Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla - from the NY Times

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The New York Times has eclipsed The Los Angeles Times as my must-read newspaper of the day, in good part because of the guest columnists they pick up.

A few days ago, they had a great piece by Dick Cavett, (the former talk show host), about the mangled syntax of former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin

This link will take you to the full original posting:

Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla

But here are some excerpts:
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"Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn’t ailing. Three out of these five implements — answering machine, fax machine, printer, phone and electric can-opener — all dropped dead on me in the past few days

Now something has gone wrong with all three television sets. They will only get Sarah Palin."

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"What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”"

"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)


Dick Cavett