Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
Sarah’s Pompom Palaver
« on: 2008-10-05 22:02:30 »
Once again, I find myself getting up from the floor and wiping clean whatever substance(s) happened to be in the vicinity of the termini of all my body's orifices after reading Maureen this morning.
You'd think I'd have learned to be prepared by now. --Walter --------------------------------------------------------------- The New York Times October 5, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist
Sarah’s Pompom Palaver
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
I had hoped I was finally done with acting as an interpreter for politicians whose relationship with the English language was tumultuous.
There’s W.’s gummy grammar, of course, like the classic, “Is our children learning?” And covering the first Bush White House required doing simultaneous translation for a president who never met a personal pronoun he liked or a wacky non sequitur he could resist.
Poppy Bush drew comparisons to Warren G. Harding, whose prose reminded H. L. Mencken of “a string of wet sponges. ... It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.” When Harding died, E. E. Cummings lamented, “The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.”
Being mush-mouthed helped give the patrician Bushes the common touch. As Alistair Cooke observed, “Americans seem to be more comfortable with Republican presidents because they share the common frailty of muddled syntax and because, when they attempt eloquence, they do tend to spout a kind of Frontier Baroque.”
Darn right. And that, doggone it, brings us to a shout-out for the latest virtuoso of Frontier Baroque, bless her heart, the governor of the Last Frontier. Her reward’s in heaven.
At Sarah Palin’s old church in Wasilla, they spoke in tongues. Maybe that’s where she picked it up.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain ran against Barack Obama by sneering that their prose was meatier than The One’s poetry. Sarah’s running against the Democrat’s highfalutin eloquence by speakin’ in homespun haikus.
We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they get lots of training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country, but if you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not O.K. to be elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable crossroads for the country?
Did Joe Biden have to rhetorically rush over to Home Depot before Sarah could once more brandish “a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there brought to Washington, D.C.?”
With her pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism, Palin can bridge contradictory ideas that lead nowhere: One minute she promises to get “greater oversight” by government; the next, she lectures: “Government, you know, you’re not always a solution. In fact, too often you’re the problem.”
Talking at the debate about how she would “positively affect the impacts” of the climate change for which she’s loath to acknowledge human culpability, she did a dizzying verbal loop-de-loop: “With the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.” That was, miraculously, richer with content than an answer she gave Katie Couric: “You know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.”
At another point, she channeled Alicia Silverstone debating in “Clueless,” asserting, “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.” (Mostly the end-all.)
A political jukebox, she drowned out Biden’s specifics, offering lifestyle as substance. “In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been, you know, all our lives,” she said, making the middle class sound like it has its own ZIP code, superior to 90210 because “real” rules.
Sometimes, her sentences have a Yoda-like — “When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not” — splendor. When she was asked by Couric if she’d ever negotiated with the Russians, the governor replied that when Putin “rears his head” he is headed for Alaska. Then she uttered yet another sentence that defies diagramming: “It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there.”
Reared heads reared themselves again at the debate, when she said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “were starting to really kind of rear the head of abuse.”
She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.”
Poppy Bush dropped personal pronouns and launched straight into verbs because he was minding his mother’s admonition against “the big I.” Palin, by contrast, uses a heck of a lot of language to praise herself as a fresh face with new ideas who has “joined this team that is a team of mavericks.” True mavericks don’t brand themselves.
Boston — SINCE the vice presidential debate on Thursday night, two opposing myths have quickly taken hold about Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. The first, advanced by her supporters, is that she made it through a gantlet of fire; the second, embraced by her detractors, is that her speaking style betrays her naďveté. Both are wrong.
Let’s take the first myth: Governor Palin subjected herself to the most demanding test possible — a televised debate. By surviving, she won. As the front page of The Daily News of New York screamed this morning, “No Baked Alaska.”
But as a test of clear thinking, the debate format was far less demanding than a face-to-face interview — the kind Ms. Palin had with Katie Couric of CBS.
Why? Because in a one-on-one conversation, you can’t launch into a prepared speech on a topic unrelated to the question. Imagine this exchange — based on the first question that the moderator, Gwen Ifill, gave Ms. Palin and Senator Joe Biden — if it took place in casual conversation over coffee:
LISA How about that bailout? Was this Washington at its best or at its worst?
MICHAEL You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America’s economy, is go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, “How are you feeling about the economy?”
Lisa would flee. (This was, in fact, Ms. Palin’s response.) In a conversation, you have to build your sentence phrase by phrase, monitoring the reaction of your listener, while aiming for relevance to the question. That’s what led Ms. Palin into word salad with Ms. Couric. But when the questioner is 30 feet away on the floor and you’re on a stage talking to a camera, which can’t interrupt or make faces, you can reel off a script without embarrassment. The concerns raised by the Couric interviews — that Ms. Palin memorizes talking points rather than grasping issues — should not be allayed by her performance in the forgiving format of a debate.
The second myth about Ms. Palin is that her accent is contrived, or that it reveals laziness or ignorance on her part. Certainly, Ms. Palin cranked the folksiness dial to 11 during the debate: she dropped more g’s, reverted to “nucular” after being teleprompted during the Republican National Convention to pronounce it “new-clear,” and salted her speech with cutesy near profanities like “darn,” “heck” and “doggone.”
But it would be unfair to question the authenticity of her accent or to use it as a measure of her intellect or sophistication. The dialect is certainly for real. Listeners who hear the Minnewegian sounds of the characters from “Fargo” when they listen to Ms. Palin are on to something: the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in Alaska, where she grew up, was settled by farmers from Minnesota during the Depression.
And no, “nucular” is not a sign of ignorance. This reversal of vowel-like consonants (nuk-l’-yer —> nuk-y’-ler) is common in the world’s languages, and is no more illiterate than pronouncing “iron” the way most Americans do, as “eye-yern” instead of “eye-ren.”
Nor is Ms. Palin guilty of laziness in “dropping g’s,” because there is no such thing as “dropping g’s.” The sounds at the end of “nothing” and “nothin’” are different consonants (linguists call them “eng” and “en”), one produced with the tongue on the gum ridge, the other with the tongue on the soft palate. We just spell the second one with two letters. We all flip between “eng” and “en” in our speech, though lower-class speakers do it more, and everyone does it more when the conversation is more casual. It’s the output of an informality dial that all of us, regardless of accent, twiddle as we tune our speech to the circumstances.
And twiddle it she did. Ms. Palin, for instance, pronounced her “ens” more conspicuously in the debate than in the Couric interviews, a part to emphasize that she was one with “everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation.”
The impression fits with the overall theme that Ms. Palin and Senator John McCain have been trying to advance: that expertise is overrated, homespun sincerity is better than sophistication, conviction is more important than analysis.
Being able to see Russia from Alaska, then, means you have an understanding of foreign policy; living in an Arctic state means that you have an understanding of climate change. In Mr. McCain’s case, it means, as he wrote last month, understanding technology policy because he flew airplanes in Vietnam and being concerned about the oceans’ health because he served in the Navy.
Much could also be written about Senator Joe Biden’s gaffes and what they reveal about him. In the meantime, voters judging Ms. Palin’s performance should focus on the facile governing philosophy that is symbolized by her speech style, not the red herrings of accent or dialect.
Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is the author of “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature.”
Re:Sarah’s Pompom Palaver
« Reply #3 on: 2008-10-18 21:27:56 »
[Fritz]Blonde roots and cheques in the E-mail; somethings are just to much for me to grasp ....
The cost of transparency Source: The Register Author: Dan Goodin in San Francisco Date: 18th October 2008
Palin demands $15m to search her own emails
US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin isn't saying citizens interested in open government can't get access to her emails. She's just saying it will cost a little.
The office of the Alaska governor, which by state law is required to make such messages public, says it could cost more than $15m for anyone conducting an exhaustive search. Even then, Palin - who ran for governor on a platform of running a clean and transparent government - says requests won't be honored until November 17, two weeks after the presidential election is held.
It's fair to say that interest in Palin's email has spiked since Republican presidential nominee John McCain named her as his running mate. Not only has her office been swamped with requests for copies of state records, but her personal Yahoo email account was breached and some of its contents were posted to the Wikileaks site.
The leak offered evidence strongly suggesting that Palin conducted official state business using the very unofficial gov.palin@yahoo.com email address. Messages sent to it bore subject headings such as "Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger," "Court of Appeals Nominations" and "CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter." Critics say her use of the Yahoo account could violate Alaska open records laws that require official communications to be available to members of the public.
An Alaska state judge has ordered Palin to preserve the contents of the account.
The emails Palin's office has valued at $15m were sent by various state employees to her husband, Todd, who is not a state employee. State bean counters say it will cost $960.31 to search each employee's account. If email for all 16,000 employees are processed, the exact figure is $15,364,000.96. They figure it will take 13 hours per email account. That figure doesn't include the cost of the paper. The office will only make the email available in hard copy.
Palin may portray herself as a Washington outsider unversed in the sleights of hand politicians use to keep Joe Six-Pack from seeing what's really going on in government. But in Alaska, she knows how it's done.
US pornmonger Hustler has released a trailer for Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?, a "parody" starring Lisa Ann as Alaska's fave MILF who entertains a couple of Russian soldiers and gets jiggy with Hillary Clinton and Condoleeeezza Rice:
Re:Sarah’s Pompom Palaver
« Reply #5 on: 2010-03-31 16:46:05 »
I am having flashbacks to a classic movie "A Boy and his Dog"; what is going on in the US of A ? I know I view US politics with 'Jon Stuart' glasses on, but still, it is the theater of the absurd.
Cheers
Fritz
Source: The New York Times Author: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Date: March 31, 2010
Palin's Show Drops LL Cool J After He Complains
NEW YORK (AP) -- An upcoming Fox News Channel special hosted by Sarah Palin is titled ''Real American Stories.'' But rapper-actor LL Cool J says his participation in the show was bogus. In response, the network has snipped him from the program.
In a Twitter posting late Tuesday, the entertainer wrote that ''Fox lifted an old interview I gave in 2008 to someone else & are misrepresenting to the public in order to promote Sarah Palins Show. WOW.''
''Real American Stories,'' which debuts Thursday at 10 p.m. EDT, is hosted by Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate, who joined Fox News Channel as a regular contributor in January. The one-hour program is described by Fox News as ''the first installment of a new series'' that features ''real-life tales of overcoming adversity throughout the American landscape.''
Fox News says the episode, which was not available for preview, will feature a Marine Medal of Honor recipient ''who gave his life to save his comrades'' and a wealthy stockbroker who helps underprivileged students pay for college.
Also listed as part of the show are country singer Toby Keith and former General Electric boss Jack Welch, as well as LL Cool J, who appeared among a number of video clips on the ''Real American Stories'' Web site Wednesday morning before being removed.
''Contrary to what was reported, LL Cool J was never scheduled to be a guest on 'Real American Stories' with Sarah Palin this week,'' Rhett Usry, the artist's spokesman, said in a statement on Wednesday. ''The show had planned to use an interview from 2008 that was being repurposed without LL's permission.
''This statement is not a reflection of any feelings LL has toward Fox News or Ms. Palin, whom he has never met, rather a clarification of what we have seen published in the media.''
Fox News Channel did not respond to numerous calls and e-mails from The Associated Press inquiring about the status of the segment with LL Cool J, who was born James Todd Smith.
But in a statement released to other media outlets, the network said: '''Real American Stories' features uplifting tales about overcoming adversity and we believe Mr. Smith's interview fits that criteria. However, as it appears that Mr. Smith does not want to be associated with a program that could serve as an inspiration to others, we are cutting his interview from the special and wish him the best with his fledgling acting career.''
Credits for the 42-year-old actor include a starring role in the hit CBS freshman series ''NCIS: Los Angeles,'' as well as several films such as ''Last Holiday'' and ''S.W.A.T.''
It is unclear when or if future editions of ''Real American Stories'' will appear on Fox News. Thursday's airing pre-empts ''On the Record With Greta Van Susteren.''
Palin's ongoing relationship with Fox News Channel as a host and news analyst accounts for only part of her television activities. Last week, the TLC cable network announced ''Sarah Palin's Alaska,'' an eight-part series about Palin's home state that is set to start production this summer.
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