When Sarah Palin got all whacked out on vicodin or whatever she’s on and busted that freestyle about Paul Revere, the first thing that occurred to me was that the winger defenses of this would be amusing. The second thing was that it was sad that Bobo and Krauthammer don’t like her more, because it would have been even more amusing to read their defenses of her. But Jim Hoft, Patterico, Donald Sensing, and especially Colonel Mustard have more than risen to the occasion.
Palin’s short statement on the video was less than clear; that sometimes happens but the part of the statement which has people screaming — that Revere warned the British that the colonial militias were waiting — appears to be true.
I’ve learned something new today, about Paul Revere.
The leading lights of the left-blogosphere have made fools of themselves, as have people who are not of the left-blogosphere. I presume they all will be apologizing.
What I like is that what Palin said was essentially nonsense, with ringing bells and warnings about the Second Amendment, and yet self-styled intellectuals are ready to claim they were educated by it somehow.
I still hope that Mark Halperin will weigh in to defend her.
(h/t commenter hilts)
Gin & Tonic
Didja hit “post” too quickly?
Yutsano
Wait, what? Paul Revere was basically an earlier Benedict Arnold? I’ve never heard anything like this before, and the direction he went in that theory makes no sense. Am I missing something here or is this just wingnut reality poking its head again?
Jenny
I’m surprised Bobo and Krauthammer don’t loves them some Palin considering all her pandering on Israel.
Doug Harlan J
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah, I did. I think it’s mostly fixed now.
Mike G
Authoritarian followers and their willingness to reshape reality to please their idols. Watch for the Texas schoolbook commission to demand a rewrite of the Paul Revere storyline to include bells, “warning shots” and notifying the British.
This is like a decade ago when my wingnut acquaintances all started pronouncing the world “nookyuler”, as if this would make it the correct pronunciation and make Bush seem less like a lazy dumbass douchebag.
LesGS
@Doug Harlan J: No, it’s not. I hope that you
Doug Harlan J
@LesGS:
Sorry, conflicting version issue there.
Yutsano
@Doug Harlan J: Wow.I thought there’d be more. Oh well.
I think I’m just too damn fucking exhausted to get any deeper into the shit that is Bible Spice. That and I’m starving.
Cassidy
I’ve been running into this today. I can’t stop laughing.
asiangrrlMN
We may not have reached peak wingnut, but I have reached peak Palin.
Gin & Tonic
@LesGS:
This will shortly make no sense to anyone.
Jamie
How is it that these people get any votes at all?
Punchy
But what’s Sully think of the bell-ringing British?
Satanicpanic
So I don’t get it- Col Mustard is saying that Revere ran into the British AFTER alerting the colonial militias that the British were coming and told the British that there were militias waiting for them if they kept advancing. So I’m not strong in bizarro logic- how does this get Palin off the hook?
PIGL
I reget your having besmirched a lyric from a definitive and genre-defining masterpiece. You’ll be tromping though the bones of the Jones and the Cashes any minute now.
Citizen Alan
I never cease to be amazed at the depths of hatred and contempt the Right has for this nation. Sarah Palin is a vapid idiot who would be a disaster for the nation if she held any office of national importance, yet the majority of her movement will defend her every stupid utterance because she’s on their team and she pisses on liberals at every opportunity. If Osama Bin Laden’s water-logged corpse could be raised from the dead as an aqua-zombie and persuaded to croak “Obamaaa izz soshulist!!” in between demands for fresh brains, most Republicans would not only support Zombie Bin Laden for President but they would completely excuse his role in 9/11. “Who among us hasn’t been a terrorist mastermind at some point? It’s all in the past. Why are Democrats continuing to harp on this? Is it because they’re bigoted against god-fearing, capitalist zombies?”
BC
Well, these yahoos might have learned something, but most Americans just remember the Longfellow version and are immune to having their perceptions of the events leading up to the American Revolution changed, even if it means they can punch a hippie in the chops with it. So these leading lights of the right really are whistling in the dark.
GregB
Didn’t he say:
The British are Commies!
aimai
I saw the wagons circling today and I was astonished at how rapidly everyone agreed on an interpretation that went something like this:
Palin has a unique speaking style that only the cognoscenti can appreciate. Once you know how she speaks you see she is just fluidly and fluently being true to herself and communicating a higher truth about an historical/social/moral issue.
The liberals are complaining about the “guns” part of her speech so they are wrong because Revere was, indeed, riding to warn the colonists to seize the weapons cache before the british did.
But of course people who watched Palin weren’t complaining because they don’t know the aim of Paul Revere’s ride was to warn the colonists to seize the arms dump. At least here in MA we all know the fuck out of that fact. And “libs” weren’t complaining because no arms were involved in the revolution. Oddly enough we all grasp that fact too.
But we were pointing and laughing because “the old north church” didn’t set no bells a ringing. The lantern’s were a *silent* and *secret* signal for a silent and secret ride.
Plus, also, too Revere’s goal wasn’t to secure arms for arms sake but to wake up the secret terrorist cels he’d been fomenting for years–in that he was more successful than Dawes who also rode to warn people because Revere actually had people to contact and did contact them.
aimai
Xof
@Satanicpanic:
It gets her off the hook because Obama is a black socialist.
The process is:
1. Palin issues a series of vaguely-connected words based on some dimly-remember thing she was told sometime.
2. The wingosphere Googles madly to find a factual item that includes those words.
3. The factual item is declared to be what Palin really meant, obviously, and it is only the bias of the left-wing media that prevents this from being reported.
4. The news cycles, all is forgotten, and then we’re on to the next iteration.
gex
These aren’t people, they are algorithms designed to produce a specific result.
MikeJ
@Punchy:
Ask him about the bell curving British.
asiangrrlMN
@aimai: Pfffft. Facts are fungible. What WE think to be true or what Palin SAYS to be true IS true.
LesGS
@Gin & Tonic: That’s okay. Pretty much a description of my life.
UncertaintyVicePrincipal
So this is like Conservative Scrabble, right?
After she speaks, hoards of Wingnuts spread out tiles containing individual words from the complete scramble she emitted, and if they can rearrange any of them into an even remotely coherent passage, that matches reality in any small way, then they win!
Well, as long as it keeps them occupied.
Are there little pink squares on the board for “wink!”?
gex
@UncertaintyVicePrincipal: Refrigerator magnet punditry?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Has a Morning Joe aired since this happened? I’m sure they’ll have Professor Palin’s back.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Satanicpanic:
best as i can tell, and i don’t know the version of events col mustard is using, the phrase “blow my/your/whomever’s brains out was not used at the time.
so sarah palin forgot to mention that paul revere was a wordsmith.
UncertaintyVicePrincipal
@gex: Yeah her speech is kind of like poetry cut-ups in reverse.
Reverse in the sense that she’s trying to actually make sense, I mean.
Bob Munck
I have seen several attempts by Star Wars geeks to “explain” the nonsense line “it’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” They had the same flavor as the attempts to explain Palin. Maybe the Palinites need to bring Special Relativity into the discussion.
TaMara (BHF)
I have a suggestion for Palin. Try Johnny Tremain, it’s written, I believe at about a 6th grade level, so that might help her with her ‘merkin history. But knowing her, she’ll confuse fact with fiction and claim that Johnny was a true ‘merkin hero ignored by the liberal bias of the media and textbooks doncha know. Also. Too.
TaMara (BHF)
@UncertaintyVicePrincipal: Can’t top that. I’m going to bed now.
Left Coast Tom
So…is Palin telling us that the people in the military who killed bin Laden because that’s what they were ordered to do should have, instead, _warned_ bin Laden to respect their Second Amendment Rights or else the underpants gnomes will get him? How would this help?
Gin & Tonic
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
I thought so too. But the links are good, and if you follow them you eventually get to a legible scan/image of the manuscript of Revere’s letter, where that phrase is indeed used.
eemom
I don’t know what this is about, because I have programmed my brain to block out all sensory input that contains the word “Palin.”
I thought Paul Revere was just the guy who rode around yelling “The British are coming!” I can’t imagine how anybody could fuck that up.
Left Coast Tom
@eemom:
Doesn’t that make it difficult to appreciate Monty Python?
+4
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: If you don’t want to travel through enemy territory, go directly here, where a bit more than halfway down the page you’ll find “blow my brains out.”
BD of MN
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
I was suprised to see that I had the same misconception you did… (link to Paul Revere’s deposition in 1775 about the night in question. Three separate instances of “blow my brains out”…)
edit: Gin and Tonic beat me to it, my link is to the readable transcript, not the actual document…
hhex65
Run, Sarah, run! You have the vote of every thinking person in America.
mclaren
Nothing unusual here. Dan Quayle spouted gibberish (“I wish I’d brushed up on my Latin before coming to Latin America”), yet highly-educated PhDs rushed forward to defend him and explain that his inanities were actually sublime insights that the liberals were too stupid to comprehend.
Dubya drooled and babbled incoherent word salad (“I’ve run a business, I know what it’s like to put food on your family,” and “Many of our imports come from overseas”), yet intellectuals like George Will praised his gibberings as “Lincolnian.”
There is no limit to the cravenness with which PhDs will crawl to praise imbeciles with power and money.
r€nato
I read the comments at Ben Smith’s column about Sarah’s mangling of Revere’s ride.
I marvelled at the morons explaining how Snooki Palin really was correct. I had to stop with the idiot who explained that the colonials were British too – that is, not Americans yet – so Palin was correct in saying Revere was warning the British.
So the colonials were fighting… themselves? To free themselves from the tyranny they had imposed upon themselves???
In case any of you have forgotten or were too young to vote back then… this is exactly how a spectacular, obvious failure like George W. Bush got so many people to vote for him and then defend every single fucked-up, retarded, cynical, doomed-to-failure thing that he did. There are just that many people out there who will excuse AN. NEE. THING. somebody on their team does.
Yutsano
@r€nato: The Tribe is sacred. The Tribe must in any and all ways be protected at all costs and against all perceived adversaries. All else is commentary.
amk
Possibly with the inexorable demographic change happening in amurikkka, the average IQ of the nation mebbe will improve slightly. Teh whites are too stoopid.
Malron aka eclecticbrotha
@MikeJ:
Exquisitely played, sir.
jl
I heard about Paul Revere’s ride on one of the days that I showed up for HS US history.
The guy who we knew mainly as the wresting coach would walk into this room with maps on the walls every day, around 11AM, and tried to teach us US history. And he said that Revere and another rider were captured after they had delivered the initial warnings. I forget whether they were riding further on to to warn other towns, or trying to get back to Boston, or lost, or what. Under interrogation at gun point Revere told the British that they were too late and everyone knew the troops were coming, and were turning out all over the place, armed.
So, now I wonder why Revere wasn’t shot, or arrested. Was he arrested? I forget. How did he get away from the British? The wrestling coach surely did not leave that out, he liked to tell big exciting stories, hoping it would perk up our interest.
Now, who do I trust, my memory of the muscle bound huge goofy wrestling coach who taught US history in HS decades ago, or Palin and the wingnuts?
I’ll go with the HS wrestling coach.
So, the apologies for Palin are technically true but collectively nonsense.
Too bad she did not talk about Paul Revere and his Raiders. That would have had more action. Lots of defeaning battles in suburban garages.
Gustopher
At least with Bush’s word salads, you could figure out what they meant, and everyone knew he was misspeaking and bumbling through something. They were almost endearing, a bit of human frailty on display.
Palin’s word salads are treated like the gospel truth, despite being far less understandable. Just ponder a world where she ends up being president, and we are ruled by incomprehensible word salad. People would actually put food on their families if she said something like Bush did, and then accuse anyone who didn’t look like Carmen Miranda of being anti-American.
jl
US History dot com says: wrestling coach 1, Palin 0. Looks like Revere completed his mission to Lexington, but got captured (or actually, blundered into a checkpoint) when he tried to ride with his buds on to Concord.
“Before the trio (Revere and two other riders] could cover the five miles between Lexington and Concord, they encountered a roadblock manned by British redcoats. Responding to the urgency of the moment, they proceeded to break through. Prescott used his intimate knowledge of the countryside to his advantage and successfully eluded capture – he was the only one of the three to complete the journey and deliver the alarm to Concord.
Dawes initially appeared to have escaped his pursuers, but was thrown from his horse and captured. Paul Revere was taken prisoner and during his interrogation deliberately provided greatly inflated numbers of militiamen awaiting the British at Concord.
During the ride back to Lexington, Revere and his captors heard shots fire and church bells ring throughout the area — events that gave some credence to Revere’s report of colonial preparations. Fearing for their safety, the British released Revere, but took the precaution of giving him a tired horse to slow his return to Lexington.
Paul Revere later joined Hancock and Adams on their retreat into the countryside, but made a frantic return to a Lexington tavern where Hancock had inadvertently left some valuable papers. As dawn broke, Revere departed from the town with the valuable documents in hand and rode past militiamen in the process of assembling. A short time later he could hear shots and see smoke in the distance,”
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1261.html
SRW1
Could somebody alleviate my ignorance: WTF is an ‘Associate Clinical Professor of Law’?
PPOG Penguin
@jl: “Paul Revere was taken prisoner and during his interrogation deliberately provided greatly inflated numbers of militiamen awaiting the British at Concord.”
The lesson of this being that the British should have subjected Revere to extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation techniques.
burnspbesq
@SRW1:
Most law schools run one or more “clinics,” which allow students to get hands-on experience providing actual legal services to actual (usually indigent) clients under the supervision of experienced lawyers and faculty members. A clinical professor would be a faculty member whose primary responsibility would be running clinics rather than classroom teaching.
honus
@mclaren: “There is no limit to the cravenness with which PhDs will crawl to praise imbeciles with power and money.”
Positively Menckenesque
Joseph Nobles
@PPOG Penguin: Couriers always lead to the real leaders of the insurgents.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Gin & Tonic: @BD of MN:
dammit those red coats outsmarted my idiom etymology research.
PreservedKillick
Not only is a lot of the “defense” of Palin based on quoting out of context or twisting timelines, it’s also based on a fundamental lack of knowledge about what happened – like, it’s news that Revere was captured after alarming Lexington? Really?
Also important to note that a lot of it is quoting from after the fact reports written by the colonials, who not only had a vested interest in twisting events in their favor, but mounted what appears to be a well organized propaganda campaign to make it appear that the British were the naked aggressors – despite the fact that within 24-48 hours of the events at Lexington and Concord, a small army had risen from (apparently) nowhere to surround Boston.
Never mind the well-organized response at Old North Bridge.
Aimai’s characterization of the event as the activation of a set of secret terrorist cells sure seems pretty close to what actually happened. it is somewhat instructive examine the current Patriot Act in the context of the early American Revolution.
magurakurin
@Mike G:
you know what. I fucking hate George W. Bush. I hated him from day one and I think he is a worthless, actively drinking alcoholic shit bag. And Sarah Palin is the lowest scum that forms on the Planet. But the obsession over the pronunciation of the word “nuclear” is prescriptive grammar-nazi bullshit. Let it go. There are enough extremely valid and compelling reasons that disqualify George W. Bush as a member of the human race. The fact that he pronounces a word in a way that doesn’t pass some fucked up, baseless shibboleth isn’t one of them
Origin:
1840–50; nucle(us) + -ar1 ; compare French nucléaire
—Related forms
in·ter·nu·cle·ar, adjective
mul·ti·nu·cle·ar, adjective
post·nu·cle·ar, adjective
—Pronunciation note
In pronouncing nuclear, the second and third syllables are most commonly said as
[-klee-er] Show IPA
, a sequence of sounds that directly reflects the spelled sequence ‐cle · ar. In recent years, a somewhat controversial pronunciation has come to public attention, with these two final syllables said as
[-kyuh-ler]
. Since
[-klee-er]
, the common pronunciation of ‐cle · ar, might also be represented, broadly, as
[-kluh-yer]
, the
[-kyuh-ler]
pronunciation can be seen as coming from a process of metathesis, in which the
[l]
and the
[y]
change places. The resulting pronunciation is reinforced by analogy with such words as molecular, particular, and muscular, and although it occurs with some frequency among highly educated speakers, including scientists, professors, and government officials, it is disapproved of by many.
El Cid
Libruls just want any damn way they can to say how much they hate good ordinary people for how they talk, and they never miss a chance to complain that the American British freedom colonists actually used guns against the English British soshullist taxers once they had told the English British they were going to use guns like Paul Revere had done.
If it’d been up to them, George Washington never woulda got no permit for a gun and instead he should have gone around telling everybody to keep quiet and never once tell the English British that we were going to keep our guns which is what started the tea taxes in the first place.
Ha! Bet you damn libruls didn’t know none of that, neither!
Snarla
Magurakurin, I love this argument. I use it to bolster my pronunciation, “supposably,” which is easier to say than “supposedly.”
Yeah, it’s reinforced by analogy! All the smartest people do it.
El Cid
Obama once said that they was 57 states — and that ain’t true!
So he’s a lot dumber than Sarah Palin.
At least she gives a damn about honoring the 2nd Amendment and not fighting to keep all these statues of the 10 Amendments out of school because she hates Christians so much.
El Cid
@Snarla: It’s kind of weird to have to go from the “ee” sound to “in” sound in reinforced without a consonant.
Actually, I’m not so much bothered by “nukular” (I don’t like it) than I am the “fuck you ha you don’t like that you damn librul!” reason that fake populists like Bush Jr. make sure to say it.
By the way, those Republicans sure hate how all these black people can’t talk right and say things like “aksed” instead of “asked”. They’re just too lazy to learn English right.
magurakurin
@El Cid:
the pronunciation of “asked” as “aksed” is rule based a predictable in the dialect of English in which it is pronounced so. Just saying.
@Snarla:
that example is not an example of two different pronunciations of a word. That is more like people saying “for all intensive purposes.” But the fact remains that the pronunciation of words changes and metathesis is a real thing. Think about how you say the word “interesting” as an example. If you speak it in one of the many standard dialects of English you will transpose the position of the “e” and the “r.” Rail on with you shibboleths all you like. There are examples of prescriptive grammars written in Old English which none but scholars of that now unintelligible form of the English language can read. Living languages undergo constant change. What is the past tense of the verb “dive” in your dialect of English? Words changes, pronunciation varies, deal with it.
drkrick
So the difference between a “warning” and “an admission during interrogation at gunpoint” is the next thing that needs to go out the window to make sure no Republican anywhere ever has to admit they made a mistake?
I suppose Sensing got pretty good training in that kind of semantic gymnastics in seminary. He used to be on my “conservatives it can be useful to keep up with” list along with JC here back in his “One Hand Clapping” days. Looks like he’s changed quite a bit, too
Svensker
@magurakurin:
Uh, what?
Emma
The moment someone told me about Palin’s speech I knew I would have to break my self-imposed news blackout because the snark would be way too satisfying. She actually did say it and they are actually backing her up on it? Maya apocalypse here we come.
magurakurin
@Svensker:
yes, it is. Dialects are real languages. All human languages are equal in there complexity and infinite ability to create meaning. The notion that someone speaks poor English when they are in fact a native speaker speaking in their dialect of the language is a form of social discrimination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English
ericblair
@drkrick:
I guess we’ll be giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a medal, then. Maybe his family can come over for the ceremony.
Svensker
@magurakurin:
I’m not questioning what you said
I just did not understand the words — my brain is reading this as word salad.
My sister is a linguist and she insists that “aksed” is an AA form brought over from Africa. However, anecdotally, I’ve heard it in children in the U.S. and in poor whites in England, as well as teen-aged hispanics in the U.S. (in heavily AA areas, tho, so that may not be pertinent). My idea, non-linguist that I am, is that it is a childish formation that gets corrected in some cultures, but not in others.
Ghanima Atreides
Palin’s speaking style is pure Distributed Jesusland Pageantspeak. A random selection of buzzwords and quasi-historical vignettes used as cover for a desperate search thru the memory stacks. She isnt drugged, she’s stumped. Anyone that has been to a lower echelon beauty pageant should be able to recognize it.
Poor Dr. K is just Horace Holly in the land of Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed.
debbie
@ Yutsano:
“Bible Spice.” Brilliant. Thank you for providing a great start to another lousy, muggy day. I cannot wait to hear George Will’s reaction to this one.
MattR
@Ghanima Atreides:
Your lack of self awareness leads to wonderful unintentional comedy.
THE
@Ghanima:
OMGosh, now she’s quoting H Ryder Haggard.
OK. I’m impressed.
EDIT: I can hardly believe you’ve actually read that.
YellowDog
Another way to interpret Palin’s remarks, in light of efforts by her defenders to tell the history of Revere’s ride, is that she was briefed on the whole story of Revere’s ride (or more likely Googled it from her Blackberry) and this is what she was able to remember. I find this interpretation more frightening, because it is what I would expect as an exam answer from a failing student who does not understand context or nuance. She learns a few words and concepts, and not even the important ones, and strings them together in a nonsensical narrative. Yes, I want her in charge of economic policy.
jimmiraybob
While her word salad is a very impressive window into a lazy, confused and generally uninformed mind, and a great example of style (genre: Christian conservative populist speak) a better Grifter would have worked abortion, planned parenthood, liberal fascism, and Hussein Obama’s Muslim anti-colonial hatred of whitey and collaboration with Kenyan al Qaeda warlords into the mix. Fail.
However, still an impressive display of the genre that I think is competitive with an earlier and classic example:
“… what a waste it is to lose one’s mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful, how true that is.”
–Dan Quayle in a Speech to the United Negro College Fund (9 May 1989) riffing on their slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Davis X. Machina
If what comes from all of this is a run on Esther Forbes‘ estimable 1942 biography Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, then some good will have come from this whole froo-fraw.
The Revere book cannot be praised highly enough…
Forbes won the Newberry, the Pulitizer, and the O. Henry. Which isn’t bupkis..
magurakurin
@Svensker: So, metathesis in the word “ask” is childish, but in the word “interest” its an adult form of the language. It would be curious to know what kind of people use a dialect which uses the first example. Oh wait, its, according to you, African Americans and poor whites. So, that makes their cultures childish? That would be a nice explanation, but the metathesis in the word “ask” has been traced back to the Old English words “axian/acsian.” All human languages are equal. People still hate Chomsky for saying it.
Davis X. Machina
@Svensker: It’s metathesis, the re-arrangement of the sounds in a word, without their replacement. The ‘k’ and the ‘s’ swap places.
Dirt common in English. We used to ride a beast called a ‘hros’. And think of how ‘tired’ is pronounced — not ‘ti•red’, but ‘ti•erd’…
Ghanima Atreides
@MattR: hardly. Have you read EDK’s latest?
I am a “liberal libertarian”.
Palin and EDK are just different types of bulshytt-talkers.
Ghanima Atreides
@MattR: Palin is a populist bulshytt talker. EDK and Brooks are elitist bulshytt talkers.
Palin is dogwhistle IQ baiting every time she opens her mouth.
EDK and Brooks, Douthat, Sully, McMegan, are all pandering to intellectual elites.
see? im just like you. i understand the mechanism, and can sneer at the proles politely.
we are just the same.
El Cid
@magurakurin: I have no idea why you would be convinced that you would be one tiny bit more familiar with ethnolinguistics or than anyone else.
Apparently you even miss that the barb at conservatives regarding double standards in becoming offended at things like how (likely African language influenced) African American communities more often invert the s-k and k-s sound in “ask” requires an understanding of that ethnolinguistic variation and a condemnation of its prejudice in order to be a joke in the first place.
So, “just sayin” in this case makes no sense.
Second, lots of us actually have read quite a good deal at language and pronunciation change over time. As well as differences — and they’re never polar opposites in reality — between prescriptive / descriptive etc. For example, debates about the role of African nurses in influencing Afrikaans, or how African language patterns led largely to pronunciation patters in Southern white dialects.
Gin & Tonic
@Ghanima Atreides: Still on the EDK thing? Jeez, you mean you and him haven’t done the hot-and-sweaty yet?
Omnes Omnibus
@Ghanima Atreides: As Bugs Bunny would say: What a maroon.
gex
@YellowDog: It would be no different than any other Republican in charge of economic policy. You can have someone who managed to get through Yale (W. albeit as a legacy) or someone who struggled to finish a degree at a series of state schools, you still get the same trickle up economics.
magurakurin
@El Cid:
Look boss, I’m on your side. Sorry if you took offense, I was, just sayin’. Apparently that doesn’t mean what I think it means, and the note is taken. I’m an expat and my language has gotten a bit strange over the years.
El Cid
@magurakurin: What? I’m bein’ lectured at by a dang turncoat who ran away ’cause he hates Amurka? I bet you in dang France teachin’ them how to surrender to Al Qaeda!
gex
It seems to me, dialects aside, that Palin flirts with being incomprehensible. At which point the whole point of language is defeated.
Ghanima Atreides
@Gin & Tonic: my new goal is to get the LoOG moved into the mock column, like Sully.
When that happens I will reste tranquille.
Until then, i will continue to link the LoOG and EDK (its his blog) as research for my emergent Unified Field Theory of Libertarianism.
And the juicers will simply have to continue to be forced to endure the humilation of retrospective slobbering over a glibertarian grifter reacharound.
The internetz is forevah.
;)
shortstop
@Davis X. Machina: Thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@gex:
She is not flirting with it. She and incomprehensibility have already consummated their relationship.
Gin & Tonic
@Ghanima Atreides: So you *do* have the hots for him.
John Weiss
@Yutsano: Sister Sarah has much to teach us, not the least being, “Silence is golden”.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Svensker: “Aksed” may be Long Island dialect, also. That’s what I heard from my dad when I was growing up.
sharl
@gex:
Heh. I read a comment somewhere that said Palin uses words in the same way a squid uses ink. So yeah, the word salad may not be a bug, but a feature. Although I doubt it is so by design – her greed and ambition are not matched by the kind of work ethic or diligence required to consciously develop such a thing. It’s something she blundered into just by being herself, I think.
Ghanima Atreides
@Gin & Tonic: haha, no i find him intellectually REPULSIVE like all free markert fucktards.
I just love to tease the juicers about how they got scammed. So fun to rub your noses in it.
;)
And like I said, why isn’t the LoOG in the mock column, if Sully is?
The LoOG is a vomitorium for glibertarian grifter talking points, or like longtime LoOG commenter Jesse said, a chat roulette circle jerk.
Arent you ashamed?
John Weiss
@magurakurin: “All human languages are equal in there complexity and infinite ability to create meaning.”
Their complexity, please.
Languages are not equal in their complexity. Even a moron such as I know that certain concepts can be expressed in one language, but not others. I imagine that the speakers of one of the ‘click’ languages would have trouble talking about, say, programming languages, wouldn’t you think? So perhaps that ‘infinite ability’ ain’t so?
Ghanima Atreides
@sharl: its pageantspeak.
Havent you ever watched a heartland beauty pageant?
The contestants all talk like that.
Ghanima Atreides
@Gin & Tonic: haha, no i find him intellectually REPULSIVE like all free markert fucktards.
I just love to tease the juicers about how they got scammed. So fun to rub your noses in it.
;)
And like I said, why isn’t the LoOG in the mock column, if Sully is?
The LoOG is a vomitorium for glibertarian grifter talking points.
Observer
I guess I’m now a 27 percenter because I really don’t see how what she was saying is incorrect.
Her speech seemed clear to me “Paul Revere warned the British that we were ready for them” and I went and did a Google search and it seems that is actually correct. Didn’t know that. Now I’m no historian, most of you aren’t but I don’t get this Palin bashing for no reason. There’s lots of reasons to bash her.
On a side note, one thing I’ve generally done is the past few years is to take *no one’s* word for anything in an argument without corroborating facts. I noticed in *all* the Palin-is-an-idiot posts on this specific topic that “the left” provides no links to disprove what she says.
Here’s the US history site on two things:
Bells ringing:
Revere warning the British:
Again, the crux of what Palin says is backed up by a well known neutral site that pre-existed before she said that.
Here’s a link to the Massachusetts Historical Society devilishly taking Palin’s side in advance by publishing this Paul Revere letter :
Again, I’m no historian, but PRESUMABLY the Massachusetts Historical Society knows a little bit about this.
I don’t know what it is with you people but before making fun of someone, how about doing your own research.
anon
Sarah Palin is the anti-Chauncey!
Omnes Omnibus
@Observer:
And yet the crux of what Palin said is not the crux of what Revere did.
Observer
@Omnes Omnibus: Well then rather than just asserting that, please explain.
To me what both the Mass Society Revere letter and the US history site say are:
1) bells were ringing
2) Revere warned the Brits that the Americans were ready for them.
That’s what I heard Palin say.
Yes he was trying to evade them and so that wasn’t his actual purpose but upon being captured he spilled the beans and warned them.
Conservatives are going to kill you guys on this issue because the historical record backs up the details of what she said.
EDIT: When he was captured his thought process, as relayed in his own historical letter, backs up Palin’s sentiment about freedom and not gonna take away their guns etc.
Observer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Conservatives are just going to chain email the Mass Society letter and this pretty well backs up her sentiments.
Omnes Omnibus
@Observer: Her statement made it seem as though the purpose of Revere’s actions were to warn the British and that he did it through causing bells to ring and shooting to take place. The historical record, including things found at the sites you cite, indicates that Revere’s purpose was to warn the colonists that “The British are coming!”
ETA: Her statements were perhaps “technically true” but they are certainly “collectively nonsense.”
Observer
@Omnes Omnibus:
This is were the left goes wrong every single time.
If I knew Paul Revere had actually warned the British and wanted him to sound like a rebel hero punk then ….Palin’s description “he told the british to their face to stuff it and we were ready for them” is *EXACTLY* what I’d say.
To jump all over Palin, one has to *assume* that she didn’t know something and *assume* she was talking about the entire purpose of the night as opposed to just talking about Paul Revere and how he mentalling stood up to the British. It wasn’t a classroom, it was just a media scrum.
Now I actually agree with you, I don’t think she knew.
AND that’s were they get you everytime: you assume that which you can’t prove and the media goes way over the top, the underlying facts actually support her position and her fans like her even more against the “unfair” leftie misogynists.
Dems are media assholes too.
anon
someone in a thread a few days ago asked for a better class of troll and @observer comes through for them.
And Another Thing…
@Observer: If you knew nothing about Revere, and relied on Palin’s description of Revere, then you would have a grossly distorted perception of Revere & his role. That bells rang somewhere in Mass. or guns were fired does not validate Palin’s explanation.
The aspect of Palin & friends performance that’s distressing isn’t Palin’s fail when somebody puts a microphone in front of her – the passion/stress of the moment, it’s the gymnastics of her apologists. In cold blood, her apologists are willing to distort history & understanding to “cover” for her. She made a mistake that may or may not reflect a limited & flawed understanding of American history. Too many of her supporters are willing to commit the historical lie with premeditation.
DavidTC
@Gustopher:
Yes. Bush mangled language. He put food ‘on’ his family, he ‘didn’t get fooled again’, etc. He couldn’t speak, which was a strange trait in a president, but does not automatically make someone stupid. There were mostly coherent ideas behind his incoherent speech.
Bush wasn’t ‘stupid’. He wasn’t very intellectually curious and let Cheney and others walk all over him, but he wasn’t stupid. I’m actually convinced that a lot of it was trusting Cheney and his surrounding sycophants too much.
Palin, OTOH, is an idiot. She can’t talk either, but her inability to do so is the rambling inability of someone who doesn’t know what they’re saying.
I mean, look at her hand notes. I can’t criticize the concept of that, although it is sorta funny…but look at the content of them. If she had had ‘47% no taxes’ or ‘244b rev 1980, $446b rev 1989’. something, where she was writing percentages and dates and whatnot where was trying to get things exactly correct, it would be funny, but understandable…but she can’t remember the basic right wing talking points! That’s what was on her hand!
The idea that she got elected governor is astonishing. She really is stupid, not just incoherent.
Citizen_X
@Observer:
Yes, what Palin’s Cuisinart brain spewed out was historically correct, if you ignore a) the purpose of Revere’s ride, and b) the chronology of events. You know, those things that make up actual history.
Liberty60
I actually commented bit over at Patterico, and made the point that attacking Palin as “teh stoopid” only reinforces her support, since what she is trafficking in is tribal grievance.
Her people feel set upon and oppressed by the “elites”- not the Wall Street billionaires, no, they feel oppressed by the sociology perfessors and feminazi public school teachers.
Sure, we can laugh it off, but the blue collar white demographic is translating their stagnating economic prospects into tribal and cultural anger, and we shouldn’t ignore that.
Laughing at Palin’s word salad isn’t really a productive line of attack, in my view- attacking her as the phony populist she is, is a better approach.
There is a very real populist anger on the right, a sense of betrayal and resentment of shadowy insiders who are rigging the game against regular Americans- we need to find a way to point that in the direction is deserves, at the top 1%, instead of the public employees for example.
Observer
@Citizen_X:
What you wrote is factually incorrect.
Observer
@And Another Thing…:
Her people defend her, true, but besides the point.
On this very specific and very narrow issue, she has a leg to stand on and it does not justify the media circus.
To attack her on this, one has to assume the conclusion (beg the question) that’s she’s an idiot.
Her supporters already know that’s what people do about her, so this particular blow up just reinforces to them their perception of *you*, the media and Democrats in general.
I thought you folks were trying to win votes?
Like I said, a simple pro-Palin chain email letter with excerpts from the Mass Historical society Paul Revere letter will seal the deal with her supporters.
Matthew B.
@John Weiss: Here’s a page for programmers who work in Zulu. That’s a click language. Any language at all is capable of discussing programming languages, or any other topic; if it doesn’t have the vocabulary, then it can import or create the necessary words as soon as it does. Language “complexity” has nothing to do with it.
magurakurin
@John Weiss:
thanks for pointing out a typing error.
and you are wrong, by the way. But, whatever.
Mandramas
@Ghanima Atreides: C’mon, now is Palin immortal?
Shaw Kenawe
Palin IS an elite. She is no blue-collar populist. She’s a jet-setting elitists who flits around all over the country demanding special treatment and getting it. She’s a private citizen whose visit to the Boston area was treated with deference–just the way a very rich, very elitist personality would be treated.
Ghanima Atreides
@Mandramas:
the spirit of Kylon is immortal. You see, the advent of Sarah Palin on the electoral landscape summoned an ancient unkillable demon from the dawn of history– Kylon of Croton and the myth that all men are created equal. You might remember Kylon as the pissed-off plutocrat that raised a mob of local farmers to protest his failed attempt to get into Pythagoras’ school for rulers by chopping up the teachers with scythes and burning down the school.
Now Palin is a nice enough average ordinary lady, as self-styled talking dogs with lipstick go, and it isn’t really her fault that she was picked by Team McCain as part of the longterm Republican strategy of scam-the-base-into-voting-for-stealth-elites-pretending-to-be noble-yeoman-farmers.
Sad for them, Palin turned out to be the ‘realdeal’, as Joe the Plumber so succintly put it.
And now the conservative elites can’t stop her, as Rove and Dr. K and Bobo are about to find out.
Riding the tiger always entails the possibly that the tiger is going to turn and eat you out of the saddle.
trex
Palin’s version of the Revere story is somewhat analogous to saying John McCain “leaped from his jet over the skies of Vietnam with all the Agent Orange and stuff to the Vietnamese know we weren’t going to let them take our liberty. And when he confronted then face to face at their headquarters he confessed that he was part of superior military force and the Vietnamese better not mess with them.”
The Kenosha Kid
This is the statment that Observer is defending.
Ghanima Atreides
@Shaw Kenawe: Palin is not an elite. She was plucked from obscurity to BE an elite, but she refused the GOP makeover. She wouldn’t play galatea to the GOP’s pygmalion. Thus Dr. K and Bobo getting all pissy over her refusal to read some books and educate herself on foreign policy.
SRW1
@burnspbesq:
Thanks for the explanation. Sounds so logical that I feel somewhat embarrassed not to have figured it out myself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Observer: When I drive the 2 hours to visit my parents, i sometimes buy gasoline and a diet coke. Nevertheless, my trip is not a drive with diet coke and gasoline buying; it is a trip to see my parents.
Citizen_X
@Observer:
Oh, bullshit.
Yes, what she spouted ignored “the purpose of Revere’s ride, and…the chronology of events.” So fuck off, concern troll.
Svensker
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes, I understand what a metathesis is. And that it’s a common occurrence in language. From my only purely anecdotal evidence, I hear little kids saying “aksed” until they learn that it is “asked” — between age 2-4. What I meant by “childish” is that I think it is easier to form “aksed” than “asked” and that some cultures correct it and others let the childish form be. I’m not saying AA culture or language is “childish”, I’m saying that the form of “aksed” is a holdover from childhood English learning — they say it in Cockney or Lancashire English, as well.
My use of “childish” was not a value judgment, just an observation that it seems a natural mispronunciation. I’m not a linguist, so I could very well be wrong. Just going on what I’ve observed vs. what I’ve been told how it should be.
Svensker
@magurakurin:
Keep your shorts on. Jeez. I still don’t understand the English in your original sentence. And I’m not trying to make a value judgment. If you’re interested in a discussion, that would be interesting. If you’re interested in a fight and scoring points that would not be interesting to me.
MattR
@Ghanima Atreides: Unsursprisingly you didn’t understand what I mean. These may not be the exact words I would use to describe your comments, but they are pretty close. The major difference is that Palin uses words and her accent to appear folksy while you use big words to try and appear intelligent.
Similarly, your definition of bulshytt is perfectly applicable to your comments as well as Palin. As I said, a completel lack of self awareness creates wonderful unintentional comedy for the rest of us.
@Observer: I went out this morning to the supermarket to pick up milk and a few other things. While I was there I ran into my neighbor and I mentioned that it was supposed to rain soon. According to you, it would be perfectly accurate for Sarah Palin to say that the purpose of my trip was to warn my neighbor about the rain.
shortstop
@Svensker:
No one did, because it wasn’t a sentence. I read it four times and still had no idea what he/she was trying to say.
@trex: Nicely stated.
Observer
@MattR:
Your style of assigning your idiot analogies to someone else (in this case, me) is a reflection of your character.
Besides, of which, you have no reading comprehension.
grumpy realist
Guess this is a good point to quote Anatole France’s comment that “a language is nothing more than a dialect with an army behind it.”
Double-negatives, “aksed” rather than “asked”, “I seen him”–> indication of class distinctions. And then there’s all the historical examples where local dialects get stamped out by the Powers That Be in order to cut down on separatism, etc.
Todd Dugdale
If we are to take these defences of Palin seriously, we necessarily must agree that the most important aspects of Paul Revere’s ride is that 1) he lied through his teeth under interrogation to save his own skin, 2) he prevented the Redcoats from suffering a humiliating defeat, 3) instead of fighting the Redcoats, he went to help his buddy move, and 4) somebody rang a bell.
MattR
@Observer: You provided proof that the things that Palin said happened did in fact happen. But that completely ignores the context and meaning of her statment. She clearly believes that those facts are the reason why Revere went on his ride and why he is famously known today.
Similarly, in my story Sarah Palin would be factually correct if she said that I went to the store and warned my neighbor about impending rain. But if she made it clear that was the reason for my trip, she would be incorrect and people would not be out of bounds to point that out or ridicule her for not understanding the context. And yet based on your activity in this thread, you would be pointing out that her critics are idiots because the truth is that I did talk to my neighbor about rain.
Ghanima Atreides
@MattR: i am intelligent you retarded cudlip. you just don’t liek what i say, so you pretend im not.
The freemarket is a lie.
All libertarians are crypto-conservatives.
Less than two percent of humans are fluent in high order mathematics.
And one of them is me.
Dan S.
@John Weiss:
Well, speakers of English circa 1800 would have trouble talking about, say, programming languages, internet architecture or blogging, not to mention a vast number of other topics of current interest. In fact, my guess is that the vast majority of English speakers today would have trouble talking about programming languages (and I doubt most if us would do too well if asked to, eg, identify useful plants of the Kalahari).