D'oh! That's Who Sarah Palin Reminds Me Of
I have been racking my brain to figure out who Sarah Palin reminds me of ever since she came on the scene with her bright smile, her folksy-corporate style, and her Silly Puttied authenticity, which mirrors back at the viewer whatever talking point she's just absorbed. From the start, I've found her stylistically arresting, for reasons that have to do with her energy and her youth but also, I felt, with some dim recollection of a dark literary doppelganger ... And just now, watching the very end of the debate, it struck me: Sarah Palin reminds me of a character in a George Saunders story. Saunders writes brilliant short stories about characters trapped in the American DreamTM. They are workers at theme parks or Hooters-style restaurants, mummified in corporate-sponsored "flair" (to borrow from the brilliant film Office Space). They speak in the same style of substanceless perk. They are to humanity what MSG is to flavor. (At least, some are.) Palin is, of course, far more successful than many of Saunders' characters, and I don't make the comparison merely to caricature her but to capture what I think is crucial about her. She buys into a whole vocabulary of signifiers that often don't signify very much, and she scaffolds that lexicon with winks, smiles, and carefully mimed gestural reinforcement. All politicians employ empty rhetoric, of course. But I don't know that I've ever seen one employ superficial language with such a sense of palpable enjoyment at her (or his, of course) mastery. And just like Saunders' characters, she refuses to show vulnerability or hesitation, deploying rapid-fire prepackaged phrases like a missile shield, as if the silence that comes with groping for ideas were deadly. (Just listen to her answer about her "Achilles' heel" in the V.P. debate, and compare it with dialogue in a Saunders story.) She loves to say "maverick" and "zero-base" and to recount how she once "quasi-caved" on an issue but didn't "compromise." (Huh?)
A lot of the original media coverage of Palin was confused by things about her that derive, it seems to me, from the fact that she's a woman in the West (which Camille Paglia wrote astutely about a few weeks ago). But what's *not* Western about Palin is how avidly she's borrowed and inhabited the language of cute-can-do-ism that's exploited by companies to lull workers into taking pleasure in how much of their time is given over to "breakout sessions" and the business of being an employee. Throughout the debate, she talked like the executive she's so proud to be rather than the governor she ought to be. (It's no surprise, it occurs to me belatedly, that Saunders wrote a brilliant parody of Palin's speech patterns right after the RNC speech, which you can find here.)
Meanwhile, Biden was the tortoise to her hyper hare: He chipped away slowly and steadily and relaxed as the night progressed. And his answer about being a father and understanding what it's like to raise a child who might not make it was authoritative and emotional at the same time.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2008/10/03/d-oh-that-s-who-sarah-palin-reminds-me-of.aspx
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