So Conor Friedersdorf and Peter Suderman have both jumped on board the “fake folksiness” wagon, and as was the case when I took the issue up on Friday, I simply don’t get it. Here’s Peter:
… I think it’s clear that the folksiness [Palin] displayed in the recent debate is a recent addition to her public persona. And I think it’s reasonable to infer that, as with most every development in a major campaign like these, these tics were added intentional [sic], layered on like an actor building a character — and, most importantly, that they are products of campaign-trail training.
Really? First of all, as this blogger points out, the accent Palin has spoken with since her selection as McCain’s running mate is straightforwardly identifiable with that of the region she grew up in, and the same goes in turn for most of the various folksy turns of phrase that she’s deployed. And so the fact, if it is indeed a fact, that these mannerisms may have been missing from past incarnations of her public persona does not give us grounds to conclude that they are, in Conor’s words, “more or less affectation”: it would seem far more appropriate to say that it is the less-folksy manner of 1996 that is the affected one, and that the speaking style we’ve seen over the past month has been a slide back into something more like the way Palin spoke before she majored in journalism.
Might this later shift have been a deliberate one, adopted to play up Palin’s “outsider” image? Surely. But that doesn’t mean that there’s anything dishonest about it: our public faces are almost always consciously selected, and is it really fair to insist that the only acceptable sort of play-acting is the sort wherein a girl from the Mat-Su Valley tries to speak like a generic TV newscaster?
P.S. The Palin from this 2007 (?) clip doesn’t sound all that much different from the one we’ve heard during the past month-plus.
Filed under: media/culture, politics
[...] Schwenkler says that Peter and I are wrong to claim that Sarah Palin’s folksy manner in the last debate is [...]
You seem to be willingly contrarian about this, John – it’s not the accent that’s being questioned, it’s the word choices – the you betchas, the “say it aint so’s”, the hockey mom, Joe-Sixpack nonsense. Other video clips don’t show a shred of evidence of her campaigning in this way. It’s phony.
I said in my original post that I thought the “Say it ain’t so, Joe” was clearly forced – but that blogger that I linked to argues that many of the other tics (”nucular”, the repeated use of “also”, “you betcha”, etc.) are easily traceable to where Palin grew up. I also agree that she didn’t campaign this way in the past – but that doesn’t show that it’s phony.
P.S. Andrew Sullivan clearly questioned whether the accent was faked.
I think we’re all overlooking the obvious here: All of the verbal tics that others have noticed in Gov. Palin (”you betcha”) are quite clearly the result of the pressure involved in covering up the ugly truth about Trig’s maternity. John Schwenkler is Trig’s mom, and they know that at this point that if the truth came out (Trig’s mom is an arugala-eating-hippie-commie-pinko) it would be the final nail in the coffin of McCain/Palin ‘08.
You’ve got things totally wrong, Adam. As I explained before, Trig is the secret love child of Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney …
I’d suggest that some of these affects and mannerisms might be a natural response to the fact that she is often emphasizing (or defending) the fact that she’s from Alaska. This sort of “reversion”, for lack of a better term, is illustrated by a linguistic parlor trick. If you want to folks to talk in the their “natural” accent, have them talk about home. The interviewee almost always speaks with a much more pronounced accent and is much more likely to use regional “sayings”. Whether or not that’s what’s going on in Palin’s case, I have not a clue.
So this is the self-immolation of identity politics on the rightward side of the street.
(Pleas, please, please someone say “you betcha!”)
You betcha!
Gosh darn it, why hasn’t anyone one talked about Joe. Read the editorial in Wall Street Journal yesterday. Say it ain’t so Joe…
I knew I could count on you John.