A vote for John McCain is a vote for George Bush.
The Oval Office is a “bummer free zone”.
grammar
Sarah Palin and grammar22 Oct 2008 08:49 am
Sarah Won’t KISS Drew on the First Interview
Maybe I misunderstood the grade school education I received, but I always thought the primary mantra of communication was Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS). Apparently, the American public has no attention span to listen to politicians speak in concrete terms about real issues. However, they cheer for folksy talk full of run-on sentences filled with uninformative and unnecessary clauses.
Take for example Sarah Palin’s latest interview with CNN’s Drew Griffin. I got a headache just trying to tease out the primary talking points from her non-Euclidean sentence structure. Let me examine one 60-word sentence from her interview.
Now let me condense it down to her real point.So, finally Joe the plumber and as we talked about today in the speech, too, he’s representing, you know, Jane the engineer and Molly the dental hygienist and Chuck the teacher and, and all these good, hard-working Americans who are, finally, were able to hear in very plain talk the other night, what Barack Obama’s intentions were to redistribute wealth.
“Joe the plumber [was] able to hear what Barack Obama’s intentions were to redistribute wealth.” (15 words)
I don’t care if you think that 34% of America’s wealth should remain consolidated in 1% of the population, or if you believe that we have an economic, social and/or moral obligation to use our Nation’s capital to bolster government programs to support the less fortunate. These are substantive issues on which we can disagree, and can debate which will ultimately make our Nation stronger.
Sarah, don’t fill voters’ heads with rambling talking points that bring no value to the debate. If you are going to speak in platitudes, please make them short.
More Terry Tate election videos here.
Dan Savage, the genius behind the word santorum, wants to be Sarah’s gay friend.
Europe is catching onto Palin’s palining.
Europe mocks ‘half-baked Alaskan’ Palin.
For Europeans, who were alienated during George W. Bush’s first four years by a president who showed little interest in their continent and patently cared nothing for the opinions of its leaders, the turning point probably came with the appearance on the Katie Couric show when Palin confessed to not having had a passport until 2006.
Europeans are appalled at the thought that someone who wants to be vice president of the most powerful nation on earth had so little interest in the rest of a world which is so vitally affected by the decisions of the man, or woman, in the White House.
full disclosure, I did not have a passport until 2002, but I am not running for a national political office either.
The City Journal’s Heather MacDonald has a nice article about palining.
“I know, it’s elitist to expect a candidate for president or vice president to speak like an adult. Sure, there are parents out there battling the “like” epidemic who might not appreciate having someone in the White House validating their 15-year-olds’ speech habits.”
Not Michael Palin, our Sarah.
“I’m sorry Michael Palin for saying that you are not the funniest Palin anymore, but you’re not.”
It looks like Natasha Vargas-Cooper at Radar Online thinks that Sarah is working against us.
“This may surprise you, but the cringe which adds hundreds of irreversible wrinkles to your face when you hear Sarah Palin speak doesn’t come from her inane policy proposals. (Or not totally.) For the most part, it comes from witnessing Palin desecrate our most precious resource: verbs.”
Update: George Packer at the New Yorker also made some observations on Sarah’s palined grammar.
thanks to WD for pointing out my spelling errors.