I used to think Dick Cavett was a bore

Okay I confess, I’m being incredibly lazy today. And, in fact, there’s no way I can say it better than this. I grew up with the Dick Cavett Show and I had no idea he was such an enlightened wordsmith. I thought he was mostly a yawn. So, my apologies, Dick. And here’s to you and your blog on the mantle of my blog.

From his blog on the NY Times online:
http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/the-wild-wordsmith-of-wasilla/?em
November 14, 2008, 10:00 pm

The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla

Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn’t ailing. Three out of these five implements — answering machine, fax machine, printer, phone and electric can-opener — all dropped dead on me in the past few days.

Now something has gone wrong with all three television sets. They will get only Sarah Palin.

I can play a kind of Alaskan roulette. Any random channel clicked on by the remote brings up that eager face, with its continuing assaults on the English Lang.

There she is with Larry and Matt and just about everyone else but Dr. Phil (so far). If she is not yet on “Judge Judy,” I suspect it can’t be for lack of trying.

What have we done to deserve this, this media blitz that the astute Andrea Mitchell has labeled “The Victory Tour”?

I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.

I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed.

What will ambitious politicos learn from this? That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate’s valuable traits?

And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high.

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)

(How many contradictory and lying answers about The Empress’s New Clothes have you collected? I’ve got, so far, only four. Your additional ones welcome.)

Matt Lauer asked her about her daughter’s pregnancy and what went into the decision about how to handle it. Her “answer” did not contain the words “daughter,” “pregnancy,” “what to do about it” or, in fact, any two consecutive words related to Lauer’s query.

I saw this as a brief clip, so I don’t know whether Lauer recovered sufficiently to follow up, or could only sit there, covered in disbelief. If it happens again, Matt, I bequeath you what I heard myself say once to an elusive guest who stiffed me that way: “Were you able to hear any part of my question?”

At the risk of offending, well, you, for example, I worry about just what it is her hollering fans see in her that makes her the ideal choice to deal with the world’s problems: collapsed economies, global warming, hostile enemies and our current and far-flung twin battlefronts, either of which may prove to be the world’s second “30 Years’ War.”

Has there been a poll to see if the Sarah-ites are numbered among that baffling 26 percent of our population who, despite everything, still maintain that President George has done a heckuva job?

A woman in one of Palin’s crowds praised her for being “a mom like me … who thinks the way I do” and added, for ill measure, “That’s what I want in the White House.” Fine, but in what capacity?

Do this lady’s like-minded folk wonder how, say, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, et al (add your own favorites) managed so well without being soccer moms? Without being whizzes in the kitchen, whipping up moose soufflés? Without executing and wounding wolves from the air and without promoting that sad, threadbare hoax — sexual abstinence — as the answer to the sizzling loins of the young?

(In passing, has anyone observed that hunting animals with high-powered guns could only be defined as sport if both sides were equally armed?)

I’d love to hear what you think has caused such an alarming number of our fellow Americans to fall into the Sarah Swoon.

Could the willingness to crown one who seems to have no first language have anything to do with the oft-lamented fact that we seem to be alone among nations in having made the word “intellectual” an insult? (And yet…and yet…we did elect Obama. Surely not despite his brains.)

Sorry about all of the foregoing, as if you didn’t get enough of the lady every day in every medium but smoke signals.

I do not wish her ill. But I also don’t wish us ill. I hope she continues to find happiness in Alaska.

May I confess that upon first seeing her, I liked her looks? With the sound off, she presents a not uncomely frontal appearance.

But now, as the Brits say, “I’ll be glad to see the back of her.”


**********


I’ve been having such fun reading all the replies on the Internet - http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/the-wild-wordsmith-of-wasilla/?em&apage=3#comments.

Most confirmed what I felt (favorite line: “one who seems to have no first language”) that finally there was an intellect in the media who could take apart Palin-speak without losing him/herself in it.

A few smart-asses started taking apart Cavett’s words (”you can’t hear a wince, you can only see a wince”).

And then there was a response that seemed oddly familiar. After reading it several times, I continue to ask myself is it a put-on (”but seriously, Volks”?) or for real? Or am I just getting paranoid about the now historical fact that a candidate for one of the highest powers in the land doesn’t have to make sense, so now they’re all coming out.

I’ll let you decide:

You ask what makes her popular. The word says it all, but let Shakespeare try, too: “The skipping King [...] enfoeffed himself to popularity [... and] ambled up and down, with shallow jesters and rash bavin wits, soon kindled and soon burnt.” People like her because she talks like them, and as a English teacher I can tell you that most folks write like they talk so when they talk like they talk, or other people, people like it because it helps them see that somebody that’s in charge, you know, like in the president’s office, sees it like them.

Just wait. Soon she’ll be praised as if she’s Faulkner. Or at least Benjy. But seriously, Volks, her people don’t just tolerate her mangled English. They actually like it, because it proves their teachers wrong: good grammar is unrelated to success. It shows that she finds world issues just as confusing as they do; but, above and unlike them, she proceeds to whip (up) moose with perky confidence and without a frown. With this (and hunting from aircraft–can you say “Black Hawk”? Sure you can. ) she reassures them that conviction counts for a lot more than mastery of a lot of dumb history facts and stupid grammar rules. She speaks for all the people who ever thought their English teacher [sic] was clueless.

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.

— Paul Erb

"Huh?" I ask, scratching my head.

Skye, definitely out for now