Remember McCain and Palin's parent/student/teacher conference with Katie Couric the other night? I realize it was ages ago in campaign years, but who could forget...
- McKeating5 calling Palin's Pakistan slip-up an example of 'Gotcha journalism', even though the question came from a non-reporter in a restaurant.
- Palin misquoting said question: (her version)
"What are you gonna do about Pakistan? You better have an answer to Pakistan",
when the actual question was
"How about the Pakistan situation...What should we do? Cross the border from, like, from Afghanistan?"
(Gotcha!)
And many more 'very, very' disturbing moments.
There is one moment in particular, however, that I don't think has been covered and it comes early in Palin's recounting of the restaurant 'gotcha' moment, right after McKeating5 says he'll 'let her speak for herself'...
Now, we've known for a while that Palin, when cornered, or whenever, actaully, will string together a series of relevant-sounding prepositional phrases often ending in '...there in the state which I am the executive of.' This meaningless blather is peppered with 3 and 4 syllable governmenty-sounding words such as 'maritime', 'ultimately', 'opportunity', 'multi-faceted' and, in a pinch, 'umbrella'.
It seems she wanted to use the word 'caricature' during her first interview with Couric, but stopped mid-word. It's like she memorized that word with her coaching team, but in the heat of the interview could only remember that it was a word that sounded a lot like 'character' and didn't want to risk blowing it.
"Cari-..."
UPDATE: Katie Couric should have said, "Caribou?"
Couric was awesome when she suggested the word Palin might be looking for is a simple, one-syllable, everyday word -'mocked'.
I digress. Back to her description of what happened at the restaurant. Here's what she said:
"In fact, you're absolutely right on. In the context, this was a voter, a constituence, hollerin' out a question from across an area..."
Unfortunately for Palin, THE WORD 'CONSTITUENCE' DOES NOT EXIST. here's what you get when you type it into dictionary.com:
http://dictionary.reference.com/...
She doesn't know that the individual unit that makes up a politician's 'constituency' is known as a 'constituent'. That's partly because the singular of 'constituents' is so seldom used; after all, why not just use the word 'voter' (unless of course you're trying to sound like a non-moron).
I realize this may seem like a pretentious and minor grammar correction, but to me, it offers a window into how she created her political speaking style - by copying what she hears smart folks saying, like some kind of robot nightmare parrot - and almost definitely not by reading.
THE END