I remember John Kennedy saying something like, “I can imagine, on the craggy cliffs of western Ireland, those looking out over the sea and seeing America.”* Sarah Palin had severe difficulty in answering thoughtful, simple questions. She was comically portrayed in her essential essence by Tina Fey. Tina, as Palin, smiling proudly, confidently, and completely clueless, “I can see Russia from my house!”† Kennedy’s language was poetic, Palin’s language is psychotic.
Recently on the Johnny Carson show [I had a friend, whom, always referred to it as the Jack Paar show] it was pointed out, that Palin’s speech, would make sense, if it was treated as beatnik poetry. They had William Shatner demonstrate. Steve Colbert took out pieces of paper from a hat, and randomly generated a palinesque speech.
Her language has color; as logical and rhetorical argument, it meets no traditional standard. The tone is belligerent and dismissive of, even, reality. Who does she sound like? It came to me, the Vancome lady, Nicole Sullivan’s character on the first episode of Mad TV. Sullivan describes her thusly: “says rude things while smiling, just like this boss I used to have, and like the women behind the makeup counter at Skokie Mall.”
“Tchah... you know what? Uh-uh!” or, “Shaaaaah - you know what?”
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*i need to find the exact wording somewhere
†She and Republican staff touted her foreign affairs experience by saying, several times, that Alaska and Russia were neighbours, and Alaska being a bulwark in defense and such nonsense. “They’re our next-door neighbours and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.”
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