This post is about Sarah Palin's use, or misuse, or abuse of the English language. Ordinarily when someone makes the kinds of mistakes she does it is customary for the reporter or the news outlet to signify the mistake with "sic", Latin for "thus", indicating that the speaker actually said the word or words quoted. However, I do not believe that a single news report or story has ever used this fairly common device when reporting on the governor's mistakes. Not that they should, I suppose, otherwise they would spend all their time trying to figure out where to put the sics.
I thought I would quote from her interview today with David Brody of CBN (http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif). In response to a question about a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage she said:
Palin: "I am, (sic) in my own, state, I have (sic) voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining (sic) marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage. I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat(sic) of judgment telling (sic) what they can and can't do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument(sic) that it's the foundation of our society is (sic) that strong family (sic) and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that."
I wondered if her dialogue could be translated into plain English. Here is what I came up with:
Question: Are you for a federal constitutional marriage amendment?
Palin: "I am. In my own state I voted along with the majority of Alaskans to amend our constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level we would also do that because I don't support gay marriage. I'm not going to judge individuals or tell them what they can or can't or should or shouldn't do. But I certainly can express my own opinion, as I am doing here, and I can take action which I believe would be best for traditional marriage: I can vote and speak up for traditional marriage. Traditional marriage is the instrument and foundation of our society; a strong family is based on the traditional definition of marriage. So I support the federal amendment."
This, of course, is a fairly standard argument for the prohibition of gay marriage by constitutional amendment. Gov. Palin, however, in one sentence says that the the marriage amendment is needed to prevent gay marriage, and, in the very next sentence, says she is not going to tell individuals what they can or cannot do. Well, that is exactly what she is doing, telling gays that they cannot get married. And she has good reason for doing so: gay marriage would destroy our society and subvert our strong families.
Gov. Palin comes as close as she can to saying that there is something destructive and subversive about gays. One wonders if she thinks this should become a campaign issue.