My wife commented the other day that Sarah Palin has the rare talent of being able to make complete gibberish sound like it means something (a combination of that odd wink, and the modulation of her voice). As usual, my national chauvinism got the better of me: we, the British, have the finest exemplars of that skill, and Palin seems like an amateur to me. Two words: Idle; Unwin.
{ 25 comments }
Russell Arben Fox 10.09.08 at 2:54 pm
Ah, but Palin doesn’t know she’s doing it. It just comes naturally.
P O'Neill 10.09.08 at 3:35 pm
It only seems to have meaning because she’s confident. And she’s confident because she thinks it’s God’s will that she’s on the ticket.
HH 10.09.08 at 3:55 pm
Palin is not assaulting language as much as she is undermining reason. Her gibbering puts ideas into an ideological blender from which they emerge as a frothy emotional buzz. Much of the American electorate has lost the ability to decode a spoken argument, and now simply respond to disconnected verbal tokens, like FREEDOM, HONOR, VICTORY, PRIDE, and TERRORIST. Television is largely to blame.
lemuel pitkin 10.09.08 at 4:03 pm
Speaking of gibberish….
Ano 10.09.08 at 4:14 pm
Fred Armisen on SNL is pretty great at this. Check out his “political commedian, Nicholas Fehn” bit (second video on this site works, the first has been taken down):
http://easywaystogogreen.com/green-media/fred-armisen-as-nicholas-fehn-political-comedian/
Righteous Bubba 10.09.08 at 4:26 pm
Professor Irwin Corey Accepts the National Book Award for Thomas Pynchon
Manoj 10.09.08 at 4:36 pm
Typical British Imperialstic tendancies – to say Brits are the best at everything…. Indians have been doing crappy things better than anybody else in the world, in fact, Indians invented crap, during the reign of our lord **** (self-censored for “offending religious sentiments”).. Indians have the best of the worst of the litter of politicians..
Jared 10.09.08 at 4:42 pm
Two more words: James Joyce.
MarkUp 10.09.08 at 5:09 pm
”Television is largely to blame.”
No more than ‘bullets kill’. TV’s should come with a warning label though…
http://tinyurl.com/4hf3ty
Cycledoc 10.09.08 at 5:39 pm
She’s a loudmouth Zelig grafted on to Eliza Doolittle.
HH 10.09.08 at 5:55 pm
How has TV poisoned our politics and society? Let me count the ways:
1. The Leni Riefenstahl effect: magnifying the emotional impact of theatrical propaganda displays arousing primitive emotions.
2. The Attention Deficit Disorder effect: conditioning people to consume facts and decide on them in 30 and 60 second commercial spots.
3. The Superficiality effect: collapsing evaluation of an individual’s character into a TV personality that must be instantly agreeable to the befuddled viewer.
4. The Production Values effect: conditioning people to endorse the most attractively produced message.
5. The Dueling Sophistry effect: programming people to believe that there are knowledgeable “experts” on both sides of every controversy, and alternative “truths.”
In Neil Postman’s words, TV has amused us to (societal) death.
Lex 10.09.08 at 6:16 pm
One need only watch what passes for ‘expert commentary’ on CNN, which appears to be made up of partisans shouting soundbites at each other, to appreciate the mature deliberation of, for example, the BBC’s Newsnight, where occasionally people manage to speak in whole paragraphs. The points in #11 may not be exclusively a US disease, but the USA has it much worse than the Mother Country. And let’s not start in on France, where they have whole channels devoted to paragraph-spouting…
David in NY 10.09.08 at 6:22 pm
When I first heard Palin, I thought, “My God, Prof. Irwin Corey had a daughter?? Who knew??” She makes exactly as much sense as he does (but the Prof’s personal politics are better): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Corey ; http://www.irwincorey.org/ .
(Corey has been compared to Unwin.)
MarkUp 10.09.08 at 7:21 pm
HH> ”How has TV poisoned our politics and society? ”
or
How the way TV has been [mis]used to poison our politics and society.
In twenty years they’ll likely be saying the same about the internet, who knows though, by then 90% of capacity could be 3-D porn and nobody will remember to ask the question. Seems to be a similar argument to, “government is the problem.”
HH 10.09.08 at 8:08 pm
TV has been [mis]used
I believe in instrumentality effects. Crimes of passion are more serious when firearms are involved, as are international confrontations when nuclear weapons are available.
Internet activity is bidirectional. TV watching is unidirectional. It can easily be argued that unidirectional information media tightly controlled by the plutocracy are far more pernicious than bidirectional media with no central control. Commercial TV broadcasting is intrinsically corrosive to informed discourse because of its unidirectional and capital-intensive nature. It is a perfect propaganda tool, and that is why it has dominated and degraded American politics.
MarkUp 10.09.08 at 11:20 pm
”It can easily be argued that unidirectional information media tightly controlled by the plutocracy are far more pernicious than bidirectional”
Hey, you know, Greenspan still sees little need for regulation, we just need more honorable folks. If we had eliminated ships and navies centuries ago we would have put a stop to empire building. Hammers don’t hit thumbs, people do. I’m not saying the medium is not abused and largely corrupt, only that it’s the human factor not the tool; those who seek to corrupt will regardless of media, if allowed. The net does allow for your bidirectional inputs but is also readily corruptible if/when allowed. Digital bidirectional capabilities work both ways and offers new, quite scary potential. We know those in the ‘neutral’ middle are not always, and that money can sway in ways altruism never dreamed of.
Jason B 10.09.08 at 11:29 pm
As terribly executed a film as Idiocracy was, its premise was compelling because of what’s being said here. We’ve reached oversaturation. Each additional fact subtracts from the whole of “knowledge.”
If they just could have had a script and some actors, Idiocracy could have been a great film. But I suppose the same could be said for Freddy Got Fingered.
Roy Belmont 10.09.08 at 11:35 pm
Scat singing is gibberish, Ella Fitzgerald vocalized across whole stanzas without making any sense at all.
Babies hear a lot of gibberish and often find it very comforting, because it’s coming from mom, or someone momlike.
Gibberish in Palin’s context is disconcerting to those of us whose minds still work, but to the stunned and bewildered of the lower right it’s probably pretty reassuring. Coming in on a wink and a prayer.
MarkUp 10.09.08 at 11:53 pm
There is currently being done at PBS – Now asking if Palin is qualified. When I just looked the results were 49% yes, 49% no, and 2% don’t have a clue.
vote/view > http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html
Helen 10.10.08 at 12:20 am
Gibberish in Palin’s context is disconcerting to those of us whose minds still work, but to the stunned and bewildered of the lower right it’s probably pretty reassuring.
Maybe she’s speaking in tongues?
Dan S. 10.10.08 at 1:33 am
“Babies hear a lot of gibberish and often find it very comforting, because it’s coming from mom, or someone momlike.”
That’s surely true to some extent, but it’s more complicated. See for example various things here about how the fundamentals of “baby talk” appear to be cross-cultural, cross-species, and specially suited to helping babies learn language.
Palinese, on the other hand, seems to have some of the opposite attributes . . .
Henry (not the famous one) 10.10.08 at 5:23 am
She’s not speaking in tongues, she’s not speaking in code, she’s speaking BACKWARDS. As a commenter on another blog (not me, I wish it were) has pointed out, her off-the-cuff comments make more sense when read backwards:
Forward:
“As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we’ve really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance.”
Backward
“We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance. Perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation here, with those fighting the freedom of the press. And then the press, we’ve really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship, including freedom of the press, to fight for democracy and freedoms, as we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015023.php#1385826
mac 10.10.08 at 11:47 am
Palin has difficulty speaking off-script on semi-weighty matters because she needs ‘pointers’ and other cues to keep her on track. She can do improv but most easily when the subject is ‘Joe Six Pack’ or when engaging in some other folksy cliche-laden claptrap because she’s all about the folks … out there … somewhere.
The Couric interview illustrates what happens when she gets caught without her ducks lined up … the waffling becomes almost satellite-like in its orbit. But even when talking complete and utter shite, she still manages to put on an expression that suggests she is imparting something we all desperately need to know – which I suppose is simply doing what politicians do.
Worst of all is the rhyming couplety student voice that goes up and down – sort of like a 10th grader reciting by rote. The voice seems detached from her brain, which is why it is so irritating … also because it is piercing (notice I didn’t say ‘shrill’). No matter how superficially informed it seems, you know that deep down Palinochio is really a complex hybrid – part-human, part-parrot and part-witchhunter cult member.
The one hope is that while shooting wolves from a helicopter, she falls out and impales herself on the antler of a passing elk.
Robert Hanks 10.11.08 at 10:15 am
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Slim Gaillard’s Vout: now that’s quality gibbering.
Also, and more patriotically, The Fast Show’s Chanel 9 Neus – http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ctaszjeaDK0.
There’s a good selection of literary examples in the Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry, edited by Hugh Haughtoneroonie.
sara 10.11.08 at 10:16 pm
Palin speaks in text clouds.
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