Picture of the Day

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Sarah Palin at a fund-raiser in Hamilton, Ontario, April 15th.

I am posting this only at the special request of Californian Trevor Losh-Johnson, who will be joining the graduate program at McMaster in September and was curious to know how the Palin appearance played here.

Well, you can see by the photo that she’s turned writing on her hand into Christianist shtick.

If you want to know how the Hamilton Spectator covered the event, you can read its headline story here.

Here are the first four grafs:

Hamilton’s NHL ambitions have the support of Sarah Palin.

The former Alaska governor, in town last night for a fundraiser at Carmen’s Banquet Centre that raised $50,000 for a children’s charity, was at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Hamilton before the evening event.

“I’m overlooking Copps Coliseum and I thought, what a great place for an NHL franchise,” she told a sellout crowd of more than 900 people at the east Mountain banquet centre.

“You’re all set up for it,” she said to applause. “If I ever meet the president of the NHL, I’ll put a little bug in his ear,” Palin said.

That about capture it for you, Trevor?

To be fair, you can read Spec columnist Jeff Mahoney’s very funny “sneak peek” at her speech here — which perhaps confirms that satire may now be more relevant than what otherwise passes for news.

Bill Maher on the whole writing-on-the-hand thing after the jump.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s60jYSgVT0

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2 thoughts on “Picture of the Day

  1. Robert D. Denham

    Was God asleep? Did He nod off?
    Or was His mind just ailin’?
    Or was it just a joke he played,
    When he made Sarah Palin?

    Reply
  2. Trevor Losh-Johnson

    While there exist online programs to simulate her predictable diction and astonishingly collage-like syntax, I have yet to find any systematic way of imitating her idiosyncratic delivery. Though a bad voice simulator might suffice, it is important to account for her perceptible modes of delivery (sarcasm, chirpy, etc) and for her unpredictable caesuras that interrupt both sentences and their subjects.

    The best system I have been able to devise is a simple coin toss. Let every syllable be designated as either unstressed or stressed. If heads, unstressed, if tails, stressed. I just subjected the above stanza to this method, and here is the result:

    WAS GOD asleep? DID HE nod off?
    or was HIS mind JUST ailin’?
    or was IT just A joke he PLAYED
    WHEN HE made SArah PAlin?

    This will not do, which is why I suggest using a dice and assigning to its numbers certain qualities of her delivery for a set number of words, irrespective of punctuation. For a six-sided dice, I have chosen the following for every set of six words(delimited by “/”):
    1- Caesura after set
    2- Chirpy recitation
    3- Insinuating tone
    4- Sarcasm
    5- Random insertion of a folksy idiom, to be identified in brackets.
    6- Repetition of fourth word in set, followed by the elision of the last two words, replaced by the second word of the following set.

    Here is what I got, after rolling the dice:

    (chirpily) WAS GOD asleep? DID HE nod/ (sudden sarcasm)off?
    or was HIS mind JUST/ [Here’s a shout-out] ailin’?
    or was IT just A/ joke he PLAYED
    WHEN…when PAlin?

    This is only a prototype, but I think an improved version could possibly catch on. Coincidentally, Romney was in my little burg of Claremont on the same night Palin was in Hamilton. Until he releases a map with crosshairs denoting which congressmen should be “targeted” for reelection, I do not think he deserves an equivalent coin toss. Incidentally, if you want to turn an online coin toss into an online I-Ching reading, I used this site:
    http://www.eclecticenergies.com/iching/consultation.php?lns=786776

    On asking it, “Will I ever meet Sarah Palin,” it yielded hexagram 17 (Following) changing into hexagram 13 (People Together). It counseled me that “Following the elder man/ One loses sight of the little child./” and later that “People together in the open country./ Progressing./ It is beneficial to cross the big river./ Benefiting the noble one’s persistence.” Spooky, eh?

    Reply

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