Apparently, half term Governor Caribou Barbie turned up on Fox news and delivered a classic Palinesque melange of word salad:
We’ll add the nuclear option to the list of things she does not understand. Hell, let’s just add the whole English language to that list.
Jerzy Russian
Is there a transcript of that I can point and laugh at? I don’t have sound at the moment.
The Chiefs went down to the Chargers. I am now waiting for the Broncos to beat the Patriots.
IowaOldLady
I lost IQ points just listening to that. She is such a joke.
ruemara
Dammit, Cole, stop bigfooting all over your own posts. That clip was infinitely better with the sound off.
Also, too, how are the dogs?
Villago Delenda Est
It’s a searing indictment of our “news” media that this bimbo continues to be interviewed so as to display her appalling vacuousness.
Chris Wallace has no shame at all. Mike is wondering, from the great beyond, who the hell actually fathered the twit.
Oh, and John, it’s melange, but given that yes, the bimbo is the most prolific word salad tosser on the planet, perhaps the the e got replaced by an a that way.
ice weasel
Sorry, I got like five seconds into that thing and just turned it off.
Schlemizel
@ruemara:
YES, PLEASE JOHN, HOW ARE THE PUPS? After the last two posts my BP is up abut 30 points I could use a relaxing interlude – thanks
the Conster
I don’t know how, but she hasn’t ever learned one thing. You’d think she would have at least learned something from her makeup and hair people from the campaign, but no. Nothing. It’s really amazing how fucking dumb you have to be to go through life to have nothing considered to be knowledge or self-awareness penetrate that useless organ tissue suppurating between her ears.
Amir Khalid
You’re going to howl and scream at me for this — sigh — but it’s “melange”.
Comrade Mary
I watched a bit with the sound off. Her hair looks better.
Joey Maloney
Malange – typo, or bilingual portmanteau neologism?
Redshirt
Is there a better symbol of how insane the Republican party has become that Sarah Palin is STILL held up as some source of knowledge by Fox News? It’s stunning, really.
Danack
@Jerzy Russian: “Is there a transcript of that I can point and laugh at?”
I’m with Jerzy on this one. Two minutes and twenty-five seconds? Without prescription level sedation?
I really don’t think so.
brent
I haven’t seen a live picture of her in quite a while but she seems to look a lot older to me than I remember. Has she been unwell?
As for what she is saying, she honestly just starts to sound like one of those adults on a Charlie Brown cartoon after a few seconds. Come to think of it, they were actually more intelligible.
Calming influence
“…as to this rule change, that some people are calling the NUKULAR option…”
It may seem petty to point to this mispronunciation of word that’s been pronounced properly roughly 8 zillion times by every talking head on every newscast in the country over the past 2 weeks, but I don’t give a shit. She’s an ignorant fool, too stupid to know she’s ignorant, proves it every time she opens her smirking gob, and why she’s allowed to do that over and over and over and fucking over on TV does not bode well for us as a nation.
schrodinger's cat
Can anyone paraphrase what she is saying, I don’t want to waste my precious bandwidth on her.
Aji
@Danack: Yeah, no, not happening. I’d like to hang onto my sanity today, and what’s left of my mood. That by definition excludes listening to a single syllable from Snowbilly Snooki.
Violet
What’s up with that muskrat pelt she’s wearing on her head?
Villago Delenda Est
@Joey Maloney:
Bilingual portmanteau neologism actually makes some sense. MAL ange. I like it.
It’s like I said about the Department of Homeland Security…that it sounded better in the original German…Heimatsicherheitshauptamt, but a friend of mine quite nicely turned it into Heimatsicherheitshauptangst which captures the Zeitgeist of the period perfectly.
Amir Khalid
Sarah Palin’s face looks different, in a way that I wouldn’t attribute to aging over the past five years. Has she had, um, work done?
IowaOldLady
@Joey Maloney: I saw a video of Rob Ford talking about a coup d’etat and he felt he had to explain what that was. This is in Canada, where French is one of the official languages. All I could do was laugh. I hope someone has dragged him off to rehab by now.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
“Nucular option, bad!”
You’re welcome.
Ruckus
@brent:
That’s why she isn’t funny. She’s not as smart as any cartoon that I’ve ever seen. Wiley Coyote is way smarter and he keeps proving time and time again that he’s taken one too many anvils to the head.
Schlemizel
@brent:
I think she my have had a little work done around the edges, either that or her ego is so tender that she is over-compensating with the face putty. Both of those things can add the impression of age despite they belief they do the opposite. I also think that she either has a hair hat on or has really overworked that shit. Its all designed to make her look younger and sexier but really does not work against healthy men with good eyesight.
Aji
@schrodinger’s cat: There’s no point. Just envision a really REALLY flat Midwestern accent coupled with a Valley-Girl question-like rise at the end of every clause, interspersed with “real Americans” and “betrayal” and a few other euphemisms for “that blackity-blackity-black usurper in the people’s White House!” and you’re good. It’s all the same, no matter the topic, no matter the context.
schrodinger's cat
@the Conster: She looked much better when she was campaigning with Grandpa McCain.
Aji
@Schlemizel: “healthy men with good eyesight not corrupted by hallucinations of starbursts.”
FTFY.
Violet
@Amir Khalid: She’s had so much work done, we should invest in plastics to make money off her.
Villago Delenda Est
@IowaOldLady:
Reminds me of Tony Blair’s claim that George W. Bush once told him that the problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@schrodinger’s cat:
@Palin:
The Dangerman
@Schlemizel:
That could explain it, since doing something too much is supposed to make you go blind. Or grow hair on your palms. Or something.
Calming influence
Maybe she’s an incredibly sophisticated and evil robot. Every time I see her speak my blood pressure spikes to ~400/260 which takes an hour or two off of my lifespan. Collectively, that short clip probably took 75 man/years from progressives around the country.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Certainly not good work done. It is possible that her brain is so scrambled that some autonomic functions, like cell regeneration are not functioning properly.
Violet
@schrodinger’s cat: Click the PoliticsUSA link that John posted in the original post. It has the transcript.
ed
Every time I see Ms. Palin speak I think to myself: boy, I sure wish she had access to the Launch Codes.
Aji
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): Nah, too pithy. Pithy is one thing she is not. Likewise, not brief, concise, pointed, or any other putative virtues in public speech.
Now, if you’d said “Wharrgarble . . .” ad infinitum, that might fit.
Violet
@Schlemizel:
She’s been wearing a wig for years now. Her hair varies far too much from day to day for it to be anything else. Sometimes it slips and you can see her hairline.
dedc79
She has always, and apparently will always, sound like a second grader giving a book report on a book she didn’t read.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: Thanksgiving is a time to talk about our usurper in office and socialism, I guess. Chris Wallace chuckled at the end.
Violet
@JPL: Did Chris Wallace draw the short straw at Fox today and be the one who has to have her on his show?
Calming influence
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): You win the “Shorter” contest for the day.
Transcribing her last ten interviews would look something like this: “derp derp herp derp derp derp derp derp derp herp”
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
LOL
Thanks for that reminder of how much of an idiot the man is.
WereBear
@schrodinger’s cat: It doesn’t matter what she says, though. None of it ever makes any sense.
Douglas Wayne Wieboldt
OMG! It’s moose meat Barbie bloviating senselessly, again. Still. Because TeaBagging!
Ruckus
@dedc79:
Is that a second grader that’s been held back a couple of times?
Dolly Llama
She’s had worse than that, for sure, though that’s seriously the first clip of her I’ve watched since Paul Revere “ringin’ those bells.” Too lazy to Google how long ago that was.
She’s looking rough. I wouldn’t bring it up, being a rough-looking sort myself, except that’s such a central part of who this woman is.
schrodinger's cat
I have just what this thread needs, our new overlords, who I think we should all welcome.
geg6
@Calming influence:
THIS.
And WTF is going on with her fucking hair? Those are the worst extensions/weave I’ve ever seen, bar none. And a little lip color would take away some of that pale old lady look.
JPL
@Violet: Wallace probably volunteered. I can understand his lack of follow up questions, because what exactly do you follow up on.
For those without sound, you can use closed captions. The entertainment value is worth it.
Dolly Llama
@Amir Khalid: I imagine so. Good enough for John Kerry, good enough for her, I guess. Hers didn’t turn out quite as good as Bristol’s (if that’s the one that was on the dancing show), though that’s damning with faint praise, for sure.
Pogonip
@geg6: My last cut/color came out a hundred percent better than that, despite costing a mere $100. I bet Palin paid 4 or 5 times that much. If I were she, I’d ask for a redo or refund.
My aunt had to go to an expensive charm school to learn how to be a corporate wife. One of the things you learn is that among the 5%, a good hairdresser is one who can give you the exact same result at least three times in a row. Maybe Palin needs to invest in charm school. I think those lazy 47% hairdressers are having fun with her. You know how those 47% are.
Calming influence
I’m of the strong opinion that transcripts of Palin-Speak don’t do it justice. There is a confidence in her delivery that is lost when reading it; the pauses that your mind insists on making when a completely random word appears on the page don’t exist when she speaks.
If she wasn’t so dangerous, I’d call it an art form.
Calming influence
@Pogonip:
I’m also guessing that she’s never eaten restaurant food that didn’t have spit in it.
dmsilev
@JPL:
Sarah Palin and Thanksgiving has historically been a bad combination.
Pogonip
Another thing you learn in Corporate Wife School is that less is more. A big blow-out like Palin’s got there would never fly among the 5%. Except for the fvck-me shoes, she used to look a lot more 1%-ish.
Violet
@dmsilev: My favorite Thanksgiving video ever.
Bob
Looks like Caribou Barbie has taken the Lord out of Xmas. Not a a baby Jesus in sight.
dmsilev
@Violet: Putting aside the turkeys (both in the foreground and the background…), she really hasn’t aged well since that fiasco, has she. Only been 5 years, one resignation, and umpteen media appearances since then.
Calming influence
@dmsilev: I was waiting for someone to dig that up. A Palin Classic.
SiubhanDuinne
@dedc79:
This. Truer words were never written.
Steeplejack
I actually felt sorry for Chris Wallace in that clip. He’s thinking, “I know I sold my soul to Fox News, but I didn’t think I would have to sit through shit like this and keep a straight face.” Which he almost didn’t, with that explosive chuckle at the end.
Violet
@Pogonip: When the GOP was dressing her when she was McCain’s running mate, she looked classy. When that ended and she was on her own her look started going downhill. It’s been going that direction ever since.
Amazingly, she looks better in this video than she’s looked in awhile. Her hair isn’t crazy, crazy bad like in some recent appearances–you can’t see her hairline under the wig, for instance, and it seems to have a style rather than the animal pelt look she usually goes for. And her face is slightly more filled out than usual–maybe she’s had a filler treatment recently. Or got some sleep for a change. She doesn’t have the haggard, worn look she usually has.
dmsilev
@Calming influence: When I started typing in ‘Sarah Palin turkey’ into Google, autocomplete helpfully offered ‘fiasco’, ‘massacre’, and ‘slaughter’ as additional search terms along with more normal suggestions like ‘video’ and ‘interview’.
Violet
@dmsilev: No she’s aged a lot. She looks considerably more than just five years older. She’s mean, petty and angry–that sort of thing ages a person.
shelly
But her hair looks fantastic! ;-) As if gently tossed from the cool winds off the Alaskan tundra. Or maybe she was just wrestling a bear.
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
I reckon Sarah Palin is a political version of a Kardashian. No Kardashian is known for any sort of talent; Sarah isn’t now and will never again be an office holder. Yet they and she manage, as a livelihood, to cultivate a glamour which attracts public attention and money.
Calming influence
@dmsilev: That’s hilarious! I think that Google’s god-like algorithms are sometimes actually going for the laugh.
debbie
It’s the eyebrows. Definitely overarched. Makes her look maniacal, and with her silly words, she could be the bad guy in Team America.
Mike in NC
Sarah Palin thinks a Filibuster is something elitists order for dessert.
ArchTeryx
Sarah Palin and Effie Trinket: Compare and contrast. The two differences?
One dresses better and actually has a shred of humanity about her. Guess which!
schrodinger's cat
@debbie: She needs to grow them out and fire her stylist.
debbie
@schrodinger’s cat:
And demand they giver her her bump-it back.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
I think the hair is fake as well.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
It’s actually much more interesting to watch the guy in the background, whose turkey-killing work station is in the shot through no fault of his own, making him choose between ruining the Governor’s interview and not doing his job. At first he stands there uncomfortably, then he says to himself, “Fuck it”, and gets on with work.
Geoduck
Put me in the “the hair’s not THAT bad” camp. The stuff she spews out of her mouth, yes.
JPL
@dmsilev: During the infamous Thanksgiving video, Sarah mentions that she is prepared to get back to work for the great state of Alaska. She lied because she quit. That was her Katrina moment.
Petorado
I’ve found all frustration with Sarah melts when away when I think of her as a comedienne and performance artist, kind of like Andy Kaufmann with a sex change. If Palin was a permanent guest on SNL’s weekend update, she’d kill it.
David Koch
I understand why women love shoes, in short they accessorize their outfits.
But I don’t get why guys are attracted or turned on by shoes.
RobNYNY1957
Here is a (partial?) transcript.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/palin-filibuster-reform-conspiracy-stop-talk
Napoleon
@dmsilev:
I love that function from Google for that very reason. You learn sometimes the funniest way people are searching for things.
Pogonip
@David Koch: They’re not; it’s just that a woman wearing fvck-me shoes is singing a horny man’s song. If a nun’s wimple was generally recognized as shouting “Fvck me!” you’d have the same effect with those.
Amir Khalid
@David Koch:
We aren’t. Most guys know jack shit about women’s shoes and hardly notice them at all. They’re for impressing other women.
NotMax
Ah, the collective IQ of YouTube lowered another passel of points.
David Koch
@Pogonip: Hmm. Well, Sister Kate Upton is a sexy nun.
PurpleGirl
@efgoldman: I miss WKRP in Cincinnati. That was a great ensemble cast. And yes, that section of the show is the classic Thanksgiving skit. (Although Wednesday Adam’s First Thanksgiving in the summer camp pagent is also pretty funny.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VbYZDohsHk
Shana
@Violet: Clips or still please!
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: Count me in the not impressed column, even her 2008 avatar, which was quite a better than the current version.
gogol's wife
@PurpleGirl:
Is that “As God is my witness . . .”?
Too lazy to click. Maybe I will just to see that.
PurpleGirl
@gogol’s wife: See EFGoldman’s link for the WKRP clip. But the clip is an extended version with all the station people talking about a secret promotion setting up the event. The “As God is my witness…” is a great ending and punchline.
My link is to Addams’ Family Values.
nancy darling
@Amir Khalid: Definitely botox injections—her face doesn’t move. Also highlights in her hair.
Pogonip
It just occurred to me: she might have focus-grouped various do’s and the above is the one her audience preferred. But it still would get you an F at Corporate Wife School. :)
Tripod
I’m pretty sure at this point even Fox is trolling her. I think she might have been high.
Dead Ernest
@Amir Khalid: @Pogonip: @David Koch:
Nope.
It is not the shoes themselves.
It is the change in posture, more significantly, the change in gait… stride …ambulation …er, what is the less medical, more ‘everyday’ speak for what men note about how women walk?
Anyway, it’s not the shoes, it’s that.
Jennifer
It’s the brow lift that’s giving her such a harsh look. I keep wondering when people will figure out that brows hovering that high up on the forehead only works for drag queens. The botox has been going on for quite some time – it’s why her upper lip didn’t move during her infamous “Big Gulp” speech. The hair? Well, it’s just age-inappropriate for a 50 year old. Middle aged women need to figure out that having long hair doesn’t make you look young – it makes you look like a middle aged woman trying to look young. Probably the thing that’s hurting her looks as she ages the most is the anorexia. Look at the cords standing out on her neck, the prominent collarbones. If you could see her chest, which you can in other pictures from the interview where it’s not blocked by the Fox spew ticker at the bottom of the screen, the sternum and ribs are showing.
All of which means my fondest wish regarding Palin is coming true. As I’ve been saying for several years now, “I hope she stays in the public eye just long enough to be tempted into unfortunate plastic surgery.” If she’s still haunting our television screens 5 years from now, she’ll be the next Michael Jackson – or at least the next Joan Rivers.
schrodinger's cat
@Jennifer: So everyone over 30 should have a shoulder length soccer mom do? I don’t understand this jihad against long hair. Who makes these stupid rules.
ETA: Not defending Palin, her hair looks atrocious but countering your statement about a woman’s age and the length of the hair.
Schlemizel
@dedc79:
That may be the most succinct description of her style I have heard yet – I intend to steal that Thanks
Aji
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, WTF? For some of us, it’s a cultural thing. I’m Indian, and I will not be cutting my hip-length hair just because I’m a couple decades beyond 30-y/o soccer-mom-ism. Oh, and I have no kids of my own – does that mean I’m supposed to cut it just on barrenness grounds? Jeebus.
Aji
@Jennifer: Sorry, but this very middle-aged Indian chick with hip-length black hair knows what you can do with your “need to figure out.” I get absolutely no complaints on my attractiveness, thankyouverymuch.
That’s just . . . I don’t even know what that is. Something I’d expect from a misogynist guy.
Kevin
Notice how Chris Wallace initially frames it too, he says they changed the rule so that you will no longer need 60 votes to confirm nominees, but now just need 51. He kind of indirectly notes that there is obstruction later when he shows that graphic, but for the uninformed (aka, the entire Fox News viewership, and his guest), it seems that Democrats lowered the bar on what it takes to confirm a nominee. Sneaky like a fox.
As to the word salad that followed, I can’t listen to more then a sentence Palin utters. That herky jerky stop and start speech is just too strange and distracting…by the time I start paying attention, I’m completely lost (then again, I start over and listen to what she says, and I still manage to get lost in a closet, so I’m not sure what else I can do).
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Aji:
I usually truncate pretty severely when people of Palin’s stature are involved.
JPL
@Kevin: Click on Closed Caption, although it doesn’t necessarily help.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Tripod:
I agree. I think she has succumbed to a terrible addiction.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid: Actually, it’s “mélange.”
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
Can’t be—the whites of her eyes aren’t blue.
Jennifer
Jesus, chill out folks. Maybe I should have included that it’s not age appropriate for her line of work. Which on second thought doesn’t really work either, because her line of “work” is approximately that of a Real Housewife rather than a politician, and long Charlie’s Angel style hair is pretty much the norm for 50-year-old Real Housewives. But can you imagine Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer going around in a Farrah ‘do? Women in political positions, for better or worse, pretty much have to stake out whether they want to be known as a serious problem solver or a beauty queen; if they style themselves as the latter most people will not see them as the former.
I’m not knocking your personal decision to keep your hair long – I’m knocking Sarah Palin’s, because she’s clearly only interested in being a beauty queen but she keeps pretending to be someone who knows something about anything at all. She’s chosen that style because she thinks it has more sex appeal, but it’s not doing her any favors, any more than the eyebrow lift, because on her it looks like a middle aged woman trying to pretend she’s in her 20’s. Which is how she dresses as well.
schrodinger's cat
@Jennifer: I have had hair of various lengths, very short, shoulder length and longest was mid back. When I wore it too short as a teen, I was told that I looked like a boy and it was not feminine and now you are saying that anything beyond a bob, means you are not serious about your work. You did not restrict your comments to Sarah Palin alone. BTW do you think that Tammy Duckworth is not serious about her job because she has longer hair. Are there only two options for women with careers, be sexless or be a Real Housewife of whatever county. If you take care to look good, does that necessarily mean you are not serious about your work. Wow.
fuckwit
@schrodinger’s cat: i too, am tired of women sniping at each other about their looks. doesn’t help anyone.
kc
@Amir Khalid:
She looks to me like she lost a lot of weight too fast.
J.D. Rhoades
The scary thing is, I’ve dealt with people like her in person and online. To her followers, she actually makes sense. They actually think and talk in this kind of blizzard of disjointed gibberish, spewing a veritable santorum of buzzwords: “Failed big government”, “bankrupt this country” “double standard”, etc. As long as they hit the buzzwordS and convey the proper sense of frustrated resentment, it doesn’t really matter to them what comes in between or whether or not the whole makes any sense.
We may be headed for the post-linear-thinking society.
David Koch
@Dead Ernest: you’re evaluation on walking is true. both genders find confidence attractive, which can be expressed in many ways, such as the way we walk and talk.
but it’s more than that. for example, look at the spokesmodels at fox news. They’re not walking, they’re sitting in chairs. but, they’re in mini-skirts showing off their legs and f-me heels. If it was just a matter of having swag when walking, then they wouldn’t wear ridiculously impracticable shoes while sitting on a couch.
Ripley
They’re most often filled with a woman’s feet.
Okay, back to the hair wars.
fuckwit
@J.D. Rhoades: c.f. duckspeak, also orwell, george. palin duckspeak doubleplus good.
fuckwit
@kc: breaking bad could have just as easiy been set in alaska as arizona.
Bill Arnold
@David Koch:
I don’t understand the general case, but some people male and female have some crosstalk between the region of the brain mapped to the feet and the nearby region mapped to genitilia, at least according to VS Ramachandran “Phantoms In the Brain” (1999), inspired by phantom limb case studies.
Pogonip
@Ripley: “Sarah! I am your father…’s HAIRDRESSER!”
Didn’t know she had anorexia problems. Sorry to learn that.
Bubblegum Tate
@Violet:
I’d say it looks like she’s got a weave, but it actually looks more like a straight-up wig.
Jebediah, RBG
I can’t believe I watched the whole thing. Perhaps my bong will console me. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
Yep. Still the best analogy for them I can think of.
Pogonip
This leads into something I’ve always wondered: why do female politicians rarely go for glamour?
Bubblegum Tate
@Mike in NC:
Or maybe those sales that start early in the morning during holiday season.
Lurking Canadian
@David Koch: it’s like jazz, baby.
TriassicSands
@Calming influence:
I have to admit it drives me nuts when people mispronounce nuclear. But a surprising number of people do and some are people you’d expect to get it right, for example Jimmy Carter. My annoyance escalated when Bush was appointed president, but I remember hearing him say it correctly once, which surprised the hell out of me. Then, he immediately reverted to “nukewlar” (or nukular, if you prefer). My theory on that was that his handlers had worked with him to get it right, but it took much too much of Bush’s limited attention for him to pronounce it correctly, so they gave up and let say it his way. I’m sure they were correct in believing that the vast majority of Americans never even noticed it. But I did…every damned time that pea-brained idiot said it.
Hearing Palin say it, especially with the grating quality of his voice, brings back unpleasant memories.
Jennifer
@schrodinger’s cat: Ok, so it’s your contention that the way a woman grooms and styles herself has nothing at all to do with the way she’s perceived? Just trying to get a fix on it, because I clarified my meaning, and now you seem to be continuing to look for a reason to be offended by the clarification. Tammy Duckworth, FWIW, has shoulder-length hair, not some Miss Clairol long mane, and she doesn’t go around in skin-tight clothing. So again, look at other powerful women – politicians, CEOs & etc., and name for me the ones who go around wearing skin-tight clothing and sporting big hair. You may not like it that people don’t take women who present themselves this way seriously, but you know it’s true, which is why other female politicians and CEOs and the like don’t style themselves this way – because they know it too.
schrodinger's cat
@Jennifer: This is what you said
Why are you so judgmental about other women’s appearances? and who appointed you the hair police? Palin is a moron and that has nothing to do with the length of her hair. Why don’t you stick to talking about Palin, rather than talking about women in general.
Jennifer
@schrodinger’s cat: In other words, you prefer to be upset rather than accept my clarification. Got it.
Paul in KY
@TriassicSands: I think he purposely mispronounced it. Brought him closer to regular muricans (his thought).
Peanutcat
@Violet: Well, that’s because then everything was paid for by McCain’s campaign!
Mr_Gravity
@fuckwit: I thought Breaking Bad was set in Mew Mexico.
LanceThruster
@schrodinger’s cat:
I can! I can!
Cup your hand…put it under your armpit…and make a chicken wing flapping motion with your arm.
It’s like a Snowball Snooki decoder ring.