Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin photo credit: edalisse

John McWhorter explains Palinspeak is and why it isn’t a disqualifying trait to Palin’s loyal supporters.

Yet Palinspeak still differs from statements like Brownback’s in degree. It’s a rather extreme case — an almost instructive distillation of the difference in public conceptions of language in Charles Eaton and Robert Byrd’s time versus our own. “Folksy” is only the beginning of it — “You betcha,” -in for -ing, and “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” during her debate with Joseph Biden indeed make her sound accessible, ordinary, unpretentious. This, however, is America as a whole, and no one should be shocked that a public figure would strike this note. “You betcha” hits the same chord in Palin’s fans as the equally folksy — and close to meaningless — “Yes, We Can” intoned in a preacherly “black” way did when a certain someone else was saying it. Folksy is America; it always has been, but is especially so now.

What truly distinguishes Palin’s speech is its utter subjectivity: that is, she speaks very much from the inside of her head, as someone watching the issues from a considerable distance. The there fetish, for instance — Palin frequently displaces statements with an appended “there,” as in “We realize that more and more Americans are starting to see the light there…” But where? Why the distancing gesture? At another time, she referred to Condoleezza Rice trying to “forge that peace.” That peace? You mean that peace way over there — as opposed to the peace that you as Vice-President would have been responsible for forging? She’s far, far away from that peace.

All of us use there and that in this way in casual speech — it’s a way of placing topics as separate from us on a kind of abstract “desktop” that the conversation encompasses. “The people in accounting down there think they can just ….” But Palin, doing this even when speaking to the whole nation, is no further outside of her head than we are when talking about what’s going on at work over a beer. The issues, American people, you name it, are “there” — in other words, not in her head 24/7. She hasn’t given them much thought before; they are not her. They’re that, over there.

[...]

Palinspeak is a flashlight panning over thoughts, rather than thoughts given light via considered expression. It bears mentioning that short sentences and a casual tone can still convey information and planned thought.

via What Does Palinspeak Mean? | The New Republic.

The funniest sentence thus far in Going Rogue occurs about a third of the way through the second chapter when our heroine — speaking through the Palinese translator Lynn Vincent — declares that “life is too short to hold a grudge.” This is a warm piece of advice that Sarah Palin predictably spends much of her time ignoring as she recounts her contentious early years in local and state politics. Few pages are allowed to turn without our deposed governor reminding us of the bêtes noires who interfered with her efforts to bring “common-sense conservatism” — a phrase she’s been loading into the wingnut beer bong for the past few days — to the people of Wasilla and, soon enough, their fellow Alaskans. As Palin revealed in her first chapter, the first “big word” she learned how to spell was “different.” And because different people are sometimes scary — perhaps not President Black Man Terrorist scary, but scary in that ordinary, non-Negro way — Palin knows that she’ll have to deal with resistance along the road to glory.

via Lawyers, Guns and Money: Going Rogue, Chapter 2.

Palin appears to feel that anyone who even seeks to verify her previous statements is a menace, driven by the desire to trap her into some snobbery powered iron maiden. Palin not only must but is entitled to say anything to escape. There is no mess to clean up once she uses nonsense, lies or babble to evade a seemingly benign debate moderator, interviewer or pool reporter.  The courtesy to atone for gaffes or lies would be wasted upon nefarious, unprincipled people who want to see her fail.

One must agree with Palin’s correctness or risk  being included in her list of menaces who function to destroy her. A person is not safe from reproach even after Palin decides they are agreeable enough. News stories are littered with former friends, aides and subordinates attempting to defend themselves from Palin’s negative characterizations. To the general voter, there is no useful policy she can hold because there is no public principle that is fluid and abstract enough to coincide with unchallengeable definitions of logic or fairness. To agree with Palin is an approval of politics for the sake of the politician.

Former Gov. Sarah Palin’s book, “Going Rogue,” blames her first legislative director for moves early in her term that helped poison her relationship with state lawmakers. But the ex-aide, John Bitney, calls Palin’s account a fabrication and said he wishes his former boss would leave him alone.

via Portrayal in Palin book irritates former aide: Former Gov. Sarah Palin | adn.com.

We are still lucky Democrats didn’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, because none of these folks, save Shannyn Moore and Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, were saying anything about how empty and dishonest Palin was in October 2008.

Here is Brooks’ review of the VP debate for the 2008 Presidential Election:

Like the last debate, this one was surprisingly wonky – a lifetime subscription to Congressional Quarterly. Palin could not match Biden when it came to policy detail, but she never obviously floundered.

She was surprisingly forceful on the subject of Iran (pronouncing “Ahmadinejad” better than her running mate) though she stepped over the line in claiming that Democrats sought to raise the “the white flag of surrender.”

[...]

Still, this debate was about Sarah Palin. She held up her end of an energetic debate that gave voters a direct look at two competing philosophies. She established debating parity with Joe Biden. And in a country that is furious with Washington, she presented herself as a radical alternative.

By the debate’s end, most Republicans will not have been crouching behind the couch, but standing on it. The race has not been transformed, but few could have expected as vibrant and tactically clever a performance as the one Sarah Palin turned in Thursday night.

via David Brooks: The Palin rebound – The New York Times

It would be good to remember that one wink-filled, shallow and evasive debate performance in 2008 made Brooks comfortable enough to ignore the shocking ignorance Palin displayed in interviews (with Couric, Gibson) and her refusal to hold a press conference w/the presidential race press corps. Who’s the real joke?

“Investors” paid six figures to hear her speak about, well anything. If shareholders of any company will pay for her pearls of wisdom is it any wonder that the corporations they own may be at the  heart of so many financial crises? Take this nonsense back to “main street”.

More Palin’s proverbs below.

She talked, of course, about the infamous “death panels” – a big smirk here from Sarah – and “market-friendly responsible ideas” (this must have been the speech-writer) and offered slippery advice: “We can responsibly develop our resources without damaging the environment.”

She spoke too fast. She gabbled her words. Scatty was the word for it. We slalomed between the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of Yugoslavia and 9/11. Then it started. The war on “vicious terrorism”, the war against “violent fanatics who wished to end our way of life”, our battle against “radical Islamic extremists” with “twisted vision”. This was not a clash of civilisations but “a war within Islam”. We slalomed again. Asia – “what an amazing place!” – was at its best “when it was not dominated by a single power”.

What on earth was happening? Had Sarah just looked up from her podium and seen China? Addressing what was surely the neo-conservative wing of the Republican party, she could not “turn a blind eye” to Chinese policies that created “uncertainty”, which supported “questionable regimes” and “made a lot of people nervous”. America wasn’t going to impose its values on other countries, but America was going to have to “ramp up” its defence spending.

Then family again. “I have a husband,” she said. “I think I could have used a wife. He’s awesome.” This really floored the Chinese. Poor Todd.

via Robert Fisk: Mangling everything in its path, Typhoon Sarah blows in to Asia – Robert Fisk, Commentators – The Independent.

Update:

Some listeners praised her forthright views on government social and economic intervention but others walked out early citing boredom or disgust.

via AFP: Palin divides international investors in debut speech in Asia.

“And Democratic Party officials enlisted in the fight by the White House acknowledged in interviews that the growing intensity of the opposition to the president’s health care plans — within the last week likened on talk radio to something out of Hitler’s Germany, lampooned by protesters at Congressional town-hall-style meetings and vilified in television commercials — had caught them off guard and forced them to begin an August counteroffensive.”

via “We were a little surprised” | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/11/2009 [c/o Susie Madrak of CrooksAndLiars.com].

Many folks left of center are handwringing about Obama’s Administration “over learning” from the Clinton White House mistakes. Those on the right are gleefully happy that Obama had let the debate be pulled into, what they feel, is a leftist ideas graveyard by the “evil” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the wicked Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). Now this may be the new theme: the insurance industry and drug companies end around lobbying has fooled poor naive Obama and his hapless administration.

I doubt the genuineness of this surprise expressed by an official in the President’s White House or rather that the entire team is stunned. Rather, I think the Obama White House is letting the crazies open their mouths and prove their craziness. Obama likes to draw out the over aggressive. Let them ramble, anounce and bluster. Obama believes the arrogant big mouths and short sighted ideologues will always state their positions with absolute certainty of a “you always” accusation and “I never” virtue, all the while draping themselves with political tethers.

Far right ideologues lament the coming socialist state and that he must be stopped. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin says things like Obama’s health care bill, which doesn’t exist, will use a “Death Panel” to determine that toddlers with Down Syndrome must die, immediately. The Media, for once, brushed her aside. Even then, the media fails to expose the simultaneous silliness and cynicism of Palin’s dog whistle attacks. While she says Obama-care will kill your less than A+ kids, at the time of her resignation, Alaska was actually the worst in the nation at administering health care for the elderly and those with disabilities:

State programs intended to help disabled and elderly Alaskans with daily life — taking a bath, eating dinner, getting to the bathroom — are so poorly managed, the state cannot assure the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to serve, a new federal review found.
The situation is so bad the federal government has forbidden the state to sign up new people until the state makes necessary improvements.

No other state in the nation is under such a moratorium, according to a spokeswoman for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
via Troubled Alaska health programs face federal restriction | Anchorage Daily News | LISA DEMER

The town hall screamers, mostly just a bunch of angry old folks, many of them jump right on past health care issues and attack Obama’s legitimacy. What about these new 15 minute fame flames, the town hall screamers? One requested that her GOP congressman keep “government hands off” off her Medicare. Another, while being allowed in front of Specter to speak said Specter was denying them the right to speak. Another asserted that he was sure, the IRS under Obama care will collect data from all citizens on behalf of said government (as if the Bush administration didn’t already authorize and do that when they rolled up Carnivore into the big brother bill to watch us all, the Patriot Act).

The Michael Steele’s and Dick Armey’s of the world see this fervor and these quotes and they probably think: let’s throw some party and lobbyist resources at these folks and encourage more people to show up at town halls and be mad as hell for no reason under the sun. More wood on the fire. And I think Obama is fine with that. Beltway GOP congressmen assert that Obama has gone too far and the American people are all happy with their healthcare because they see 15 Pennsylvanians from a conservative small rural town of Lebanon taking their turns screaming at Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA).

The more the crazies talk, and throw out specific, yet false statements about the direction health care is going, the easier it is for Democrats to defend the abstract legislative process that is actually taking place. Obama aww shucks these anecdotal diatribes and uses these sound bite screeds as a straw man in his health care town halls and interviews. Without any serious and principled opposition or alternative from the GOP, the Democrats in the Senate do have cover to get whatever they can pass in the senate and then get it to Obama’s desk.

I doubt the White House is surprised. In 1994, a bill couldn’t even get out of either House of Congress. Today, Pelosi was able to do what then Speaker Dick Gephardt couldn’t and the White House is essentially waiting for Senate Finance Committee to deliver a version that is palpable to blue dogs so that everything can be voted on, negotiated in conference committee and delivered to Obama’s desk. Many lefties, including me in some aspects are not 100% pleased with the process, but that’s how democracy is. Even then, this is a reform start:

Many people, including Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum, think these bills do some of the most important things of all in fixing the American health insurance system. Namely, they ensure that every insurance plan has to accept everyone at the same premiums regardless of prior health, that you can’t be kicked out of a plan for getting sick (or old, or anything), and that you can’t have a lifetime cap on payments. Universal community rating is probably the single most important reform of all, as it removes private insurers’ perverse incentives to make money by denying coverage to sick people.

via Matt Steinglass – Accumulating Peripherals – That slope just ain’t very slippery – True/Slant.

It don’t think its gonna be universal or single payer, but there will be some base improvements. 2009 is not 1994.

Before Palin left the state to become John McCain’s running partner, she cultivated a good, if not exactly chummy, working relationship with Alaskan Democrats by pushing for an oil-tax increase and ethics reform. And state Republicans embraced Palin as the new face of a party that had been tarnished by scandal-ridden politicians like Ted Stevens. But upon returning to Juneau last fall, “she managed to alienate most of the 60 members of [the Alaska] House and Senate,” says Larry Persily, an aide to state Republican Representative Mike Hawker. “It wasn’t a matter of burning bridges–she blew them up.”

[via Ready for Her Close-Up - Suzy Khimm - TNR.com]

Palin is a bridge burner. Pit Bull in a china shop. One of the many traits that make her ineffective as a leader and continues to push her disapproval ratings up.

“Gov. Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before! Now he has really done it.” — “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

Now compare that with this joke, David Letterman told about 18 year old Bristol Palin, who now is a public advocate on behalf of abstinence only training as the only birth control method:

“One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game,” Letterman said, “during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” – David Letterman, Late Show with Dave Letterman

As Letterman asserted in his apology for being misunderstood or misconstrued it was about the 18 year old, teenage mother, Bristol Palin. Not the underage Willow Palin. Even though it was Willow Palin at the game with Sarah & Todd Palin, the joke would not make sense if it was about Willow: she wasn’t the pregnant one. If you are worried about sexism, yes its sexist. Many jokes are. There are some other comedians who don’t dabble in this. Wayne Brady? Ellen Degeneres? But this is Late Night television. Its for adults. Often I wish they could go back to smoking cigarettes and drinking hard liquor neat on these shows so that it would be painfully obvious to purity zealots.

Since the Presidential election of 1992 Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity was used as a tacit admission (in the press as well as the media) that his wife Hillary was a frigid, sexless, woman in a marriage of only political convenience. Jokes about the Clinton’s sex lives were and are late night television and stand up comedy standards. You could always tie something about sex to Bill Clinton and get some cheap laughs.

Now Palin has decided to reject Letterman’s comedic explanation and apology for being misunderstood and move on, or say agree to appear on Letterman as long as some sum of money would go to some kind of charity focused on woman’s issues. Palin turns around and said this in an interview on the today show with Matt Lauer:

Here’s the problem, Matt – the double standard that has been applied here. One, let’s talk politically, the double standard. First, remember in the campaign, Barack Obama said the family’s off-limits – you don’t talk about my family. And the candidate who must be obeyed – everybody adhered to that and left his family. They haven’t done that on the other side of the ticket, and it has continued to this day. So that’s a political double standard.

This is ridiculous on a variety of levels. Obama consistently chided his crowds for booing any other political figures. He publicly defended Palin’s family by firmly saying they were off limits. So yes, people didn’t obey Obama. Obama explained his position regarding personal matters, asked for fairness, demanded it from his own campaign and the press by and large adhered to that standard. Comedians aren’t bound by that rule. She apparently thinks Letterman is a White House spokesperson or Obama’s chief advisor before Axelrod. In addition, we are all guaranteed the right to say offensive jokes by the 1st amendment. Palinites want to boycott Letterman? Now the politician based in a state far removed from the rest of the country, who has to forcefully push herself into the national spot light wants make the guy who millions watch every night her adversary. Good luck with that.