Posted on 07/21/2010 8:28:27 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Washington Post's sweeping investigation into what it characterized as the inefficiencies of the country's intelligence agencies came out Monday, both in print and on the paper's Web site.
But, at least for the better part of the day, the most read story on the paper's Web site dizzily revolved around another kind of intelligence: Sarah Palin's.
"Palin Invents Word 'Refudiate,' Compares Herself to Shakespeare," read the headline. And it was entirely true, if not a little dramatic. Palin did say the nonexistent word "refudiate," and she also regurgitated it in a Twitter note she posted. She later shrugged off her faux pas by explaining that the Bard invented words, too.
Whether or not this is national news is for readers to decide. But the liberal blogosphere certainly seemed to think it was. Slate, Gawker and CBSNews.com were just a few of the media outlets that put Palin's gaffe center stage; MSNBC had a field day, suggesting that her malapropism was definitive proof that she's not cut out to lead.
And why wouldn't they? Palin's been a force for some time now, and making fun of her word choices, the way she talks, and what they think is an unforgivable lack of polish is much easier than going after her actual message, which is fairly complex and carries considerable weight among her base and even independents.
But as much fun as her detractors are having over "refudiategate," what is it really evidence of when it comes to her political fluency and leadership abilities?
If the liberal media are suggesting we need to elect linguists who never make such silly mistakes, well then they have some explaining to do. Vice President Biden could barely pronounce the President's name for a few months and had difficulty counting the number of letters in the word "jobs" (which he said was a three-letter word).
President Obama - perfectly polished by Palin standards - had trouble spelling "Syracuse" in his NCAA bracket, thinks Twitter is plural and repeatedly mispronounced the word "corpsman" to make it sound like something out of a zombie movie. He has said "inefficiencies" when he meant "efficiencies."
But these gaffes are minor, trivial even, and as much as right-wing bloggers tried to make hay over them, they really don't say much about Biden's or Obama's qualifications to lead the country - which, to me anyway, are questionable for reasons having nothing to do with pronunciation. And the liberal media rightly give these two a pass, laughing off Biden's revolving door of blunders as Joe being Joe, and dismissing the great orator Obama's as the momentary miscalculations of an overworked genius.
But when it comes to Palin, as was the case with George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle, her slip of the tongue becomes all-defining for the left. Mispronouncing or misspelling a word, speaking with an accent that a more learned person would have dropped at Harvard, and using colloquialisms that are authentic (gasp!) instead of mere political fabrications make her a hick unsuitable for public office.
History disagrees. Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson, for example, were famously terrible spellers. So were some of the country's most beloved novelists, like Herman Melville or F. Scott Fitzgerald, both of whom could have benefited from the luxury of spell-check. And yes, even Shakespeare had trouble with consistency. He would use three different spellings of the same word in a single text.
It's also worth pointing out that our information-era immediacy makes discovering mistakes that much easier. Had Abraham Lincoln been on Twitter, I'm sure we'd be correcting his spelling, too.
This sort of scrutiny seems silly to anyone who's met a mad scientist that could barely utter a coherent sentence. Or a wildly successful CEO who couldn't type. Or a vice president who didn't know when the television was invented.
I'll admit that, as a writer and the daughter of an English teacher, words are important to me. I even broke up with a guy once who wrote in an e-mail that he "had the flew." No one is arguing for ignorance, but let's not make a mountain out of a proverbial molehill. Should we judge our political leaders on whether they know what the meaning of "is is" or should we judge them on their leadership, their know-how, their values and their vision?
Let he who is without syntax cast the first stone. As political analyst Larry Sabato forgivingly tweeted, "Not to worry, Sarah. We've all said things we'd like to refudiate."
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secupp@redsecupp.com
leaders with word trouble, I’ll say!
Take the case w/potus Ike in 1961, and then last night on GB when he spoke of Ike and his famous speech—beck didn’t pick up on that missing word either...
... and Obie is the Last King of Scotland...
All English words were invented by someone.
Liberals invent words all the time. They tack a “gate” on the end of something a Republican has done and transform it into a scandal. But I guess that’s OK.
There’s only one King of Kenya, and he’s also King of America.
I like Sarah’s word “refudiate”-—I might like it even more if I searched the exact context of the sentence it came from and found that it was a perfect mix of refute and repudiate that was needed to make her point.
They all vastly misunderestimate her.
They all vastly misunderestimate her.
Refudiate has been used > 30 years - see article at C4P
http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2010/07/refudiate-new-word-in-1980.html
Quick-—can anyone tell me one word Samuel Taylor Coleridge invented way back about 200 years ago in Biographia Literaria?
I only skimmed the article, but I remember when Obama said something would “wreck havoc” instead of “wreak havoc.”
Left to their own, Barry and Michelle, with four Ivy League degrees between them, are more grammatically challenged than Palin. (And yes, that’s saying something.)
There's just no point in pretending this media is comprised of journalists anymore. This media is comprised of propagandists, and is as dangerous as any enemy our Country has.
AT least Sarah doesn’t need a teleprompter to tell her what to say and when...
Surely she must have meant overgolfed genus.
‘’’Refudiategate’’’
HIL-LAR-EEE-US!!!!!!!
HAr dee Har HAr... If only she had said something equally stupid like “Marine Corpse” they could have had ANOTHER WHOLE DAY of this story
No worse than the frequent use of the non-existent word “irregardless”.
They are all to laxadaisical to practice real journalism.
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