Some reviews of Sarah Palin’s Thursday special, “Real American Stories,” on Fox News:
NY Daily News’ Richard Huff:
Sarah Palin will have a career in TV, that’s for sure, but “Real American Stories” isn’t the show to make her a superstar. That’s not her fault. It’s the production.
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NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley:
Ms. Palin, who mostly narrated taped stories about inspiring Americans — a war hero, a philanthropist, a boy with cerebral palsy and his service dog — gave a competent, but generic performance, as cheery and bland as any news anchor’s in the mainstream media she deplores. Ms. Palin is telegenic, but her restraint was more noticeable than her charm.
LA Times’ Mary McNamara:
As a host, Palin brings little besides her name and all that it has come to mean. Despite her time on the campaign trail and in front of often-unfriendly cameras, Palin still has an eyes-locked-on-the-teleprompter stiffness.
WaPo’s Hank Stuever:
The debut on the Fox News Channel of Sarah Palin’s “Real American Stories” Thursday night turned out to be like one of those shows that’s on when nothing’s on and yet there is air to fill — like infotainment you sometimes see on empty channels in hotel rooms, or the stuff that’s playing on the little TV screen at the gas pump nearest the rental-car center. What are we watching exactly? (A commercial? News?)
EW’s Ken Trucker:
Hosting this edition of what will be a new series (Palin at this point was just hosting the premiere), Palin was her usual chipper self. The result was at once heart-warming and a little tedious, rather like your average Barbara Walters “news” special.
I can think of several scenarios right now that would really work well. But putting Palin in a paint by numbers format like what we saw tonight, where she doesn’t have the freedom to do what she does best, isn’t one of them. This was a wasted opportunity.
What did you think?