Diagramming Sarah Palin’s sentences leads to an unsurprising conclusion at Slate.
I discuss it at Likelihood of Success.
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Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
Diagramming Sarah Palin’s sentences leads to an unsurprising conclusion at Slate.
I discuss it at Likelihood of Success.
{ 18 comments }
I had been wondering what would take the place of Bush Derangement Syndrome once GW left the national stage.
I think it’s pretty clear now what will.
I think I saw someone once sentence diagram Ronald Reagan to "prove" what a moron he was.
The desperate need for the Left to demonstrate their self-perceived intellectual superiority is one of the most disgusting things I see from them. It’s just plain juvenile.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Obama debate conclusion?
Perhaps we should be diagramming the sentences of McCain and Obama. After all, the other two are at least one heartbeat away from the top office — why should they have to be more erudite than the top seekers? Or do we go back further into linguistics to the word "rude". Or maybe back to the 60s – rude, crude, and socially unacceptable? I’m smart enough to figure out what Biden really meant to say, so I’ll have no problem with Paline :-)
Donna B.’s last blog post..Experts And Idiots
I find a lot of what Palin says to be gibberish on a semantic level, but in her defense, most people’s utterances are ungrammatical. Typical speech has all kinds of backtracks, changes in subject mid-sentence, etc. You can make almost anyone look stupid just by printing the words they said in an interview verbatim. People don’t say things the way they write them, and slamming someone for an ungrammatical sentence they uttered in an interview is unfair.
There is no need to stoop to diagramming sentences. I just heard some clips on the radio of Palin attempting to answer some pretty easy questions and she simply couldn’t do it. She was unable to name a Supreme Court decision she disagreed with or even any publications she reads with regularity. It was painfully awkward, and I say this as someone who under no circumstances will vote for Obama.
I tried to give the benefit of the doubt that perhaps these were out of context, but I couldn’t even imagine a context that would possibly improve how she came off.  Unless they were completely fabricated…..
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Paul,
Exactly! Making the case against Palin is already such an easy sell (especially to dumb left-leaners like me) that why did the author even bother jumping through hoops that, as Elizabeth very insightfully pointed out, aren’t even especially compelling? The article comes off as so pointy-headed that even I’m left wondering "where’s the beef?"
Yawn.
I finally followed Ron’s link and realized that he was against it too. Duh. Ron, you might want to at least hint in your post here what point you’re trying to make, although my bad for not following all linkage before responding.
My problem with Palin’s responses, for what it’s worth, has nothing to do with the way she jumps around or constructs her sentences; it has to do with the fact that she can’t answer the questions. When Couric asked her about the bailout, why we should help the big financial companies who created this mess rather than families who are having money trouble, her response makes sense initially. She says she feels ill about it too, but that what the bailout does is help those people… but then she apparently can’t say how, by saying something like, Main St. and Wall St. are inextricably linked, that without the support of large financial institutions the local businesses that we rely on and that employ us can’t function, and that although it’s tempting to allow those who steered us into the iceberg to drown, the fact is that we’re in the boat with them and the biggest priority right now should be to keep the boat from sinking (or whatever metaphor she’d like to use).Â
Instead she wanders off into this weird hash of health care reform and job creation and other buzzwords. She literally says reducing taxes has to accompany tax reduction. That’s not a grammatical problem, that’s someone who got flustered when they were asked a question they couldn’t answer. I’m sympathetic (I’d probably do really poorly myself if I were trying to answer complicated policy questions knowing that the country was hanging on my every word) but it doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. This isn’t even historical like the Supreme Court case criticism, this is happening right now, it’s critically important, and she can’t explain it.
As I said, Sarah Palin will be the replacement for BSD, we are already seeing it here, there and everywhere.
Sometimes I think the Left NEEDS a bogeyman to get their blood going because their policies just don’t inspire such vigor.
;)
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Obama debate conclusion?
CC,
You really think a number of us saying that her answers in that interview were incoherent means that we’re painting her as the boogeyman? The whole Derangement Syndrome meme starts to have a lot less impact if it gets watered down to mean "being critical of my favored candidate in some way".
With the exception of the link to the Slate article I don’t see any derangement syndrome going on here.
I was simply embarrased for her and myself for being a supporter when she couldn’t even answer what publications she reads with any regularity… much less name a Supreme Court ruling she disagreed with. Regular readers of this blog could answer that in their sleep, so what gives?
Look, my vote is going to either McCain or nobody so there’s my bias, but her incoherence with Katie Couric was unsettling. I mean really, she couldn’t handle Katie Couric!
Since we are dissecting candidates comments here, why don’t we dissect Barack Obama’s bald-faced assertion in the debate that America was a more attractive destination for idealistic black africans in the late 1950s (when his father apparently yearned to be free here) than it is today.
I think that’s a pretty amazing assertion considering that a large portion of the country back then forced black citizens to sit at the back of buses, to drink from separate fountains and to use separate restrooms.
Barack asserted that it’s WORSE TODAY than then.
And nobody calls him on it? Hmm…. whats up with THAT?
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Obama debate conclusion?
CC,
Sure, I’m willing to talk about that, but why in this thread? Is the only possible defense of Palin’s performance to call it "derangement" and then change the subject to Obama’s flaws? Again, do you really think it’s deranged for someone to say that her answers were incoherent? Why?Â
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Obama’s statement word for word was this:
"And in the ’60s, he wrote letter after letter to come to college here in the United States because the notion was that there was no other country on Earth where you could make it if you tried. The ideals and the values of the United States inspired the entire world. I don’t think any of us can say that our standing in the world now, the way children around the world look at the United States, is the same."
If you interpret this as a claim that people no longer want to come here for college or to live, he’s factually incorrect. I can’t find any actual data that compares demand for immigration in the ’60s to now, but I’d be totally astonished if it was greater in the ’60s. Our waiting list is years long, so clearly there’s no lack of demand now. Furthermore, I suspect there’s a big disconnect between how people see the US as an actor on the world stage and how they see it as a place to live. I bet there are a lot of people who are critical of the US’s actions and would still choose to live here in a hot millisecond.
If you look at this as a comparison with how people saw the US in the 60s as opposed to now, it’s harder to evaluate. I couldn’t easily find any data that would tell me how the US was viewed then, by Africans or anyone else. It’s true that anti-Americanism has gotten worse since the wave of sympathy post-9/11, but apparently polls show that we’re reasonably popular still, especially in Africa.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/27/news/pew.php
So I’d say it’s hard to prove definitively, but I think this statement was bullshit. If he wanted to say that it’s too bad that anti-Americanism has increased in the world, that’s fine, but to choose immigration and Africa to illustrate that didn’t make any sense.
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Oops, sorry, I forgot I was supposed to accuse you of ODS and change the subject. Dude, you’re deranged… and what about McCain’s totally bogus answer to ….
You guys are really shocked at a politician being vague and avoiding giving "Real Answers" by the superfuous use of buzzwords?
Yeah, cause that’s *never* happened before. /sarcasm
Actually polls I’ve seen show the US to be pretty popular throughout much of Africa, in large part due to the completely ignored efforts the Bush administration has done to help combat Aids and poverty in Africa. Efforts that have been acknowledged as the most any President has done by Bono, who has some gravitas on the matter.
It’s worse than bullshit, it is effectively saying that the US is a worse place TODAY for an AFRICAN IMMIGRANT (which his father was) than it was in the late 1950s.
The reason I am bringing this up here is to show how absurd it is to parse sentence structure when there is actual content that can be parsed much more effectively.
This was Obama’s big closing statement. It MUST have been vetted and rehearsed multiple times (how many times did Obama rehearse for this? Eight?) It must have been heard by every important member of this entire staff.
AND IT IS UTTER BULLSHIT. And bullshit that is DEEPLY OFFENSIVE to Americans who believe that the US has made progress since the late Fifties. You know, people like major league ballplayers, football players, Secretaries of State, Presidential candidates… You know all those examples of how things have actually IMPROVED since then.
Parse that.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Obama debate conclusion?
Elizabeth:
The evidence I have for "Palin Derangement Syndrome" is not simply this ridiculous parsing of her sentences, although I do think this is a particularly ludicrous example of it.
No, Palin Derangement Syndrome is demonstrated in the following ways:
1. A famous female comedian calls for Palin to be gang-raped in New York. Oh, that’s funny.
2. Several prominent liberal actors/actresses attack her as being "anti-woman."
3. Someone hacks into her email address and the press describes HER as the guilty one.
4. A prominent Florida Congressman asks what she will do to "blacks and jews."
I could go on, but you either can see the trees in the forest or you can’t.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Obama debate conclusion?
CC,
I’m sorry, you seem to be reading my words through some sort of Bizarro World filter. I’ve agreed with almost every word you’ve said and you’re acting like I’m contradicting you at every turn. I agree it’s silly to look at sentence structure and that we should look at content. I’ve characterized Obama’s statement as bullshit. I’m the one who posted the *link* to an article discussing the polls showing that the US is popular in Africa. Your conviction that I’m some sort of mindless Obama supporter and equally mindless Palin detractor is inexplicable to me, but perhaps the Bizarro World version of me is and you’ve got us confused. It happens. Does she have a goatee? It might help in telling us apart.
The one thing I’ve said that you don’t apparently (who can tell?) agree with is that the CONTENT of Sarah Palin’s responses to Katie Couric on key issues, including the bailout plan, was incoherent. I say "who can tell" because you’re apparently not going to say anything directly to the point about that.
And I’m not disputing that irrational dislike of Palin exists; irrational dislike of nearly every extant politician exists. I’m saying that no one in this thread, as far as I can see, is exhibiting it, so I question the relevance of repeatedly bringing it up when people are questioning her performance in her recent interviews.
George W. Bush statement:
"Rarely is the question asked: is… [shake of head] ARE kids learning?"
Consistent reporting of George W. Bush statement:
"Rarely is the question asked: is our kids learning?"
This is amusing. Insightful and helpful, it is not. It’s just a common game in the political process.
"…but perhaps the Bizarro World version of me is and you’ve got us confused. It happens. Does she have a goatee? It might help in telling us apart."
LOL!
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