Since it’s Palin hypothetical day, here’s mine: If Sarah Palin were an 80’s emo teen instead of a has-been politician, she’d be sitting in her room in Wasilla with the 45 of this song on replay while writing in her Lisa Frank diary with a pink fluffy pen, dotting her i’s with sad faces, and eating Ho-Hos even though she knew that they were bad for her complexion. Because she was only joking, and now she knows how Joan of Arc felt.
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BGinCHI
As the flames rose to her Roman nose and her slushy started to meeeelt.
YellowJournalism
I glanced at that out of the corner of my eye and thought it originally said, “What if Sarah Palin were Elmo?”
Sesame Street would never be the same. She would accuse Big Bird of palling around with imaginary terrorists.
Omnes Omnibus
If you want emo by the Smiths, you want this.
Carnacki
What if Sarah Palin was a vampire?
Well for one thing, she’d probably be less blood thirsty than she is since vampires aren’t pro war (wastes blood).
Anonymous37
There was a time when that was literally my favorite song.
Then, as all teenagers do, I viciously turned on The Smiths and hated them with all of the passion that I once loved them with. Now I have a faint feeling of nostalgia for those songs, and vaguely wish that Morrissey wasn’t a racist douchebag.
Sorry, mingebag: I forgot he’s British.
JGabriel
Sarah Palin was an emo-teen in the 80’s — it’s just that her idea of emo was Barry Manilow, whom she had a deep and secret crush on until 1993, when, being in Alaska all those years, she first learned he’s gay.
Pat Buchanan told her.
At a TGIF in Anchorage.
.
Carnacki
@YellowJournalism: He already IS. He pals with teh gays too. Also.
master c
@Omnes Omnibus:
that’s right, “if a double decker bus killed the both of us…”
let’s see…. who would both of us be?
calipygian
What do you mean “if she were?” She IS a self-absorbed emo teen!
funluvn
Sarah of Wasilla
Burned at the snake?
beltane
No, no, no. Sarah Palin had the opportunity to be an emo teenager in the ’80s and she passed it up, too busy listening to Van Halen and Def Leppard.
Back in the day, my emo friends and I were very much into Brian Eno era David Bowie. I think we must have watched Christiane F. at least 20 times. Can’t see Sarah having anything to do with such sinfulness.
mistermix
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, that’s more emo, but this one is more self-pitying and clueless about the effect of words.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anonymous37: I was more of a Cure person for my emo needs. But the Clash, the ‘Mats, and such like bands were really my thing. Which is a way of saying, OMG, Sarah Palin is about six month older than me. Good god, what have we wrought? I guess I am a hoity-toity elitist who SP wouldn’t even let be in her generation anyway.
Mnemosyne
Having been a Morrissey-listening emo teen in the 1980s myself, I can say that Palin would probably be a better person if she had gone through that phase since eventually you start to realize that those songs are funny.
Maude
OT
The House has voted to repeal the health care bill.
freelancer
Oooo Oooo! This is a fun game, lemme try:
If Sarah Palin was a crayon, which political office would she quit halfway through?
RandyH
Off Topic but the Beast just released their annual 50 Most Loathsome Americans for 2010. Better late than never. Thought some here might be interested.
Update: their site is flaky as a result. Link not working right now but it’s good.
BGinCHI
I have a really easy time imagining her as Mr. Shankley.
She speaks such bloody awful poetry.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: Did you go to my college? I wasn’t that person, but I had friends who were.
JGabriel
@funluvn:
And scored to an oratorio by Tristero: Voices of Fright.
.
cathyx
I don’t get the emo reference. What is that?
lamh32
So OT, but still food for thought:
Plurality of Americans no longer trust Fox news.
Omnes Omnibus
@Maude: Well, now that’s basically over and done.
funluvn
Seriously. The Smiths were awful then and they are to be laughed at now.
Oh! I get it now. Awful and to be laughed at is Sarah’s calling card…
BGinCHI
@lamh32: Jesus, did Juan Williams tip that scale fast or what??
Surly duff
If sarah was a tree nd fell in the woods, would anyone hear her say, “you betcha!”
Surly duff
If sarah was a tree nd fell in the woods, would anyone hear her say, “you betcha!”
jwb
And then there is this, which I think accurately captures how the Right and the media believe Sarah! affects the left.
Ryan
You know, I’ve heard that song a thousand times, but the whole persecution complex angle never really sunk in.
@funluvn
Commandment 11 which is penciled in reads: thou shalt not troll the Smiths
BGinCHI
@funluvn: No, the Smiths were not awful. That’s a dumbass thing to say.
JGabriel
@cathyx:
Emo-core. Sad-sack indie music. The term was first used in the 90’s, as far as I remember, but it’s been retroactively applied to similarly morose indie music in previous decades.
.
R-Jud
@Omnes Omnibus: My sister and brother-in-law had that as their first dance at their wedding.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ooh. Had to go immediately to this as the chaser.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, if you’re six months younger than Sarah Palin, you’re four years older than me. Most of my friends either stayed in NYC and went to CUNY schools or went to very small liberal arts colleges in the northeast (Bard seems to have gotten a good chunk of my graduating class)
freelancer
@funluvn:
I’m inhuman and I need to be loathed, now, like everyone else does.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane:Very small liberal arts college in the Midwest here.
Jason
It’s very rare that a blog post about Sarah Palin actually makes me laugh, instead of causing annoyance and frustration. Well done!
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Upstairs College of Animal Husbandry?
I thought I knew you.
Omnes Omnibus
@R-Jud: Brilliant.
handy
@Ryan:
Same. And I’ve listened to that thing on my ipod hundreds of times the last few years.
As for the epitome of an emo Smiths song, I think it’s pretty hard to top this.
R-Jud
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes. My mother-in-law’s eyebrows almost literally hovered above her hairline for the entire duration.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Not quite. That was just down the road.
slag
@lamh32:
Jesus. What’s taking these people so long?
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: We had good parties.
Seriously, school in WI?
SiubhanDuinne
In keeping with the earlier speculative threads — wouldn’t that be “nappy-headed Ho-Hos”?
wasabi gasp
She’d bedazzle crosshairs on a Lennon t-shirt.
cathyx
@JGabriel: Ok, I must be really old because I still don’t know what you mean.
Mnemosyne
@R-Jud:
My one regret about our wedding is that G wanted to have our first dance be to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and I said no. In retrospect, it would have been awesome.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Second try because of FYWP. Yep, Lawrence.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Have a colleague whose son goes there. Likes it a lot.
Can’t beat midwestern liberal arts colleges.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: It is the one context in which I will root for Vikings.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Wait till that new Thor movie comes out.
hilts
Sarah Palin is an epic pratfall. Watching her talk is like watching an endless loop of someone slipping on a banana peel.
funluvn
@BGinCHI:
I have ears that disagree, but then again, it’s just my ears opinion.
Knew a lot of people that found them dreamy at the time
BGinCHI
@funluvn: OK, that you don’t like them is fine.
I don’t really like The Band, but I would not say they were “awful.”
Just not my cup o tea.
funluvn
@BGinCHI:
You listened to them too? Kool kid thing I guess…
BGinCHI
@funluvn: Smiths? Hell yes, back in the day (as they say).
One moves on, but I still like an occasional tune of theirs. It’s whingy stuff, but there’s some great guitar and smart songwriting.
craig
Just want to see the mobile site.
Anonymous37
OmnesOmnibus> I was more of a Cure person for my emo needs.
Never got into The Cure, but I did like “Why Can’t I Be You?” back in the day.
Steeplejack
@cathyx:
Shorter version: “emo” = excessively emotional in a self-absorbed, teenage-angst, bad-poetry kind of way.
funluvn
@BGinCHI:
That day and time, for that genre of music I thought 10,000 Maniacs were interesting. I do agree with your critique above though. I should have stated that I didn’t care for them instead of dropping a marker of awful there.
My cousin is older than me, probably a 1975 0r 76 HS grad. He had a real issue with Elton John then. Listening now, I can see his point.
tim serbo
the smiths are a painful subject for me. johnny marr and bob mould are the great enduring guitar stylists of that period, if you ask me, but i could never stand morrissey. nothing’s ever his fault, no one understands him, he’s too brilliant and sensitive for this world, he’s always right and everyone else is always wrong. that kind of adolescent horseshit was barely tolerable when he was an adolescent, or near enough. with every passing year it grows more curdled and nauseating. listening to the smiths is just exhausting, it takes so much effort to filter out the maundering asshole.
funluvn
@tim serbo:
Talent they had. I’ll say no more or I’ll use the word awful again, and that would be wrong and I know it.
tim serbo
@funluvn: aw, you didn’t say anything so terrible. don’t let a commenter barking in your face ruin your night. life’s too short, and don’t i know it.
Omnes Omnibus
@tim serbo:If you think of Morrissey being tongue in cheek, the Smiths are a lot more fun. Come on, if he were really that depressed, he would have topped himself years ago.
Omnes Omnibus
Redundant.
Nellcote
What makes you think she isn’t.
Comrade Mary
Q. What’s the difference between a hockey mom and Morrissey?
A. Morrissey doesn’t take himself anywhere near as seriously as a hockey mom. But they both bear more grudges than lonely high court judges.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Any post that quotes Morrissey automatically wins the TBC-C seal of approval.
Sweetness, Sweetness I was only joking when I said
You could run for Veep while standing on your head…
Sorry.
de stijl
@tim serbo:
You’re the one for me, fatty.
I get it. Moz is not your cuppa. If listening to him is exhausting, don’t do it.
I’m not a Beatles fan so (and I know this sounds radical) I don’t listen to the Beatles.
PIGL
Never mind the Smiths, here’s the early 80s.
(Meant to link to Color me Impressed, but I am so lame with the html)
Gina
@hilts: True. Improve upon that mental image with this as a soundtrack.
gbear
@tim serbo: What you need is Karoke versions of songs by The Smiths.
MoonBatista
@cathyx: Sorrowful sounding music by suicidal skinny white guys, often British of heritage.
ogliberal
@Steeplejack: I worked backstage security a couple of times for Morrissey shows in the NYC area in the early 90s. Tired me out – spent most of my time during each show escorting emo kids – well, I was a kid, too…and a Moz fan, but not emo – back to their seats after they came up on stage to touch their hero. (which he loved and encouraged) Anyway, at one of the shows some goth girl tossed a gift bag up on stage for good old Stephen. It contained a pair of silk boxers, several photos of said goth girl (she really needed some sunlight), and a book of poetry she had written…really, really bad poetry. Several mentions of placentas. Uplifting stuff.
ogliberal
Well, Palin put crosshairs on Gabby Giffords district and Morrissey hoped that the unofficial Smiths biographer would die in a hotel fire. They should have lunch – he could teach her to love vegan stew and she can show him how to skin a moose, all while blowing racist dog whistles and singing about the National Front.
I always pictured a young Morrissey as the Daniel-Day Lewis’ character in “My Beautiful Laundrette” – beating up Pakistanis by day and sleeping with one by night.
Steeplejack
@ogliberal:
Vindication is mine!
People don’t understand how rare that is in these parts. I got sucked into watching Clash of the Titans on HBO–predictably cheesy but surprisingly better than I thought it would be (okay, admittedly a low bar there)–and expected when I came back here there would be at least six posts reaming me for my dismal and utter misunderstanding of all things emo, complete with links to emo-centric Web sites I never heard of. And the word cudlip might have been used.
goatchowder
There were no emo’s in the 80’s. Back then they were called “goths”. They listened to Bauhaus, the 4AD records, the Cure, Siouxie and the Banshees, Depressed Mood (um, Depeche Mode), and in general anything sad and British. They wore black, dyed their hair black, painted their nails black, and wore lots of black makeup.
Emo punk was invented sometime in the mid-1990’s. Emo music was just emotional, anguished, sad punk rock. Emo fans grabbed elements of goth style (wearing black, suicide attempts), but the music was totally different.
platosearwax
Bigmouth is my alarm clock ringtone.
Paul in KY
@Anonymous37: I like ‘The Cult’ better than ‘The Cure’. Both are fine, though.