Dispatches from the Culture Wars

*((Insert "glib witticism"!!))*

Posted by: Abby Normal | July 6, 2009 9:49 AM

This speech would be an embarrassment for a Freshman running for a seat on Student Council. Does this mean that she didn't even bother to tell her staff that she was about to quit? As Kelly Bundy used to say, "The mind wobbles."

Posted by: kehrsam | July 6, 2009 9:55 AM

"Here’s some of the things we’ve done" She gots good grammars.

But my favorite was this:
"If I have learned one thing: life is about choices! And one chooses how to react to circumstances." Except, of course, when you're pregnant.

Posted by: Ryan | July 6, 2009 10:12 AM

This seems like it should be the point(assuming we didn't reach that point a long time ago) where we stop thinking about Palin's behavior in terms of "strategy" and start thinking in terms of "psychopathology".

My money would be on sociopathy. She has the requisite mixture of charisma and ruthlessness, grandiose narcissism and complete lack of sustained focus, tendency toward lying even in situations where it clearly doesn't serve her interests...

Posted by: phisrow | July 6, 2009 10:15 AM

Has anyone else seen the letter from Palin's lawyer, trying to preempt criticism by threatening to sue anyone who says she may have resigned because of possible investigation or indictment? Here's a link ot one article about it:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/07/05/palin_lawyer_letter/

What an amazing bunch of thin-skinned hypocritical crybabies. We REALLY dodged a bullet when this bitch lost the last election.

Posted by: Ragino g Bee | July 6, 2009 10:28 AM

Raging Bee:

"Palin and her fanatical infantile base want to keep their favorite MILF's hands clean of such frightening stuff."

MILF = Mom's In Love & Faith?

Posted by: democommie | July 6, 2009 10:35 AM

MILF = Mom's In Love & Faith?

MILF = Mother I'd Like to F***.

Posted by: AdrienneAdr | July 6, 2009 10:41 AM

Physicalist: thanx for the link. I managed to read about four paragraphs before teh stoopid started making my back teeth hurt. I'm beginning to suspect we've all overestimated her intelligence.

And now there's an ad on this post for Habbo, "Virtual world, real friends." Even the computers understand how unreal all this is.

Posted by: Raging Bee | July 6, 2009 10:51 AM

The truly scary part is that she has a bachelor's degree in communications and journalism.

Posted by: Tsu Dho Nimh | July 6, 2009 10:51 AM

So you think Palin should be criticized for abandoning her governmental responsibilities? How quaint and naive. The modern Republican Party is the party of Grover Norquist, he of the government-drowning bathtub. The conservative base denies that government has any responsibilities whatsoever (except for waging war, glorious war, and keeping those durty furriners on the other side of the border, both of which are federal duties).

In other words, today's Republican seeks power at the state level for three reasons: (1) to keep liberals out of power, (2) to prevent the government from intervening domestically, by rolling back policies and canceling or defunding government programs, and (3) to satisfy their own personal ambitions. As long as Alaska will replace Palin with a Republican (which is almost certain), (1) and (2) are covered. Now that Alaska's too small for Palin, from the point of view of the Republican base, there's no reason why she shouldn't go for (3).

Posted by: mad the swine | July 6, 2009 10:57 AM

Mad@19:

The conservative base denies that government has any responsibilities whatsoever (except for waging war, glorious war, and keeping those durty furriners on the other side of the border, both of which are federal duties).

Also, you forgot the other key function of the government in the minds of those conservatives who love Palin: Keeping American "family values" intact by outlawing abortion, gay marriage, and eventually no-fault divorce and even contraception. And if they are really lucky, feminism!

Posted by: Adrienne | July 6, 2009 11:11 AM

I said this once last fall when I tried to keep a diary at DailyKos: Palin should be an ESL (English as a Second Language) student. My kids here in China can write better essays than she can write speeches.

Of course, they're English majors, not, wait, a journalism major?

We who blog and comment on blogs are for the most part able to write cogently, logically and grammatically. Writing for us is comparatively easy. But there are hordes of people who never really learned to write well. It cuts across socioeconomic and ethnic lines; I've had upper middle class white kids who could not string two sentences together and still make sense. Some of these kids can talk like lawyers making closing arguments, but they can't write.

Then there are students who can neither write nor speak in any sort of clear, logical fashion. They jump from one thought to another at random, leave sentences unfinished (bridges to nowhere ...), make little or no logical arguments, and take an incredibly long time to say even the simplest thing. As someone has said about Palin's speaking style, it's a "word spray."

Armchair psychologists suggest Palin has a narcissistic complex. Maybe they're right. Maybe Palin is stuck on herself that she didn't bother to ask anyone (even darling hubby) to read her speech before she tried to deliver it. Or maybe hubby is equally inept, or unable to tell her the bald truth that her speech was idiotic.

The best to show you're not a quitter is to quit. Yup. Makes sense in the Bizarro world.

Posted by: wheatdogg | July 6, 2009 11:25 AM

Raging Bee stated:

I'm going with the theory that with the economy tanking, the job of governor is now a lot less glamor and a lot more actual work, responsibility and tough choices; and Palin and her fanatical infantile base want to keep their favorite MILF's hands clean of such frightening stuff. Can't have those lovely little starbursts when we're stressing out about reality, can we?

I agree this is a motivation, but I don't think it explains all of it. She never took an interest in either of her state-wide jobs and appears to love the lower 48. Her time spent in the capitol in Juneau was infrequent. While she showed her ignorance on national issues, she's also proven almost equally ignorant of state matters as well.

I'd argue the following instead:

She still has enough of a following to make some serious coin marketing herself. From Nov-08 through 2010, focusing her time on governing will reduce her future financial opportunities if she waited to go national since I think she realizes she's bound to fail as the gov. given her gross incompetence coupled to tough times (as Raging Bee points out). Therefore, she needs to strike while the iron's hot, the fact that means marketing herself rather than administrating the oaths of her office correlates both to what she enjoys doing and what she's good at is reasonable speculation given the lack of evidence we have to definitely understand her resignation. Doing what you enjoy while making far more money is a tempting opportunity, especially given her current middle class status where her family is not financially independent.

The argument against my notion is that a rational person would better plan this scenario out to protect their reputation for future political opportunities - the current source of her appeal, e.g., they'd certainly have a more coherent speech and reasonable excuse for abandoning her job and her state than the lame ones provided. I think the rebuttal argues for her narcicissim, irrationality, idiocy, and that she has the emotional maturity of a 13 year old used to acting impulsively. A cogent argument is not in the Palin toobox, it happens only when reading another's script.

I think what transpired is that last mid-week she transformed her plan to not run again to resigning this month, where such a decision was impulsive and made from home with no staff involved. I'd bet money the CBS report had an effect; where McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt outs her lying to him three times.

A natural reaction by someone like her would be, "Who needs this shit? Fuck them, I'm going to make some coin doing what I like! I'll show them!". This is a person after all who has proven to never have really worked at any one of her jobs, including her time as mayor. The fact she's popular is just more evidence of how mentally ill the Republican party's base remains.

Posted by: Michael Heath | July 6, 2009 11:27 AM

To be fair, I think all of those fully capitalized words are to remind her to strongly accent them during the speech.

But then again, I could be wrong.

Posted by: GaryB, FCD | July 6, 2009 11:52 AM

Although, on the bright side*, I imagine teachers will be handing out 'Palin's Resignation Speech' and one of Obama's Stump speeches, with a "compare & contrast the form, punctuation, logical consistency and rhetoric of these two speeches. Which do you think is the better speech? Why or why not?" kind of question for decades to come.
Palin has made a speech that will go down in the annuals of speech-writing infamy.
Gotta feel good about that! ;) DJ
_________
*in a sick, sad way

Posted by: DingoJack | July 6, 2009 12:33 PM

She did audible one line as she was reading this speech. Where the speech says that the decision cam after "much consideration", she originally read it as written, but then backed up and said "much prayer and consideration". In retrospect, if you allowed her one thing to change in the speech, I imagine it would be to add those two words and rather than to clean up the ridiculous grammar mistakes.

Posted by: Odie | July 6, 2009 12:57 PM

I found a video of an interview in March 2008 on Open Left which was embedded in an article called Palin 2008: Clinton Whining About Media Criticism "Does Herself A Disservice To Even Mention It"
http://www.openleft.com/diary/14056/palin-2008-clinton-whining-about-media-criticism-does-herself-a-disservice-to-even-mention-it

There are a few interesting things about it.
1. She has some complimentary things to say about Hillary Clinton. (Part of Palin's problems now are due to the fact that the Alaska Dems she got along with before the 2008 campaign do not like her now because of all the bad-mouthing of Dems and libs she did during the campaign.)
2. She also says that sexism is the reality that women in politics have to face, and so HRC needs to just toughen up and deal with it. Yet Palin said criticism is one of the reasons she is leaving office.
3. She appears to be speaking extemporaneously and conerently. I mentioned in another thread that she does not speak well off-the-cuff, yet in this video she is doing pretty well I think.

So why is what may be the most important speech she will ever give so disjointed?

It keeps looking like the 2008 campaign changed Sarah Palin. Granted, the Vanity Fair article makes it look like the change happened pretty quick. Maybe she was overwhelmed. Maybe she got a sip of the 200-proof Everclear of power and fame in the fall, and now Alaska is just not enough for her.

So I am leaning towards the "cashing out" hypothesis. But I am not completely ruling out the "other shoe" or "fiscal disaster" hypotheses either. These are not mutually exclusive.

Posted by: Blue Nine | July 6, 2009 1:18 PM

What Michael Heath said.

It's also worth noting that she's treated Alaska the exact same way she's treated many former political allies in the past (as was noted in the recent Vanity Fair article). Now that she no longer believes being governor is necessary to further her career, she's wasted no time in throwing Alaska under the bus.

But what is it about Palin, that has even reasonably sane and critical conservatives, like Ross Douthat in today's New York Times, arguing that she still has the ability to become a formidable player in national politics, if only she will hunker down and bone up on the foreign and domestic policy issues?

She hasn't shown the slightest inclination towards any serious effort in that direction, and there is nothing about her that suggests she has any interest in doing so. She is about the most unserious candidate to have been trotted out onto the national stage in my time in the US, rivaling people like Ron Paul and Alan Keyes. And Douthat actually argues that she would have been a long term player if only she hadn't accepted the VP nomination from McCain?

I think pundits like Ross Douthat and Rich Lowrey are in love with the *idea* of Sarah Palin. To them she embodies many of the stereotypical ideals of what a conservative woman should be---beautiful, tough, hard working, motherly, religious, pro-life, sacrificial, faithful, pro-family, and so on, and they see starbursts when they consider the possibility that their version of the Roman Catholic Madonna (or perhaps Ronald Reagan's second coming) might actually be the one to rescue them from the present malaise they find themselves in.

Thus, they forgive her where she's fallen short, blamed others for rushing her into the spotlight and for stabbing her in the back. They don't want to believe what's obvious to the rest of us---that she does not have the character or the intellectual firepower to overcome her present failings.

If Palin manages to transform herself into a serious political heavyweight, it will be a far more miraculous transformation that anything that Barak Obama has accomplished in his meteoric rise to the presidency.

Ironically, all Palin's going to end up being is the exact same thing that the McCain campaign tried to pin on Barak Obama---a celebrity. And I have no doubt that she's going to be extremely successful at it---as long as she turns down any offers to host a news-oriented show, that is. She's going to make a pile of money, and she's going to continue being courted as Republican royalty and may even be the Republican king-maker one day (in the vein of Limbaugh, that is).

If she's smart enough, that's all she'll do and be. But somehow, I doubt she'll have the strength to resist the siren call of the Republican primary season in 2012.

Posted by: tacitus | July 6, 2009 1:36 PM

Although, on the bright side*, I imagine teachers will be handing out 'Palin's Resignation Speech' and one of Obama's Stump speeches, with a "compare & contrast the form, punctuation, logical consistency and rhetoric of these two speeches. Which do you think is the better speech? Why or why not?" kind of question for decades to come.

*chuckle* DJ, where I work, to do so would be the ultimate in "bias." Of course I get shredded for pointing out the flaws in the Republicans all the time, the flaws in the Democrats are just ... "obvious."

;o)

Posted by: dogmeatIB | July 6, 2009 1:37 PM

Well, in Orwellian terms quitting is not quitting makes sense for Sarah Palin. Being governor of Alaska, somehow means she's a quitter (exactly what she is quitting, well, only she knows) so in order to stop being a quitter she has to quit her job. Fulfilling her duty as governor is to quit and be with the dead fish. Resigning her position is not to quit (what exactly will she not be quitting, she only knows) it is moving forward with something (exactly what that is, she only knows).

If that doesn't make any sense, its not supposed to. How can any reasonable person rationally explain what has to be most bizarre political move in the last 20 years?

Posted by: Goldbrick4 | July 6, 2009 2:07 PM

Personally I don't see why it matters. No matter the reason for her resignation, lazy, too big for the little pond, $$$$, growing fiscal crisis combined with sinking approval ratings, it really is irrelevant. If she runs in 2012, which at this time I have no doubt that she will, her supporters will create some reason to blame it all on the liberals and Democrats, the media and "unfair biased" reporting, etc. They will concoct some sort of bullshit story where she becomes the great heroine who stands up to the special interests, the liberals, and all the anti-American factions by resigning.

No, I have no idea how the hell they'll spin that, how they'll sell it, how they'll manage to claim any of it without laughing their asses off, but they'll do it. They'll do it, morons on the right will buy it, and idiots in the media will treat it as if it is a "valid difference of opinion."

Posted by: dogmeatIB | July 6, 2009 2:20 PM

*((job creation, also!))*

Posted by: *((Der Bruno Stroszek))* | July 6, 2009 2:45 PM

"I think pundits like Ross Douthat and Rich Lowrey are in love with the *idea* of Sarah Palin."

That's funny--that's what I thought when Giuliani was doing well in the polls in the early campaign. Some people liked the idea of Guiliani as a candidate, but then seeing the actual Guiliani--not so much. (Fred Thompson, too, I guess--there was no way the actual candidate could match the hype.)

"I thought that was the Chief Blue Meanie. . . ."

"It's no longer a blue world, Max. Where shall we go?"
"Argentina?"

Posted by: Moopheus | July 6, 2009 2:59 PM

HTML Fail. Scene from The Birdcage.

Posted by: DaveL | July 6, 2009 3:29 PM

*((And the great Ronald Reagan!))*

Posted by: Raging Bee | July 6, 2009 3:45 PM

But what is it about Palin, that has even reasonably sane and critical conservatives, like Ross Douthat in today's New York Times, arguing that she still has the ability to become a formidable player in national politics, if only she will hunker down and bone up on the foreign and domestic policy issues?

They are applying the lessons of history.

Richard Nixon taught them that there's no limit to the amount of dirt that can be swept under the rug as long as it doesn't involve sex. It's quite possible that the insiders already know of the "family values" scandals waiting to spring out on the rest of the leading Republicans. What, you thought the latest round was going to be the end?

St. Ronnie taught them the importance of being able to charm the cameras. Perhaps his biggest lesson was that with low voter turnout, there was more advantage to be had from juicing up the Faithful than from coaxing the relatively unmotivated middle to the polls. IMHO, that's the most fundamental principle that the GOP has now.

Bush-43 taught the critical importance of having the behind-the-scenes backers of the Republican Party lined up before anyone else even decides to run. Bush-43 also taught that it wasn't Reagan's ability to speak coherently that mattered.

------------------

Personally, I hope she lands a prominent position with the Party. While the rest of the GOP is being mealy-mouthed, she's one of the few people they have who spells out for the American people what the Republican Party really stands for.

Posted by: D. C. Sessions | July 6, 2009 4:14 PM

Obviously the *((Gotta put First Things First))* line is just a comment -- she misremembered her (* Pascal comment syntax *).

Posted by: *((Squiddhartha))* | July 6, 2009 4:27 PM

Richard Nixon taught them that there's no limit to the amount of dirt that can be swept under the rug as long as it doesn't involve sex.

But Nixon was SMART. He may have been amoral, even perhaps evil, and maybe even sociopathic, but that fucker was smart. Also, Nixon's downfall was the absolute opposite of your proposed "lesson"; Watergate had no sex, and neither did the cover-up, but he couldn't sweep it under the rug. Nixon taught them that there IS a limit (or, at least, was). Reagan was just a dumber, more charismatic extension of Nixon. Bush 43 taught them that the limit may have changed--I can't keep track of the number of scandals Bush swept under the rug, although the Republicans paid the prince in the end.

Clinton taught them that two can play their game.

Posted by: Shygetz | July 6, 2009 4:47 PM

The truly scary part is that she has a bachelor's degree in communications and journalism.

From where? Liberty U?

(Like others, I couldn't read more than a paragraph or two of that dribble before wondering which planet the clearly brainless alien fungus that wrote it came from.)

Posted by: blf | July 6, 2009 4:48 PM

To pile on more evidence at how incredibly inept Palin was in her resignation I give you the Juneau Empire editorial's money quote on her tone-deafness and self-proclaimed concern about Alaskans:

Palin should have waited a few days before announcing her resignation. Instead, she dropped a bombshell just one day before Alaska was to celebrate its 50th anniversary of statehood. Her announcement could have overshadowed the historic significance of the Fourth, but it certainly didn't in Juneau or Douglas, where people were much more concerned about celebrating their state's heritage than about what the "guv" was doing or saying. [italics mine]

The editorial is worth the read, a well-written, "fuck you very much" to Ms. Palin.

Posted by: Michael Heath | July 6, 2009 4:53 PM

I thought it was a truism of the Web that bad writing/poor grammar was not to be taken as an indicator of intelligence. There are smart people who write poorly, after all.

Messed up grammar and spelling in a blog comment? Sure, that's not generally to be taken as indicative of anything other than somebody typing a bit too fast.

But bad writing? In a speech? Not so much. It shouldn't be that much to ask that a speech such as this should be coherently argued, and have some sort of point. Did she even read back the text to herself?

Posted by: Brain Hertz | July 6, 2009 6:01 PM

I recall how vehememtly the republicans decried Obama's policy of getting US troops home from Iraq as early as possible as a "cut and run" policy.

Who woulda thunk a republican governor lacked the gonads to "stay the course".

Posted by: grasshopper | July 6, 2009 6:33 PM

Tony, are you serious? I can't tell.

Posted by: Brain Hertz | July 6, 2009 6:36 PM

You should see the Big Hollywood column... they have a long one detailing why this is a work of political brilliance on Palin's part, but all the liberals are too braindead to realise her genius.

It hurts my mind to read it.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/07/04/the-force-is-with-sarah-palin/

Some highlights:

"First, she was a fantastically successful conservative governor lurking beneath the mainstream media’s radar. Next, she was a vice-presidential candidate who, even though she lost, still did more to electrify the base than the headliner. Third, she has now drawn the curtain on her post-election career as a sitting governor, a period that saw her deftly turn the tables on mainstream haters like David Letterman."

"Personally, I was unaware of the urgent moral imperative of serving out one’s full term as governor but, if it makes the lefties feel better, when she’s elected president I’m pretty confident she’ll serve a full term. Maybe even two."

Excuse me for a while. I think part of my brain just shut down in protest. I'm going to sleep now.

Posted by: Suricou Raven | July 6, 2009 6:50 PM

Completely off-topic, but just for DaveL: that's Twyla (Tharp), (Bob) Fosse, and Martha Graham.

All I can say from here in Aus is: fascinating train-wreck!

Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | July 6, 2009 7:24 PM

@59, thanks for the editorial link.

From that editorial: "Not only did she hit the self-destruct button, she built the time bomb known as Sarah Palin. We're surprised by the news, but we shouldn't be."

Ouch, that's gotta leave a mark.

Posted by: Adrienne | July 6, 2009 7:48 PM

@72--dude, if you're going to try and make people think that some idiot wingnut with three brain cells wrote your post, you really need to try a little harder. That comment is just not convincing. Although "cereal" was a pretty good touch...

Posted by: Josh | July 6, 2009 8:06 PM

The corn flakes were asking for it!

Posted by: Taz | July 6, 2009 8:47 PM

@72 - good start by only using one paragraph; but to be truly convincing you really need some words screaming out in all caps.

I agree with Josh; great touch on your use of 'cereal', that one hurt I was laughing so hard.

Posted by: Michael Heath | July 6, 2009 8:49 PM

Gunther:

Dude, I get it now. You were confusing us with some "cereal killers". I can only speak for myself but I've always leaned more toward being a Dali copycat, y'know, a surreal killer.

Posted by: democommie | July 6, 2009 9:35 PM

It puts the milk in its bowl or it gets the spoon again.

Posted by: Brian X | July 6, 2009 10:14 PM

I killed a bowl of Lucky Charms this morning.

O hai...I iz ebil nao.

Posted by: BobbyEarle | July 7, 2009 12:09 AM

*((AND YOUR LITTLE DOG TOO!))*

Posted by: Azkyroth | July 7, 2009 4:00 AM

I could have sworn that I saw *(( and ))* used as open and close tags for emphasis in a prompter file at one point. I don't know if it was just a cue for the talent or an actual tag for prompter software. Heck I wouldn't even swear that I remember seeing it correctly, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw that excerpt. Can someone who works with prompters more regularly comment/correct?

Posted by: Robert S. | July 7, 2009 4:56 AM

Point of information. The pun on "cereal killer" was used by Neal Gaiman in The Sandman comics, late 80s: a serial killer convention billed itself as a "cereal convention" in order to not attract attention. A few years later, it seems a group named Green Jellö aka Green Jellÿ had a video/album "Cereal Killer", with Toucan Son of Sam going on a violent rampage against various cereal icons.

Posted by: william e emba | July 7, 2009 10:51 AM

For those who want to follow a journalist on the scene who has been threatened by Palin's lawyers:

http://shannynmoore.wordpress.com/

Posted by: Tom | July 7, 2009 12:20 PM

The spelling of her name, Shannyn, reminds me of the chapter on names in the book Freakonomics, by Levitt and Dubner.

Posted by: Steve | July 7, 2009 4:49 PM