The unassimilable strangeness of the Palin phenomenon

Four days ago, I wrote an entry entitled, “The shrieky-voiced, big-haired presidential nominee?”

Then a day or two later, I came upon the video of Palin’s Sept 16 speech at the National Quartet Convention, a religous group.

I’m not going to talk about the content of this speech, once it gets going, which is, more or less, Palin’s belief in God, mixed with the usual anecdotes about herself that she’s told a hundred times. I’m just talking about the way she speaks. The woman doesn’t speak. She screeches. She screeches non-stop. That’s all she does, without relief. That a human being could talk like this—and that anybody, let alone an audience of thousands, could stand listening to it—leaves you dumbfounded, literally slack-jawed.

And this could be a presidential nominee? A president? It’s too strange.

I guess I am the anti-Terence. Many things human are alien to me.

- end of initial entry -

Hannon writes:

That video is simply unbearable to watch. I hope the special ops people, wherever they have to interrogate enemy detainees, play this for hours on end. Real loud.

Paul K. writes:

You wrote, “The woman doesn’t speak. She screeches. She screeches non-stop.” What is odd is that five minutes into the video, Palin jokes about her singing voice, which, if it is even worse than her speaking voice, I shudder to imagine.

She said:

The other day I’m singing at home, in Wasilla, top of my lungs, Todd starts kinda backing up, backing out the door, and I notice he keeps doing it every time I’m singing, I say, “Todd, why are you going outside when I start singing? Don’t you like my singing?”

And he says, “Oh yeah, I like your singing, I just want to make sure the neighbors don’t think I’m hurtin’ you.”

So I don’t usually subject my loved ones to my singing voice.

What makes this situation odd is that I’m convinced that the aspects of Sarah Palin that set my teeth on edge are exactly the ones that most endear her to her fans: her cornball “Hee-Haw” manner, her garbled use of the language, and her emotional, personalized approach to everything. I wish I could like her, I really do. I admire her courage and her energy, and of course she is very attractive, but overall I find it embarrassing and alarming that she could have a leadership role in the conservative movement. When Christine O’Donnell says that this November “the grown-ups are taking away the keys,” I don’t picture Palin at the wheel.

September 20

Ted Belman of Israpundit writes:

I find absolutely nothing wrong in the way she speaks or her voice.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 19, 2010 07:52 PM | Send