by Teh Nutroots | Apparently The Corner's Rich Lowry experienced the debate a little differently from most people. In his living room anyway, "projecting from the screen." And...she winked at him! Winked! See?
After which Lowry thought he was seeing "starbursts" zinging round his head, like the Elmer Fudd he is. To slightly paraphrase Stevie Smith, I thought Palin was not waving, but twitching. I put it down to nerves.
Lowry burbled:
I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.
If I'd seen any of those, I'd have gone for the flyswatter. But each to his own, I guess.
Wonkette loved Lowry's piece.
Remind us to use this once a day, forever.
Hilzoy said:
I'm sure I'm not the only female in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, rolled her eyes and thought: oh, dear God. We have all seen just that wink deployed at guys like Rich Lowry. We have all watched in amazement as it actually works, despite its transparent manipulativeness. What, we all wonder, could those guys possibly be thinking? (What the winking women are thinking is usually altogether too clear.) I'm betting that for every male vote that wink picked up, it lost at least one woman.
Jeff Fecke says:
Palin’s physical attractiveness is, for feminists, a null issue. She’s pretty? Fine, but will she be a good vice president? A good president? She’s not going to be able to negotiate better with Putin because she’s pretty — but it won’t be a handicap, either. No, her mind is the part of her anatomy we’re most interested in.
This is not the case with her ideological cohort...
Quite frankly, Lowry’s purple prose is demeaning to a woman who is only the second to serve on a national ticket. His argument for her is simple: she’s hot. Therefore I want to vote for her. Her mind? Issues? Whatever, dude, she winked at me!
Go easy on him, Jeff Fecke---it's probably his first time.
Steve Benen says:
You sat up when Palin winked at the camera? You saw "little starbursts"? And you published this?
I realize political analysis on the right has been in decline, but I didn't appreciate the extent to which it mirrored school-boys with crushes.
If you do nothing but roll your eyes at Sarah Palin's act, her allure may be hard to understand. Not to be dismissive or sexist, but after seeing some of the reactions to last night's debate, it seems like one aspect of it is that her facial mugging and winking comes across to some middle-aged white guys as a semiotic sexual flirtation.
Good thing Palin didn't blow a kiss at the camera or Lowry might have fucking fainted. I'm not a licensed psychotherapist but when you think the people on TV are addressing you personally and directly it's often a sign of incipient dementia.
I confess to being immune to Palin's contrived charms. Everything about her strikes me as phony--she possesses about as much depth as aluminum siding.
Apparently Kaus had to wipe the drool from his chin as well. I'm not reading it, not, not, not, but LG&M has the link. And Paul Campos says:
As an openly heterosexual male, this sort of thing makes me want to apologize on behalf of my entire gender and orientation. I suspect that that the idea of being consciously sexually attracted to an authority figure is such a mind-blowing experience for these fellows that they just can't handle it. It was bad enough when they were drooling over Commander Codpiece.
One of my colleagues claims to have seen some sort of richocheting sparkly effects such as Lowry claims, though she has a different interpretation of it. "Every time Palin lies, an angel dies," she says.
Reality check on the sparkliness of Palin's performance? The Politico dourly comments:
[S]he got out alive, though there were white-knuckle moments along the way: questions that were answered with painfully obvious talking points that betrayed scant knowledge of the issue at hand and sometimes little relevance to the question that had been asked....
To the contrary, it is hard to count any objective measures by which Biden did not clearly win the encounter. She looked like she was trying to get people to take her seriously. He looked like he was running for vice president. His answers were more responsive to the questions, far more detailed and less rhetorical.
On at least 10 occasions, Palin gave answers that were nonspecific, completely generic, pivoted away from the question at hand, or simply ignored it: on global warming, an Iraq exit strategy, Iran and Pakistan, Iranian diplomacy, Israel-Palestine (and a follow-up), the nuclear trigger, interventionism, Cheney's vice presidency and her own greatest weakness.
Yeah. That's what I saw too.
Final word? TBogg:
I can't speak for (or like) the folks in Flyoverstan but, as a West Coast Islamoelitist, I'm not particularly charmed by "you betcha's" "doggone it's" and the other "jes folks" expressions that dazzle people like David Broder when they go out on their Pulse of the Nation/Touch A Hillbilly walking tours. You say banana, I say canned corn.
And while Sarah Palin's Momapalooza may continue to draw some crowds, she's the David Blaine of middle class banality, last nights milk and cookies talk with America doesn't look like a game changer and she's not going to have the warm glow of Dick Cheney's satanic foundry to keep her toasty when a chill wind comes roaring down from the north.
PS. Though at times it was clear she was reading something, she couldn't have been reading from a script---Marc Ambinder says they weren't allowed any prepared materials. I'm guessing she was busy writing down every talking point she could recall whenever Biden was on---hence the off-topicness of some of her replies. While relieved she can read and write, I was certain I saw her lips moving....could she have been whispering subliminal blandishments to beguile the dude demographic?
RECENT POSTINGS
Curious Objects Found Along the Campaign Trail
The Daily Show: "Clusterf***k to the Poor House" Part 2
Reflections on the Debate: Gosh darn it, that Sarah Palin is Just as Bright as a Button!
I thought she was playing up to SNL. SNL is really on fire now with her and Tina Fey. I know a lot of people on the right, middle and left, that thinks the Tina Fey sketch, is just plan funny, its comedy. A lot of people say she should go on SNL and be part of the joke as many politicians have before. I think she has, but she is making SNL come to her playground. Watch.
Posted by: TheBad | October 04, 2008 at 09:12 AM