Our National Horshack Test

Oh! Oh! Mr. Kott-err!

Tonight was Rashomon night at the debates: what you saw depended entirely on who you were.

(But first, let me say right out that I think we
Liberals have finally found a fool-proof way of
spotting Replicants walking among us, pretending
to be human. Turns out, it wasn't just Dubya;
All Replicants are apparently
completely flummoxed by a common,
everyday, three-syllable English word.

"Nuclear".

Perhaps it should become our "Shibboleth".)

Sarah Palin is indeed Old Conservative Whine in New Skins.

Perky, vacant, contemptuous, proudly anti-intellectual, and programmed to within an inch of her life. A relentless, belt-fed drone set to full-auto, firing a short, Neocon-approved list of "Eye-Rak", "The Seeerge Werks", and the "White Flag Of Seerrender" phrases.

As I wrote a long time ago:

...
Plug in any topic – Iraq, Democrats, the economy, the Constitution, Dubya, the phases of the Moon, Vietnam, arch supports, hen teasing, what killed Vaudeville, who wrote the book of love, why does the caged bird sing...anyfuckingthing – and the lights on their vacuum tube firmware go blinky-blink, and this pre-recorded galvanic-reflex-feedback loop is what comes reeling out of their pie-holes.

It’s not that they “believe” any of this, any more than my egg timer “believes” in counting down to “ding”.

Palin is pure, triply-rectified Dubya, right down to her chipper, lock-jawed refusal to look "backwards" at anything for any reason, her barely concealed, eye-glittering contempt for having to answer anything but a french-kiss of a question, a soul constructed of absolute, evangelical certainty double-helixed tightly around a core of smirking, abysmal ignorance, and her inability to pronounce "Nukuler".

And in the Three Americas, reactions were predictable:

In Pundit America, where objectivity and judgment have been dead and buried for thirty years, the rudderless Villagers were comically schizophrenic in the way they tried to make simple, declarative statements while at the same time hedging their words in case tomorrow's poll show that, once again, none of them have the slightest fucking clue what they're talking about.

Snips from here, there and everywhere:

She killed. (Peggy Noonan)

She lost. (Matthew Dowd)

So many of her answers were programmed into her and she was going to give them regardless of the questions she was asked.

She can win by not losing. (Kate Zernike (NYT))

Folksy-riffic! (OK, I made that one up)

You may have some people who say “She talks like me!” or you may have some people who want more substance and less folksie.

But it all depends on what the voters think…

The energy level relentless.

I think there were a lot of people who may have tuned in for a few minutes to see an entertainment.

You can win without winning.

We won’t know if she was refreshingly Reaganesque or "Gidget Goes to Washington".

(And of course) Time will tell.

They were, in a word, "splunge".


In Liberal American, where the idea of an America where another Rove-programmed, Dubya-clone sits one heartbeat away from the Oval Office is seen as a Very, Very Bad Thing, Palin is the Hanta virus in size seven pumps.

And among the Pig People,

I have no doubt that Caribou Barbie will continue to be seen as a plain-folk-just-like-me godsend straight from Sweet Nukuler Baby American Jebus.

(A large and grateful h/t to Malacandra for the vid)


Noo-klee-er Update:

—Pronunciation note: In pronouncing nuclear, the second and third syllables are most commonly said as /-kliər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[-klee-er] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation, a sequence of sounds that directly reflects the spelled sequence ‑cle·ar. In recent years, a somewhat controversial pronunciation has come to public attention, with these two final syllables said as /-kyələr/[-kyuh-ler]

Controversy..........averted.