cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/the-wild-wordsmith-of-wasilla
Dick Cavett | A New York Times Blog November 14, 2008, 10:00 pm The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla Electronic devices dislike me. Three out of these five implements -- answering machine, fax machine, printer, phone and electric can-opener -- all dropped dead on me in the past few days. Now something has gone wrong with all three television sets. Any random channel clicked on by the remote brings up that eager face, with its continuing assaults on the English Lang. There she is with Larry and Matt and just about everyone else but Dr. If she is not yet on "Judge Judy," I suspect it can't be for lack of trying. What have we done to deserve this, this media blitz that the astute Andrea Mitchell has labeled "The Victory Tour"? I suppose it will be recorded as among political history's ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can't blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines. That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate's valuable traits? And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high. What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, "How was it she talked?" My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska's investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars. And, she concluded, "never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don't know about this issue." It's admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any. Her "answer" did not contain the words "daughter," "pregnancy," "what to do about it" or, in fact, any two consecutive words related to Lauer's query. I saw this as a brief clip, so I don't know whether Lauer recovered sufficiently to follow up, or could only sit there, covered in disbelief. If it happens again, Matt, I bequeath you what I heard myself say once to an elusive guest who stiffed me that way: "Were you able to hear any part of my question?" At the risk of offending, well, you, for example, I worry about just what it is her hollering fans see in her that makes her the ideal choice to deal with the world's problems: collapsed economies, global warming, hostile enemies and our current and far-flung twin battlefronts, either of which may prove to be the world's second "30 Years' War." Has there been a poll to see if the Sarah-ites are numbered among that baffling 26 percent of our population who, despite everything, still maintain that President George has done a heckuva job? A woman in one of Palin's crowds praised her for being "a mom like me ... who thinks the way I do" and added, for ill measure, "That's what I want in the White House." Do this lady's like-minded folk wonder how, say, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, et al (add your own favorites) managed so well without being soccer moms? Without being whizzes in the kitchen, whipping up moose souffls? Without executing and wounding wolves from the air and without promoting that sad, threadbare hoax -- sexual abstinence -- as the answer to the sizzling loins of the young? Could the willingness to crown one who seems to have no first language have anything to do with the oft-lamented fact that we seem to be alone among nations in having made the word "intellectual" an insult? May I confess that upon first seeing her, I liked her looks? With the sound off, she presents a not uncomely frontal appearance. But now, as the Brits say, "I'll be glad to see the back of her." David Lloyd is a comic genius (I can hear you wince, David) who wrote for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Cheers," "Taxi," "Frasier," Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and me, not necessarily in that order. As a language fan, he has preserved many gems for posterity in his prodigious memory bank. Here comes my favorite: A Navy lecturer was talking about some directives on the blackboard that he said to do something about, "except for these here ones with the asteroids in back of."
And thank you for mentioning that the aforementioned animals should be armed; At least this would make it a fair fight with the Annie Oakley of Alaska. I also wonder if there's a clip out there where she actually says "Yes" and not "Yeah".
Link Your David Lloyd contribution about a Navy lecturer reminds me of something I heard in the Army during basic training at Fort Dix, NJ Our commanding officer was addressing the troops when he was asked whether we'd be allowed to bring our cars on post, despite a rumor to the contrary.
After a few discussions w/ some family members that happen to be Sarah fans, I came to the conclusion that so many people are so blatantly uninformed. I once thought highly of these relatives, and now after this election, I can't help myself but look at them a tad differently. In the spirit of President-Elect Obama, I'm trying too embrace the fact that we should accept and respect those with differing views, I try, but I can't. ANYONE who thinks that Sarah Palin is ever going to be qualified for National office is just plain stupid. Also, there, I tried to come up up with a betterer word for stupid, to make me sound smarter also, but "Stupid" was just too perfect there.
Link My favorite reaction to "Palin-speak" comes from the first interview on the national campaign trail. Charles Gibson said in reaction to one of her answers, "I sort of got lost in a blizzard of words there". I work with a woman who is a big fan of Palin and claims that when written down her answers seem confusing, but when heard they make perfect sense. In this sense my co-worker reminds me of a bad dancer, I always wonder if they hear the same song as everyone else.
Such an eloquent painting of Ms Palin's thought-less discourse! There are two generations in this family that hold you and your stellar wit in the highest regard!
Link If language is the underlying structure that gives us thought and coherence, and ultimately reason, then as Mr Cavett suggests we should steer clear of people like Mrs Palin. I believe that in Mr Bush we have a clear example of the risks involved in electing such a lazy thinker.
Link At last a member of the media has commented on the obvious. Sarah Palin is unable to complete a simple sentence when responding to a question unless she has been previously provides with some sort of "canned" answer.
Golf doesn't qualify as sport because golf balls can't strike back? And target shooting with guns or arrows won't qualify either until the targets are made elastic enough to reflect the projectiles.
Link Mr Cavett, Her speech makes me as dizzy as having an inner ear infection. At first I blamed it on her inflection, her accent, her distractions, but I quickly came to my senses and decided that you would distill it for me if I was patient enough. But I wouldn't be surprised by her trying the smoke signals. As a health teacher who has joked about capturing and bottling gallons of essence de hormones in my classroom over the years, I was delighted to read the words 'sizzling loins'. I can't wait until Monday to throw these words out when the topic of sex gets worked into a question.
Link Last October I told the American students whom I teach in France (literature and art history) that the candidate whose English is coherent will win. I was just trying to suggest the analo...
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