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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Conundrum…What the Hell Does This Mean?

Sunday Conundrum…What the Hell Does This Mean?

by Tom Levenson|  April 10, 201112:31 pm| 64 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, WTF?

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This being the following statement from unsuccessful national candidate and half-term former governor Sarah Palin:

“It’s not America’s role not to be out and about nation building and telling other countries how to live…”

This isn’t snark.  (Or rather it is, but I am also experiencing genuine bewilderment.)

__

Treat this as a self-amuse open thread; one of the few genuine pleasures of the last couple of months has been watching Palin do the headless chicken, as she continues to strut, unaware that she’s well down Glenn Beck’s path, amirite?

So just give your babblefish a workout in an attempt to translate Palinese into coherence.

__

Image:  Francisco de Goya, Still Life with Chicken and a Pan of Fish, 1808-1812.

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Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    sukabi

    April 10, 2011 at 12:33 pm

    it’s a double negative back flip with a triple yutz… she doesn’t yet realize it, but she’s got both bases covered and can never be accused of the dreaded “flip flop” wrt America and nation building.

  2. 2.

    Radon Chong

    April 10, 2011 at 12:34 pm

    I think she knows. Deep denial, yes, but she knows.

  3. 3.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    April 10, 2011 at 12:36 pm

    Watched LOTR for the first time since it came out. For such a splendid adaptation it is OVERSCORED. Too much bloody music. Gesticulating, cloying, ingratiating music. Shoulda let Richard Thompson do it.

    Or a composer that does a pretty good Benjamin Britten impersonation since he was roughly (ETA: or better to say ‘his career was’) contemporaneous with JRR. Or maybe cranky old Peter Maxwell Davies.

    I think the composer they settled with was trying to channel Ralph Vaughn Williams who was kind of “meh.”

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 10, 2011 at 12:37 pm

    Is that a quote from Kang?

  5. 5.

    Baud

    April 10, 2011 at 12:38 pm

    It means, whatever Obama supports, I oppose. It’s the new GOP platform.

  6. 6.

    Waratah

    April 10, 2011 at 12:38 pm

    Did you just want to use that painting? If so perfect fit.

  7. 7.

    PurpleGirl

    April 10, 2011 at 12:39 pm

    Blather and babble… she can’t hear herself and edit at the same time. As Keith used to say — That woman is an idiot.

  8. 8.

    dsc

    April 10, 2011 at 12:40 pm

    @Radon Chong:

    I think she knows. Deep denial, yes, but she knows

    .

    But she doesn’t. She is honestly ignorant and proud of it. She says whatever the hell she feels like saying without heed to logic, grammar, or history.

    She is just that dumb.

    “Out and about”–like we’re in a global carpool going to the mall.

  9. 9.

    thomas Levenson

    April 10, 2011 at 12:40 pm

    @Waratah: Yup. I’m a deep Goya fan anyway, and I love still life painting generally, and I really love still life depictions of food, and once the headless chicken thought crossed my mind…

  10. 10.

    NobodySpecial

    April 10, 2011 at 12:42 pm

    I think whoever’s feeding Sarah lines is getting snarky about it. Next he’ll probably have her reciting recipes or old Royals boxscores.

  11. 11.

    Bruce S

    April 10, 2011 at 12:43 pm

    That’s Palinese for “Hey, I even need somebody to edit my Tweets!”

  12. 12.

    ppcli

    April 10, 2011 at 12:43 pm

    Double negation. How does it work?

  13. 13.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 10, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    She’s that dangerous combination of aggressive, stupid and vindictive. She is the most aggressively and proudly ignorant person who’s had time on the national stage. Pity she’s managed to gather so much coin doing it. Sigh.

  14. 14.

    Loneoak

    April 10, 2011 at 12:45 pm

    There’s a long article in the LA Times today about the Atlas Shrugged production fails.

    It has taken businessman John Aglialoro nearly 20 years to realize his ambition of making a movie out of “Atlas Shrugged,” the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand that has sold more than 7 million copies and has as passionate a following among many political conservatives and libertarians as “Twilight” has among teen girls.

  15. 15.

    Canadian Shoggoth

    April 10, 2011 at 12:47 pm

    She’s a straight word salad shooter don’tcha know.

  16. 16.

    Corner Stone

    April 10, 2011 at 12:47 pm

    @NobodySpecial:

    I think whoever’s feeding Sarah lines is getting snarky about it. Next he’ll probably have her reciting recipes or old Royals boxscores.

    “We pruned the hedges…of many small villages.”

  17. 17.

    JPL

    April 10, 2011 at 12:52 pm

    This is her entire statement

    “We better be in it to win it. ‘Win it’ means Qadhafi goes and America gets to get on out of there,” she said…………
    “It’s not America’s role not to be out and about nation building and telling other countries how to live,” Palin added.

    She wants to get rid of Qadhafi but not tell other countries how to live…hahaha
    How does she feel about Iran?

  18. 18.

    Hugh

    April 10, 2011 at 12:52 pm

    I can never resist reading a Palin quote and doing so never fails to give me a headache.

    or

    I can never not fail to not read something said by Palin whose verbage doesn’t give me a headache most of the time but all of the time.

  19. 19.

    Frank

    April 10, 2011 at 1:00 pm

    Hip Hop @13 — I think you nail it with your assessment. At least I can honestly say that I think her days of fame are numbered. Too many are finally on to her game: angry blather wrapped in falsehoods, inside an enema of the mind.

    Hugh @18 — I was wondering how long it would be before someone used her own syntax for high humor! Well done!

  20. 20.

    Yutsano

    April 10, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    That is the oddest looking chicken head I’ve ever seen in my life. Could be some obscure Spanish breed I’ve never heard of. And for a still life of Goya it’s very stark. Maybe he was just really hungry that day.

  21. 21.

    PurpleGirl

    April 10, 2011 at 1:04 pm

    @ppcli: With difficulty. Which is why we are taught not use double negatives.

    Maybe she meant it is America’s role to be out and about nation building and telling other countries what to do. For whatever reason she thought she needed to use negatives. A positive statement would have been better and stronger and we wouldn’t still be saying… That woman is an idiot.

  22. 22.

    Citizen_X

    April 10, 2011 at 1:04 pm

    @Loneoak:

    as passionate a following among many political conservatives and libertarians as “Twilight” has among teen girls.

    Heh heh. I see what they did there.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 10, 2011 at 1:07 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Upon further reflection, she appears to be quoting Kodos, not Kang. My bad.

  24. 24.

    Joey Maloney

    April 10, 2011 at 1:09 pm

    The fact that one of the 20th century’s most influential books is coming to movie screens in such a fashion is — depending on whom you ask — a reflection of liberal Hollywood’s aversion to Rand’s ideas, a symptom of Aglialoro’s rigid adherence to them, or a testament to the challenges inherent in adapting the complex tome.

    After you catch your breath from laughing at the idea that Atlas Shrugged is “one of the 20th century’s most influential books”, consider the alternative explanation that it’s a shitty movie that no one will want to see.

  25. 25.

    Yutsano

    April 10, 2011 at 1:11 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: I can just go back to ignoring her now, amirite?

  26. 26.

    MikeJ

    April 10, 2011 at 1:11 pm

    I think it means, “I don’t like that black man.”

  27. 27.

    Social outcast

    April 10, 2011 at 1:14 pm

    Laugh all you want. She’s covered 360 degrees on that issue, and nobody cannot tell her otherwise.

  28. 28.

    Butler

    April 10, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    @Loneoak: Thank you for that. So many absurd things in that article.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 10, 2011 at 1:19 pm

    @Yutsano: Why would you stop? Did you lose a bet?

  30. 30.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 10, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    @MikeJ: Win. That’s exactly what it’s code for.

  31. 31.

    Yutsano

    April 10, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Fair enough. I’m having more fun discussing the aesthetics of the painting anyway. Can I just run away to Catalonia now?

  32. 32.

    Citizen_X

    April 10, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    @dsc: Srsly. I don’t think the troops stuck in Afghanistan think of themselves as “out and about,” as they gayly stroll up the Khyber Pass, or saunter through the Korengal Valley.

  33. 33.

    MattR

    April 10, 2011 at 1:23 pm

    @Butler: I loved the comment from a Randroid that said “Captialism is not about greed; it’s about each of us doing what is best for our own self-interest.” A real distinction without a difference.

  34. 34.

    licensed to kill time

    April 10, 2011 at 1:25 pm

    I envision Sarah Palin’s brain as one of those b.ingo ball cages, turning and churning the talking points until one or more garble up and out the chute. And every time she thinks “B.ingo! Got’em agin!” while the rest of us wonder WTF.

  35. 35.

    Maude

    April 10, 2011 at 1:33 pm

    The 1/2 term Govenor didn’t stick around to do much nation building in Alaska, nevermind whatever country she imagines she can see out of her kitchen window.
    She is incredibly stupid.

  36. 36.

    ktward

    April 10, 2011 at 1:34 pm

    The headline at referenced CNN link:

    ‘I’m through,’ Palin says

    It didn’t mean what I thought it meant. Cheeky bastard, that Mooney.

  37. 37.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 10, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    @Yutsano: Have you considered the Netherlands? During EuroTrip 2010, it was the country that I saw as most livable (aside from the mayonnaise on fries abomination).

  38. 38.

    robertdsc-PowerBook

    April 10, 2011 at 1:47 pm

    Beautiful and brain-dead. That’s our Sarah.

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    April 10, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    @Joey Maloney:

    After you catch your breath from laughing at the idea that Atlas Shrugged is “one of the 20th century’s most influential books”,

    You know who else wrote an unreadable book that’s nonetheless one of the most influential (in a bad way) of the 20th Century?

  40. 40.

    Yutsano

    April 10, 2011 at 2:05 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: ZOMG. You are being so unfair to me. That’s where the Dawg is. And I promised myself I wouldn’t chase after him. But you just had to go and stick that worm in my brain. Plus Dutch is close enough to German that I could get by. U r ebil. :)

  41. 41.

    SteveinSC

    April 10, 2011 at 2:06 pm

    Qui s’excuseamuse, s’accuse?

  42. 42.

    James E Powell

    April 10, 2011 at 2:14 pm

    Sarah Palin will never be done and we will never be done with her. So long as there are angry, ignorant, bigoted Americans, she will have an audience.

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 10, 2011 at 2:22 pm

    @Roger Moore: Dan Brown?

  44. 44.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 10, 2011 at 2:25 pm

    @Yutsano: Virtually everyone in the major cities speaks very good English as well.

  45. 45.

    Yutsano

    April 10, 2011 at 2:28 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, but I consider it polite to speak the language of the country I’m in. Served me very well in Germany to be sure. Not a lot of them were used to Americans who spoke even a smattering of German, and I could hold whole conversations. It got me a ton of respect, even when they would answer me in English.

  46. 46.

    Professor

    April 10, 2011 at 2:29 pm

    What Mark Twain said all those decades ago could rightly be ascribed to the birther nonsense being spewed out on the cable stations by that idiot Donald Trump and Sarah Palin thus: It’s better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a FOOL than to open it and confirm it. It pains me that none of you has said it!

  47. 47.

    sacman701

    April 10, 2011 at 2:35 pm

    “It’s not America’s role not to be out and about nation building and telling other countries how to live…”

    is equivalent to

    “It’s America’s role to be out and about nation building and telling other countries how to live…”

    which describes Bush the Lesser’s foreign policy.

  48. 48.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 10, 2011 at 2:49 pm

    @Yutsano: The same technique has always worked for me in France. The Dutch don’t seem to expect anyone else to know more than a few phrases in their language and, at the same time, expect that English is everyone’s primary or secondary language, so if you seem remotely foreign to them, they speak to you in English. When we were there we stayed with my wife’s best friend (Romanian) and her boyfriend (Dutch). The two of them generally speak English with one another. Also, as we were walking the streets of Amsterdam, my wife and her friend were speaking Romanian and, if we would stop for coffee and the two of them were talking as we walked in, the wait staff would automatically greet us in English. It was a bit odd.

  49. 49.

    Yutsano

    April 10, 2011 at 2:58 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: There is also the fact that when they find a native English speaker, they pounce on you. I was having dinner with a German couple, we were all talking and laughing and joking and having fun when all of a sudden the woman raises her hand and yells STOP! I thought I had offended her or something. She says to me in English, “You speak English.” I said, “Yes, but I also speak German.” “But we speak English.” It took a little more back and forth before I realized they WANTED to practice their English on me. It was pretty funny.

  50. 50.

    vheidi

    April 10, 2011 at 3:00 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: LOL, FTW, in a light-hearted Sunday afternoon sort of way.

  51. 51.

    Amir_Khalid

    April 10, 2011 at 3:12 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Then again …

    I know this guy from Cleveland who married a Malaysian and works here in IT retailing. He’d like to learn Malay, but complains that here in Malaysia, particularly Kuala Lumpur, almost everyone speaks English, almost all the time. Which leaves him with few opportunities for practice. It’s true, we do use English a lot here — even when there are no English-only speakers in the conversation. A private-sector job, even one dealing exclusively with Malaysians, is out of reach for you if you don’t speak English.

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 10, 2011 at 3:19 pm

    @Amir_Khalid: I take it then that we are all agreed that Yutsano will not need to know a language other than English if he runs off to the Netherlands? This is not to say that knowing other languages would not be helpful.

  53. 53.

    Amir_Khalid

    April 10, 2011 at 3:28 pm

    @Yutsano:
    This subject cries out for a Monty Python reference.

  54. 54.

    Uloborus

    April 10, 2011 at 3:34 pm

    I have considered this Tweet carefully, pondered its deep meaning, probed it for crumbs of veracity and wisdom.

    HA HA HA HA!

    Ahem. Actually, I think this is a beautiful Tweet because it exemplifies Palin’s core technique. Everything she says is built out of shallow gimmicks expressed in brutally mangled language. The result is this – a statement that any one of her followers can read to support whatever his personal take is on the Libyan situation.

    I don’t think she’s smart enough to do this consciously, but she does know that what she has works for her.

  55. 55.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    April 10, 2011 at 3:50 pm

    translation: four whores and one retarded kid ago, the palins brought forth in real america, a more perfect union, of naked ambition, abject psychosis, and a nearly sociopathic indifference to the wants and motivations of anyone outside themselves. in order to consecrate the most sacred tax bracket, there will be means, as an ends under which all means are inalienable, fundamental, rights.

    you betcha
    wubba wubba wubba
    good bye
    and happy hunting.

  56. 56.

    Bruce S

    April 10, 2011 at 4:00 pm

    @Joey Maloney:

    Re that Atlas Shrugged article, it says that potential viewers can go to the movie’s website and request it be shown at their local theaters. I checked and Galtian Overlords ask for the zip code in your area.

    I would suggest that folks go to the site and request screening in the 87935 zip code – which happens to be Elephant Butte, New Mexico. Can’t think of a better place…

  57. 57.

    Proper Gander

    April 10, 2011 at 4:24 pm

    Keep fucking that headless chicken, Sarah.

  58. 58.

    jwest

    April 10, 2011 at 4:46 pm

    Better learn the language if you want to be able to understand the State of the Union addresses.

  59. 59.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    April 10, 2011 at 4:50 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Well played.

  60. 60.

    LosGatosCA

    April 10, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    Sarah Palin serves an important national purpose. She allows the country to be diverted from the fact that the collective national IQ has been in decline for some time.

    I’m pretty sure the Iranians have been putting micro-lead chips in chewing gum since 1979.

    That’s how you wind up with Dan Quayle as VP, a 2-term Bush Admin and now Sarah Palin being idolized by millions, who completely understand what she’s saying.

    The Iranians aint dumb, acid in the water only lasts so long, chewing lead causes a lifetime of stupid.

  61. 61.

    maya

    April 10, 2011 at 6:01 pm

    It’s really very simple. Sarah and her tribe of reel mericuns want everyone to speak english, but not too goodly because that would be elitist.

  62. 62.

    MikeBoyScout

    April 10, 2011 at 6:16 pm

    There are a lot of things to be pissed off at the guberment about, but for me the # one thing to be PO’d about is how the hell did we let Sarah back in to the country after her India Fail tour?

  63. 63.

    HRA

    April 10, 2011 at 6:19 pm

    Sarah’s speech idiosyncrasies reminds me of pig Latin which was once used to confuse those who did not know it. She will talk normally and then revert to her Palinesque blathering for at least one sentence. It’s done for attention gathering.

  64. 64.

    Tehanu

    April 10, 2011 at 7:34 pm

    @HRA:

    Uh, you mean it sounded better in the original Pig Latin?

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