Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

Sarah Palin is a Yokel

She is a yokel, and a putz, and a schmuck. That may sound ridiculously harsh, but I've just watched her debate Joe Biden for an hour and a half, and experienced shooting pain stretching from my ears up into the rational portions of my brain every time she opened her mouth. Am I a Biden fan? Not particularly, but this woman is an idiot. Do we really want to vote for yet another ticket that features someone who cannot pronounce the word "nuclear?" Palin has taken folksy jargon in national politics to a whole new level.

As of now, I still have not been able to discern what ratio of Palin's rhetoric is sincere blue-collar arrogance (more on that in a moment) and how much of it is naked, cynical pandering, but I'm certain that all of it is some combination of the two. I simply do not understand the appeal to any voter of someone who refers to herself in every other sentence as "average," "middle-class," "Joe Six-pack," etc.

Why would I vote for someone who self-identifies with the typical knuckle-dragging xenophobe who spends his leisure time chugging beer on the couch? This goes back to something I've had cause to complain of before: growing American pride in the "redneck" label and all of the moronic bigotry that that label implies. When did it become uncool to be well-educated, well-spoken, and well-bred?

As to specific complaints about Palin in the debate, her statements throughout the evening only reinforced her status as a mindless McCain mouthpiece, a clueless, bumbling tool of a dying campaign. I very much doubt she could have shoe-horned in one more use of the word "maverick" if she were getting royalty payments for it. It seemed to magically morph into every part of speech at some point during her remarks: "The maverickish maverick mavericked maverickally."

With respect to the economy, she stated that the best barometer of how the economy is doing is to attend a kid's soccer game. When asked who was at fault for the sub-prime mortgage crisis, her response began, "You're darn right it was the predator lenders." I don't in any way want to downplay the complicity of pure capitalistic greed. However, starting off on that tack is offensive on two levels: On the one hand, it ignores the personal responsibility of the people who took on more debt than they could physically afford, and on the other hand it demeans their intelligence, painting them as hapless rubes who were suckered by the Wall Street snake-oil salesmen.

Throughout the debate, Palin's dialogue was littered with button-cute, country-fried buzzspeak and strangely devoid of meaningful content. So much so, in fact, that it leaves me with very little to talk about beyond a general distaste for her values, her style, and the lack of activity taking place between her ears.

In the words of a pre-debate commentator: "People making the mistake of trying to understand her unparseable constructions suffer greatly. Only by matching her smile and blank cheerfulness can one withstand the sucking black hole of unreason that is Palin attempting to communicate with words."

Quite.

I despise her and her entire regular-American approach to politics with a flaming passion. It has been a blight on the nation since the days of Andrew Jackson. I'm still with Jon Stewart. I want my president to be an elitist. You don't know anything about leading the nation because you're just like the rest of us? Well, screw you. Get out of the race.

Posted by Jared at October 2, 2008 09:33 PM | TrackBack