. Just guessin’.)
http://www.lauranovakauthor.com/blog.html
Umm, last I heard (from Herself), she was a communications major. Completely different from j school, at least it was when I went 30 yrs ago. Communications programs taught you polling and surveys. In j school she would have reported on fires and local elections to start with and have required courses in feature writing, law & ethics, probably an internship; and a broadcast journalism option at the better endowed/equipped schools. She’d have an extensive record–something well beyond the sports newscasting video we’ve all seen. She’d have clips and more clips of her writing and she’d identify strongly as a journalist and with reporting and research. She does not get journalism at all, especially not its principles. I doubt she ever did. Just another area of fabrication, fraud and arrogance in the life of Sarah Palin.
Yes, but maybe not back that far. Also, not everybody writes or publishes anything while they’re on law review. I didn’t. If they do, it’s usually just one piece. Sarah is showing her ignorance about law review. It’s not a magazine like People where you write small articles. It’s a scholarly journal which publishes legal research and/or in-depth critique of a legal issue. Particularly for the president of law review, members are busy juggling the job (it’s like running a magazine) AND finishing their law year of law school. Each edition is published, and if he had written something, it would have been located by now. Like me, it’s likely he had an article he was working on, and didn’t finish it.
Here’s a link to Harvard Law Review’s current edition, which has a total of 6 articles and 4 cases: http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/124/april11/index.php The ones under the subhead “articles” are written by lawyers, who have submitted their scholarly articles for publication. The “notes” and “cases” are student-written pieces.
I think Joe is giving us hints. He knows about her college education and the type of “thinking” she displayed.
It’s going to be in his book. Am I right Joe?
I can’t comment in any detail about the content of the book.
–Joe
Idaho Vandal’s article “Sarah Palin’s Crazy College Daze – A chronology of her College/University years ” (Palingates blog, 17 August 2010) chronicles what is known about Sarah Palin’s college history. The article asks, “How does anyone attend less than nine full-time semesters at four different schools, two of them community colleges, change their major at least twice, and still manage to get a degree?”
http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/08/sarah-palins-crazy-college-daze.html
While Kenton Bird, the director of the UI School of Journalism and Mass Media, is quoted as saying “Palin graduated in 1987 with a bachelor of science degree in journalism with a broadcast news option and a political science minor,” it is not known whether he has verified this or is just repeating what he was told. We don’t know if Bird can confirm that Sarah Palin did have the appropriate number of credits for graduation, given her erratic attendence at so many other schools.
I watched part of Rep. Allen West at his town hall where a radio host was arrested after asking West a question and he wouldn’t answer because he only took pre-screened questions. She continued to ask the question and he had her removed and when the police officer put his hand on her arm and she yelled at him to take his hands off her and then he put the cuffs on her. It was all recorded.
Of what I did hear, he sounded like Sarah Palin. He wants life, liberty & happiness for his constituents and blah, blah. He said he sacrificed himself by going into the service to protect America. He was so full of himself. I am going to check and see if there is any info on this guy. I have heard he was a bully and pistol whipped a prisoner while he was in the service. I don’t know for sure of course, and I am curious.The pure mean spirit Palin & West and others show when anyone dares to ask them a question should not be tolerated in this country.
When I finished my undergraduate degree 40 years ago, there was no requirement for a thesis or final term paper to obtain the degree in most state universities. Just a decent GPA and finishing all coursework required. For my grad degree (30 years ago) writing a comprehensive exam, covering the entirety of the coursework was required. It was reviewed by the entire faculty of the department.
As $palin went to a number of different colleges, and seems to have graduated from a state university, I would suspect she never had to write any kind of thesis/paper/comp exam. How could she have done so, since RAM (the Facebook ghost) wasn’t working for her back then?
It would be nice to see her grades from all those colleges she went to for a semester or two.
I thought FERPA forbade release of student information without their written consent.
A D average is a 1.0. You have to manage a C average for a 2.0, which is what some schools require for graduation. Still, in many places fogging a mirror is sufficient for graduation in some majors.
I’d really like to know more about Sarah’s college career. I don’t know how she could have collected enough credits to graduate with a general degree with her jumping around from college to college, especially since one of the junior colleges she attended prior to the University of Iowa wasn’t accredited until after she left. Possibly Sarah showed incredible brilliance at university and just slammed through those credits.. but if that was the case, I think somebody might remember her. I’ve only heard of one person who remembered her.
It’s interesting that the only alleged evidence of Sarah’s graduation are a couple of pictures of a blonde young woman- nobody’s ever said Sarah tried being blonde- wearing a cap with a yellow tassel (not J school colors) and a mention on UI’s website on the “famous alumni” page. Note: “alumnus” doesn’t necessarily mean “graduate.”
I think Sarah’s jumping around is related to rejection. I realize that I’m stretching things here and could be way off base. The guy who remembers Sarah said he had the impression she was a really serious student. I think he said he never saw her around. Wish I could remember his exact words. Then I put that together with Bristol’s comments on college: too much to do to go to fraternity keggers with a bunch of snobs wasting their time.
I think Bristol’s remarks were inadvertently very revealing. Nothing about classes- her take on college is all parties and snobs who attend them. And I just have the feeling that Sarah would go to a school and try to make friends and have a social life, and just fail miserably because she doesn’t seem to do friends at all. I think the guy thought she was a serious student because she didn’t attend parties. Did she try? Was she unsuccessful? I also think she has strong bipolar tendencies, and I wonder if she’d try school enthusiastically, fail to make friends because she doesn’t know how, get poor grades because she isn’t interested in learning anything and can’t focus, and move on and start all over again. When she got to UI with her brother and sister there, she managed to stay a while. Maybe she graduated, but I really wonder. But Sarah never lets go! That’s what we hear from so many people: she can’t let go of anything. I can easily visualize her complaining about smartass rich college kids going to keggers and traveling to Europe with their passports and all- too dumb to know anything about real life, et cetera. I can totally see Sarah doing that, and Bristol just soakign that up. Why go to school? Her mom never said it did anything for her!
$P defense of the C- (or worse!) student reminds me, again, of Nebraska’s former Senator Roman Hruska (R-Natch), who according to Uncle Wiki “is best remembered in American political history for a 1970 speech he made to the Senate urging them to confirm the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. Responding to criticism that Carswell had been a mediocre judge, Hruska claimed that:
“‘Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.'”
I wouldn’t have even reported on that unless I was able to obtain a copy of her transcript and record of her diploma. Obtained through legitimate channels, of course.
Same for the telephone call Dave Weigel made to Mat-Su Hospital asking if “…Trig was born there?” Silly of him to report on what some anonymous clerk said with no substantiation whatsoever.
“It’s another one of those dog whistle racist calls. You know, black men can’t be smart and achieve anything on their own.”
My heart goes out to Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ if you care to Tweet him), who’s expressed how much he’s been wounded by and how badly he feels for our President over this Birther stuff. Particularly the past couple of days when the thwarted Birthers have started in on the assumption that Pres. Obama got into Columbia and Harvard and on the Law Review and graduated magna cum laude via Affirmative Action.
What a bunch a hateful, liberal bullshit. You idiots should be ashamed!