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The Interview Heard 'Round the Country

"Ready."

That's the word on front pages across the country today, after ABC aired excerpts of Charles Gibson's interview with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (video) Thursday night.

            And it's an all-Palin front page in Anchorage, Alaska, the candidate's home state:

The Boston Globe, which kept Palin off its front page, writes:
Palin, in her first interview since being plucked out of relative obscurity by McCain two weeks ago, presented a confident face in what was considered an important early test of her knowledge of foreign affairs.

Almost overnight, Palin became a pop culture icon — appearing on magazine covers from Newsweek to US Weekly and inspiring a line of action figures — all before granting a single interview, notes WBUR's Senior Media Analyst, John Carroll.

Carroll says he was just as interested in the performance of the interviewer, ABC's Gibson. The McCain campaign has skewered the media over its persecution of Palin. In light of that, Carroll says Gibson remained limply deferential: "Throughout the interview, Gibson was low-key and mildly persistent," Caroll says, "while Palin stuck to her talking points — right down to her response to that pesky foreign policy experience question."

Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor reports the "Palin effect" is throwing the Obama campaign off stride. "In just two weeks, the 2008 presidential race has become the Sarah Palin election."

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