Sarah Palin

Sarah PalinAnd he, who would negotiate deals, kind of with the skills of a community organizer maybe organizing a neighborhood tea, well, he deciding that, “No, America would apologize as part of the deal,” as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture and we kowtow, and we apologize, and then, we bend over and say, “Thank you, enemy.”


2 thoughts on “Sarah Palin

  1. shinichi Post author

    Sarah Palin’s English

    by Anna North

    http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/sarah-palins-english/

    Sarah Palin has been mocked a lot for the way she talks, especially in her strange and rambling endorsement speech for Donald Trump. But her speeches on the campaign trail aren’t simple; they are actually incredibly complicated.

    Her unusual style was on display at a Trump rally on Monday afternoon in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “When both parties, the machines involved, when both of them hate you,” she said at one point, “then you know America loves you and we do love he who will be the next president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump!”

    Let’s break that last part down: “We” love not just Donald Trump, or even just Donald J. Trump, but “he who will be the next president of the United States of America.”

    Mrs. Palin relies heavily on this particular kind of dependent clause. “He is one who would know to negotiate,” she said of Donald Trump in her speech endorsing him on Jan. 19. Later in that speech, she spoke of “our own G.O.P. machine, the establishment, they who would assemble the political landscape.”

    Mrs. Palin is also a big fan of the participial phrase. “And that blank check too,” she said on Monday, “making no sense because it’s led us to things, oh gosh, to pay the bills then, we have had to uh, print money out of thin air.”

    In this case “making no sense” and everything that follows appear to modify “blank check”; though it can be a little hard to tell with Mrs. Palin, the participial phrase seems to function as an adjective. Elsewhere in her speech Mrs. Palin got more sophisticated.

    “Politics being kind of brutal business,” she said, “you find out who your friends are, that’s for sure.”

    Here, “politics being kind of brutal business” defines the circumstances under which the action occurs. It looks like a construction that will be familiar to anybody who took Latin in school: the ablative absolute.

    An ablative absolute in Latin is a particular kind of clause that, according to one definition, “modifies the whole sentence as an adverb modifies the action of a verb.” An example, courtesy of The Latin Library: “His verbis dictis, Caesar discedit.” Translation: “With these words having been said, Caesar departs.”

    In fact, a lot of what Sarah Palin says sounds like it’s been poorly translated from the Latin. With her “he who” and “one who,” she’d sound almost Ciceronian if it weren’t for the holes in her logic and the way those complicated sentences sometimes dribble off into vaguely sinister, possibly offensive nonsense.

    Maybe Mrs. Palin or her speechwriters think the convoluted sentence structure makes her sound smart. Maybe they think it makes her sound heroic, like the orators of the past. Or maybe all those extra clauses are just a really good way to load up a sentence with praise — or insults. Here’s Mrs. Palin using both a dependent clause and a participial phrase to attack President Obama on Jan. 19:

    And he, who would negotiate deals, kind of with the skills of a community organizer maybe organizing a neighborhood tea, well, he deciding that, “No, America would apologize as part of the deal,” as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture and we kowtow, and we apologize, and then, we bend over and say, “Thank you, enemy.”

    I honestly am not sure what’s going on in this sentence. What I do know is that Sarah Palin has this in common with Roman orators: She loves to talk trash.

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  2. shinichi Post author

    The Most Mystifying Lines of Sarah Palin’s Endorsement Speech

    by Michael Barbaro

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/us/politics/sarah-palin-endorsement-speech-donald-trump.html

    Sarah Palin’s meandering, fiery, sarcastic, patriotic and blustery speech endorsing Donald J. Trump for president on Tuesday in Ames, Iowa, does not easily submit to categorization.

    It has been described as performance art, a filibuster, even slam poetry. (Watch the video, read the transcript.)

    Mrs. Palin has always been a singular force on the campaign trail. But in her years away from politics, the former Alaska governor and Senator John McCain’s Republican vice-presidential pick in 2008 seems to have spawned a whole new series of idiosyncratic expressions and unusual locutions — to the point where even Mr. Trump seemed occasionally mystified as he tried to follow along.

    Below, a list of 10 of the most memorable lines of the speech, and an attempt to translate them:

    “They stomp on our neck, and then they tell us, ‘Just chill, O.K., just relax.’ Well, look, we are mad, and we’ve been had. They need to get used to it.”

    An impressive example of internal rhyme — if a tad violent, as Mrs. Palin describes the Republican establishment trying to quash the anger of the party’s rebellious base.

    _____

    “We’re talking about no more Reaganesque power that comes from strength. Power through strength.”

    Whoops! Mrs. Palin seems to be grasping for President Ronald Reagan’s signature Cold War slogan, “Peace through strength.”

    _____

    “And you quit footing the bill for these nations who are oil-rich, we’re paying for some of their squirmishes that have been going on for centuries. Where they’re fighting each other and yelling ‘Allahu akbar,’ calling jihad on each other’s heads forever and ever. Like I’ve said before, let them duke it out and let Allah sort it out.”

    Here, Mrs. Palin accomplishes many things unusual for a political speaker: She recites the Arabic phrase for “God is great,” and, more notably, coins a new word, squirmishes, a cross between squirm (which means to wriggle the body from side to side) and skirmish (which means a brief fight or encounter between small groups). Twitter embraced the new term instantly.

    _____

    “How about the rest of us? Right-winging, bitter-clinging, proud clingers of our guns, our God, and our religion, and our Constitution.”

    Remember President Obama’s famously dismissive description of conservatives as bitter people who “cling to guns or religion” before a crowd of wealthy donors in San Francisco? Mrs. Palin wants to make sure you never forget it.

    _____

    “He is from the private sector, not a politician. Can I get a ‘Hallelujah!’ ”

    Mrs. Palin goes godly as she enthuses about the business world.

    _____

    “Mr. Trump, you’re right, look back there in the press box. Heads are spinning, media heads are spinning. This is going to be so much fun.”

    This is perhaps the most accurate statement in her speech.

    _____

    “In fact it’s time to drill, baby, drill down, and hold these folks accountable.”

    The slogan Mrs. Palin popularized in 2008 just won’t die. And it has taken on metaphoric meaning now.

    _____

    “Well, and then, funny, ha ha, not funny, but now, what they’re doing is wailing, ‘Well, Trump and his Trumpeters, they’re not conservative enough.’ ”

    We’re still stumped by this one.

    _____

    “And he, who would negotiate deals, kind of with the skills of a community organizer maybe organizing a neighborhood tea, well, he deciding that, ‘No, America would apologize as part of the deal,’ as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture and we kowtow, and we apologize, and then, we bend over and say, ‘Thank you, enemy.’ ”

    It’s a mouthful. But this section, in which Mrs. Palin contrasts Mr. Trump with Mr. Obama, has everything she relishes: Mockery of Mr. Obama’s early years working in Chicago neighborhoods, right-wing accusations that the president has apologized for America, and a crude reference to him as a submissive sissy on foreign policy.

    _____

    “He’s got the guts to wear the issues that need to be spoken about and debate on his sleeve, where the rest of some of these establishment candidates, they just wanted to duck and hide. They didn’t want to talk about these issues until he brought ’em up. In fact, they’ve been wearing a, this, political correctness kind of like a suicide vest.”

    Her biggest misstep in the speech: In 2016, fear of suicide bombers is real for many, not the stuff of political punch lines.

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