Somebody needs to tell Sarah Palin that Nucular isn't a word nor is ya a pronoun. Someone needs to point out that if a maverick is one who doesn't follow the herd, a team of mavericks isn't going to work well -- particularly if one is promoting that team to a leadership role.
Of course these things bother pedantic elitists like me far more than they bother most Americans. I'm not convinced actually that most Americans are bothered by anything I would call reality. We're an entertainment culture and entertaining lies will be repeated and believed while the boring truth is ignored.
Take Sarah's assertions and accusations of last night: Virtually all were either outright lies or misrepresentations. The General who said "surge" tactics won't work, Obama voting for tax increases 95 times, Obama saying he would talk to Ahmadinajad without preconditions, Obama refusing to admit surge worked, -- lies. How many people will bother to check, and of those few how many will be able to dismiss the facts as "liberal?" How many people ever asked "is this the best we can do?"
What we are going to see; what we're seeing already is a focus on making Biden out to be a liar while completely ignoring their own lies. It's the only safe bet in this world of lies.
Yes, "nukular" is one of those comfort words; it allows the nukularist to bond with a powerful confraternity of dunces. Mediocre intellects take special pride in mispronouncing words--they seem to think it lends them an air of defiant individuality. It doesn't.
ReplyDelete"Can I call ya Joe? They gave me a really nucular attack line, but to use it, I hafta call ya Joe... Whadda ya think, huh?"
ReplyDeleteShe also says Eye-wrack and Eye-ran.
ReplyDeleteThat follows the well worn pattern of the folks who loved the war in Vietnam and called it Veet-nam where nam rhymes with Sam. only pansies, lefties, commies and Francophile Nancy-boys would pronounce it correctly
Having been a language student for a great many years, I've usually encountered a group in any class that has a great deal of trouble pronouncing things without a deliberately countrified American accent. The kind of people Mark Twain portrayed saying A-rab instead of Arab. They tend to be chauvinistic, with exaggerated notions of nationalism, a willingness to endorse military action and to identify it with "freedom."
Such people are so recognizable that I used to think in those days that we are dealing with two similar but distinct species. I've begun to think so again. It requires something like a missing cognitive ability to think the way these people do - if you can call it thinking at all.
There is such a thing missing in Mrs. Palin.