So the big question on everyone's mind right now (now that we're done with the Michael Jackson funeral, which occupied way too much of our collective attention, thank you very much) seems to be "Why did Sarah Palin resign as governor of Alaska?" It's not like she got caught having sex with a hot Argentinian (e.g. Sanford), or just generally being a prick (e.g. Blagojevich). Yeah, Palin's commitment to ethics does seem to have been a bit soft, but she's in a group of people that includes Rod Blagojevich, and in that company just about anything seems reasonable.
The title of this blog post was the caption of a political cartoon I saw today by Chip Bok. It really captured my bestartlement at hearing that she had resigned, and the complete lack of understanding that can be gleaned from her subsequent statements.
On a related note, Language Log has an interesting article today on the odd use of "I know that I know that I know" (or similar formations) that occurs in recent speeches by both Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin. Apparently this is yet another example of linguistic divergence within the American evangelical community; see also "dogwhistling", a common practice for Bush's speechwriters when he was President. To me it is somewhat scary that, to a large fraction of our country, ordinary sequences of words have special, nonobvious meanings. We risk becoming a country divided by a common language.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
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It does not surprise me in the least that her subsequent statements provided no understanding. That is perfectly consistent with just about everything else she has said.
ReplyDeleteAs grating as I find her personally, it is apparent that she is capable enough to reach the levels that she has and thus I have been baffled as to how so many people can understand what she says. I honestly can't make heads or tails of a substantial portion of what she says.
I spent several hours during the presidential campaigns trying to figure out her communications style. It's like she chains together sentence fragments in order to elicit certain ideas in her listeners and then leaves it to them to infer a large part of the exact meaning.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I wonder if someone offered her a corporate position somewhere for better money (she strikes me as someone who is very much interested in money).
I'm just in love with the term "bestartlement".
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