WaPo On Palin Debate Style - She's The Popular Cute Girl Who You Like and Want To Like You

[Median Democrat]

A pattern is emerging. First, the NY Times article. Now, Wapo is describing Palin's debate style. I guess the prevailing wisdom is that she take advantage of the insecurities of the American people who will want to be in on the joke, as she makes snarky little jokes about Obama and Biden just like the popular mean girl way back in high school.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/style/features/2008/rhetoric/gallery.html

/snip

Wait, did you see that? There! She did it again: wrinkled up her nose in a way that either looks like a sneer or is adorably reminiscent of Samantha from "Bewitched." Depending on whom you talk to.

Next time you see a clip of the Republican vice presidential nominee, try this exercise. Mute your TV and just watch that face. How often do you see someone in political life so extravagantly expressive? The eyebrows go up, the shoulder leans in, the thumb jauntily gestures backward, the tongue actually fixes in the cheek. To mock Barack Obama, she licks her finger and holds it to the imaginary wind! And that smile, that nearly ever-present smile, which either indicates -- oh, dear, here we go again -- that she's sarcastic and dismissive or that she's letting you in on a very clever joke.

People love her so. People hate her so. At the heart of it is the delivery, a style of speaking we'll see again in tomorrow night's debate, a style that reaches past folksy and veers into the territory of -- to hell with it, cue the charges of sexism -- cute.

/snip

[rubberducky]

1. What she is doing to women is pitiful. To see a 44-year-old woman trying to make into the big league

on "cute". She makes me want to just SCREAM. I do not want a person who`s sole claim to fame is "cute" a hearbeat away from the presidency.

[fed_up_mother]

2. Yep, looks totally histrionic to me.

Histrionic Personality Disorder
Symptoms

A pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

is uncomfortable in situations in which he or she is not the center of attention
interaction with others is often characterized by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behavior
displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions
consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to self
has a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail
shows self-dramatization, theatricality, and exaggerated expression of emotion
is suggestible, i.e., easily influenced by others or circumstances
considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=545&cn=8

Considering she thinks she has a relationship with Russia and Canada.... LOL

[TwilightGardener]

4. Yup yup. Nailed it. I'm beginning to seriously hate Alaska for foisting

this gooniebird upon us.

[mwb970]

20. Hate McCain. Alaskans only foisted her upon themselves. /nt

[mrreowwr_kittty]

23. I think the average 19 year old has many of those characteristics.

Most of us outgrow them by the time we're in our mid-20s because we realize we won't have any friends if we don't. I do know some people in their 30s and 40s who still demonstrate those behaviors and it is embarrassing to watch. They are the number 1 reason I never want to work in sales again.

[madaboutharry]

3. I have known women just like this.

I have gone through university and grad school with them, I have worked with them, they are the other mothers at my children's schools, they have belonged to places of worship I have belonged to...they are ubiquitous, just like dust mites. And I have loathed them all. They are the mean girls in high school who have grown up to become mean women. They are back stabbers and gossips and users. And they have the "cutsie" routine down pat. I loathe Sarah Palin because of her retrograde politics, but I also have a visceral reaction to her because she reminds me of every woman I have always disliked.

[Colobo]

5. What a great post!

[Cosmocat]

14. She is not "cute" in any way shape or form ...

I do find her to be attractive in primal kind of way, cause she puts it out there like that, and I am, well, a guy.

But, I don't like her, and she certainly isn't "cute," that is just the right wing spin the MSM is trying to use to make something out of nothing.

I have been around a little, a little ... And, from moment one, she struck me as the woman that woman don't like. I NEVER bought the whole concept that the was going to bring Hillary voters in, or woman in mass.

She isn't cute, she is vacuous, she is mean, she is corse (lots of misspells there), she is, to be honest, completely backwoods.

[HuckleB]

6. I don't like her.

And I don't want her anywhere near me.

[slampoet]

7. She is the spoiled rich girl who was on the honor roll but got 400 on her SAT.....

...because she really is stupid but her teachers pass her anyway.




In one of my schools the popular girl was screwing the teacher and his son at the same time for grades.





For the record, i never liked the popular girls. I always saw they had no future.

[dkf]

8. SNL nailed it.

Tina Fey is so dead on and cuter than Palin even.

[Median Democrat]

9. So, When Cornered...

Palin looks increasingly adorable? If this is the case, we are in trouble on Thursday, because she may get cornered quite a bit.

[zulchzulu]

10. Uncle Joe better not pick on poor little Sarah

:puke:

[Median Democrat]

13. I Bet Sarah Palin Announces The Date Of Bristol's Wedding

Everyone's invited!

[Overseas]

11. That's why the right is trying to undermine Gwen Ifill

They want to generate even more sympathy for Sitcom Sarah.

[NashVegas]

12. .... Until You Get To Know Her

I used to work with someone like this. She was great fun until one night, I nicely asked her to stop doing something that was bothering me and she attributed the behavior to someone else. Not knowing any better, I called her ass on it. The next day, she looked for the first reason to go postal on me and then wrote me up to management, never mentioning her psychotic fit in front of other co-workers.

The upshot: as long as she's useful, Republican men will pretend to have never seen her with her mask off. The best thing we can hope for is to put her in front of people as much as possible.

[faithfulcitizen]

15. There are popular girls, and then there are popular mean bullies, she is the latter.

I considered myself one of those "popular girls", who played varsity sports, made good grades, and dated the hottest boys, and we ran the school, so to speak. But there's a strain of popular girls like those depicted in mean girls, who are bullies, insecure and need to pick on other to make themselves feel better. That's Sarah Palin. And I did not know anyone who wanted to be "her" friend, just those that did not want to be her target. Big difference.

[Median Democrat]

18. True, I Expect Her Every Sentence To Be A Noun, Verb, Ayers/Wright

I hope that Joe Biden can turn every personal attack Palin makes into example of Republicans not caring about the economy or people, and compare such attacks with the Keating 5, which is directly relevant to the current situation.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

24. God I hope Biden has some lines about Palin's preachers to rebut with.

Go there, Joe. The witch doctor, the other crazy pastor who said that God would strike his hand at America, and oh god yes the Alaska Independence Party.

Go there, Joe.

[DefenseLawyer]

16. So she's Summer from Napoleon Dynamite?

Vote for Pedro!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

17. When I first saw her, I immediately thought she was attractive

Now, she looks very plain and very ordinary to me. She doesn't look cute or beautiful to me at all. It's funny how someone's behavior can affect how attractive they look to your eyes.

[VolcanoJen]

19. I hate to pick on wingnut women, but I'm gonna

The thing that kills me about Wingnut Women who are in love with Sarah is that, well, let's be honest, folks. These fruitcakes were never the popular girl in high school. They were the butt of all the mean girl jokes, and, well into mid-adulthood, they're still trying to curry the favor of popular mean girls like Sarah Palin.

It's pretty sad to watch. Ladies? Sarah Palin is never going to like you. Don't you get it???

Exhibit A: Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you Sarah's biggest fan, the inimitable K-Lo, Kathryn Jean Lopez, from America's Shittiest Website™, The Corner.


(via my favorite website, Sadly, No!)

And I rest my case.

[Median Democrat]

22. So, You Are Saying That She's Just Not That Into You...

I think Sarah Palin's good looks and snarkiness feed into that long lost feeling many folks have had about the popular mean girl in high school that they wanted to hang out with even while she made snarky remarks about others, AND we suspected that she was making snarky remarks about us.

Its kind of like the GOP. They really do nothing for everyday Americans, and voting for them is against our economic self-interest, but they are rich, profess to share our values, and say that they are just like us, even while they enact policies that detrimentally affect us.

http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/guide/just-not-that-into-you

/snip

The bottom line is that men are not complicated and there are no mixed messages. If he doesn't ask you out, call you soon after a date, or want to come inside with you after a date, then he's just not that into you.

This new catchphrase actually started on an episode of Sex and the City when Miranda (played by actress Cynthia Nixon) tells her friends that her latest crush ended their last date with two kisses at her door but declined an invitation inside. His reason: He said he had an early morning appointment. Reasonable, said her friends, but then the only male at the table said ... "He's just not that into you."

The Truth Shall Set You Free?

"Coming up with reasons that he might not have called that are not critical of you is a natural defense mechanism," says New York City psychoanalyst Gail Saltz, MD, author of Becoming Real: Defeating the Stories We Tell Ourselves That Hold Us Back.

Such defenses serve a positive and a negative function, she says. "They can keep us from being overwhelmed by negative emotions, but if you are always in denial and your head is in the sand, that's not useful either because it keeps you holding onto a relationship where there is none," she tells WebMD.

"Hearing the words 'he's not that into you' are painful because it's like 'what's wrong with me?'" she says. But, Saltz notes, it's not always that simple. "Sometimes there is something going on that is not about you," she says. "The possibilities are endless and this book is popular because usually we don't like to talk about the possibility that you are not the one."

/snip

<>

[jillan]

21. Cute is not one of my personal qualifications for what I want in a President, or VP.

But then again, it doesn't hurt one bit that



is going to be the next vp.

[anneboleyn]

25. She's no Blair Waldorf!!! But yeah, I can see this argument -- she makes fun of people

then says that what she says was misinterpreted, like when she made the joke about hearing Biden's speeches since the second grade.

[barack the house]

26. The thing heree is Biden is no less lacking in charm so it will be a contest of charm but Biden>

must also use charm with content.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

27. She's "Summer Wheatly" from Napolean Dynamite.

She's "popular" sure, but everybody really wants to see the goofy, awkward guy kick her ass.