Month: November 2010

I read an excerpt from a cover story on Sarah Palin that’s to appear in the New York Times Magazine, and was struck, once again, by how she communicates. It’s a kind of bumbling ramble through a maze of thoughts that appear to support an overall theme, but somehow just skip along the surface of meaning while sounding earnest.

So I coined a term for it, based on the word “allocution,” which means a formal address, especially one warning or advising with authority. “Palocution” means a formal address that seems to warn or advise with authority, but only confuses and annoys those who are not true Palin followers, to whom it sounds like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King rolled into one on a good day. Oh, and with a healthy dose of victimhood tossed in:

In the article, Palin admits she’s engaged in “internal deliberations” about making a White House bid in 2012. Palin says there aren’t meaningful policy differences among the field of GOP hopefuls “but that in fact there’s more to the presidency than that.” Said Palin: “I know that a hurdle I would have to cross, that some other potential candidates wouldn’t have to cross right out of the chute, is proving my record. That’s the most frustrating thing for me — the warped and perverted description of my record and what I’ve accomplished over the last two decades. It’s been much more perplexing to me than where the lamestream media has wanted to go about my personal life. And other candidates haven’t faced these criticisms the way I have … I’m on television nearly every single day with reporters … Now granted, that’s mainly through my job at Fox News, and I’m very proud to be associated with them, but I’m not avoiding anything or anybody. I’m on Facebook and Twitter. I’m out there. I want to talk about my record, though.”