Sarah Palin: Is her babble scary or funny?

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According to Jacob Weisberg of Newsweek, Sarah Palin has four core beliefs:

1. Things go better with God.
2. Yay, Alaska!
3. Let’s drill that sucker.
4. Curse you, political establishment.

Palinisms occur when Palin expresses one of these views in her idiosyncratically involuted syntax (“It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia”); when she expresses two or more of them in combination (“God’s will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that”); or when she says anything at all in her imitable my sentence went on the Tilt-A-Whirl and got nauseous way (“And I think more of a concern has been not within the campaign, the mistakes that were made, not being able to react to the circumstances that those mistakes created in a real positive and professional and helpful way for John McCain”).

But the best Palinisms of all result when the huntress encounters something she wasn’t hunting for—that is, when Palin comes into contact with most anything to do with domestic, foreign, or economic policy. It is this situation that generates those priceless let me tap-dance and also sing for you a little song while you think of a different question moments. One such was the juncture in her mind-boggling 2008 interview when Katie Couric asked Palin to name a Supreme Court decision she disagreed with, other than Roe v. Wade. Surrounded by hostile forces, out of cartridges for her Remington, she bravely held her ground and kept pulling the trigger, to no effect:

Palin: Well, let’s see. There’s—of course in the great history of America there have been rulings that there’s never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So, you know, going through the history of America, there would be others. But, um.

Couric: Can you think of any?

Palin: Well, I would think of any again that could best be dealt with on a more local level maybe I would take issue with.

Tina Fey’s caricature of Palin as an unprepared high-school student trying to bluff her way through an oral exam by mugging and flirting hit its mark not merely because of the genius of the mimicry, but because of its fundamentally accurate diagnosis of Palin as bulls–t artist. Her exuberant incoherence testifies to an unusually wide gulf between confidence and ability. She is proud of what she doesn’t know and contemptuous of those “experts” and “elitists” who are too knowledgeable to be trusted. The issue is not that Palin, thrust upon the national stage with little warning, still doesn’t know all the details. That’s understandable. The issue is that she rarely appears to have the slightest grasp of what she’s talking about. For instance, in one of the 2008 campaign’s most surreal examples of rhetorical excess, John McCain said Palin “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.” A few days later, she offered a sample of her expertise in a town-hall meeting: “Oil and coal? Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not…So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here.”

Bushisms, which I collected for many years, often hinged on a single grammatical or factual error. Palinisms, by contrast, consist of a unitary stream of patriotic, populist blather. It’s like Fox News without the punctuation. The non–Sarah Dittoheads among us have to decide whether to regard this as scary or funny. During the 2008 campaign, when there was a real chance that Palin could become the automatic successor to an impulsive, elderly cancer survivor, I found it more scary than funny. After McCain lost, and after Palin terminated her governorship in the effusion of furious gibberish known as her resignation speech, I have found it mostly funny. To be alarmed by Palin today presumes a Republican Party suicidal enough to want her to do more than run its weekend paintball games.

Tip o’ the hat to Julie!!

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Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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13 years ago

I have a relative that actually believes that she is every bit as smart as President Obama.

Jess
13 years ago

This idiot made it to governor with less votes because of other idiots willing to vote for her. Same thing happened with governor Goodhair of Texas. She is the quintessential mean girl that hasn’t grown up and out of the mean girl phase. You heard that from opponents of hers during the campaign how she got back at them for the smallest slight. I see her as funny and the rubes are willing to keep giving her money ah well. PT Barnum said it and she has enough people behind her, they have managed to help bring the reps down with the whole tea bag thing. Now, I am off to do some fancy pageant walking with my kitty cats.

13 years ago

I think that the Republicans keep her around strictly as a fund raiser, knowing that to let her advance further would be political suicide.

But I think that she is probably not as dumb as she is portrayed. It does takes some strategic thought to make it to Governor.

I would suspect that she relies too much on her “charm” and persona of a “tough ole gal against the world” and should prepare more for interviews instead of trying to use those
“skills” that she fine tuned when she was in the beauty contest arena.

13 years ago

“Sarah Palin Naked” is one of the most searched phrases on Google. Just about sums her up. People are more interested in her celebrity than her politics, but bad thing about that is people who like her vote.

13 years ago

“Her exuberant incoherence testifies to an unusually wide gulf between confidence and ability.”

Sounds like most every conservatard talk show host. Palin is the Paris Hilton of the Political Arena, hoping her dubious claims to cuteness will distract people from the fact that her skills are inadequate and that she is an idiot.

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