Palin uses speeding ticket to establish honky bona fides

Former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin practices saying "hooah!" in the mirror.

Former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin practices saying “hooah!” in the mirror.

Can we take a moment to marvel at how quickly Sarah Palin became what she is now? A scant six years ago, she was the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States. She once claimed to read all newspapers and magazines. Now she’s a female version of Larry the Cable Guy, except instead of making jokes she tells people to buy guns. All right, I guess she also makes jokes: after getting pulled over for speeding last week, she told TMZ that “I wasn’t speeding; I was qualifying.” She also claimed it was because she was listening to Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55.” I think I speak for all of America when I say “no, you weren’t.”

Continue reading

To what degree is Sarah Palin trolling us?

Sarah Palin tries out her ultimately discarded catchphrase, "I'm a bad wittle sublimation of wacism."

Sarah Palin sublimates a nation’s racism in her adorable voice.

As the respectful absence of Combat! blog reminded us, yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I celebrated the way Dr. King called on us all to do, by remaining silent, but every American observed the holiday as he or she saw fit. Sarah Palin, for example, called on President Obama to stop playing the race card. As usual, she used Facebook to communicate her argument, but she was uncharacteristically to the point:

Happy MLK, Jr. Day!

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card.

That was the whole thing, and it raises an important question: to what degree is Sarah Palin trolling us?

Continue reading

Palin revives “death panel” claim

Sarah Palin, sports anchor, 1988. You actually don’t need to put siding on the inside of the building.

Remember when Sarah Palin—fresh from her stint as the thing that proved John McCain was no longer reasonable—said that the Affordable Care Act would create “death panels”? That’s a service she provides. When the country can’t decide how it feels about an important piece of legislation, Palin is there to give us a false understanding of what it does. Her claim that faceless government bureaucrats would decide whether Grandma’s blood thinner is worth it was Politifact’s 2009 Lie of the Year. Pretty much everyone agrees that it exemplified the worst of contemporary politics, which makes it odd that she brought it up yesterday. Just in time for the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare, Palin says her infamous lie was true all along.

Continue reading

Friday links! What’s your excuse? edition

So it turns out mono is the best disease ever. You can’t really do anything about it besides rest and drink fluids, which I was doing anyway. Other than encouraging you to look at pictures like this on the internet, the symptoms are not that bad, but it remains a name-brand illness. When you say you have mono, people pity you like, immediately. I’ve been using it for everything. Late to the movie? Mono. Haven’t shaved in nine days? Definitely mono—too tired, skin weak. Thirty-four, jobless, unmarried—how do you think I got mono in the first place? Today is Friday, and I’m pretty much taking the day off for reasons you can guess. Today’s link-round up is half-assed—some might say mononuclear—and smug. I’m ill, literally, and every stupid thing I do is okay because of it. What’s your excuse?

Continue reading

Close Readings: What do you mean “we?”

I don’t know about you, but I miss Sarah Palin. She’s still around, of course—on Tuesday she guest-hosted the Today show, and I assume she still has the Fox News show where she connects surviving childhood leukemia to free enterprise or whatever. But I miss Sarah Palin the awful thing that happened to American politics. Now that she’s an awful thing that happened to daytime television, my loathing lacks that tang of panic. Not that Sarah Palin is totally useless. She still serves as a valuable warning in both electoral politics and English usage. Lucky for us, she continues to pose as a competent practitioner of both—as she does in the subject of today’s close reading.

Continue reading