The Wink
For the record, I hate when male politicians wink too. Someone in the Senate–it might even be Joe Biden (though he certainly didn’t do it last night), or maybe Chuck Schumer–does it, and it infuriates me that a politician would diminish his work by incorporating such smarmy body language into his shtick.
But it especially pisses me off that Palin did it.
It may not be fair, but as one of the trailblazers for women in politics, all women will be judged by the manner with which Palin approaches her campaign. And it is equally unfair, but a wink from a woman means something totally different than a wink from a man. From a woman, a wink is flirtatious. At best. To these commenters over at Reddit, it was far more than that.
I bet she gives awesome head.
She wants to sleep with me!
I believe that wink was aimed at myself. Which is why I immediately proceeded to masturbate.
Yes, it is disgusting that these slobs immediately made this sexual–but they were simply projecting a common connotation onto Palin’s gesture. Whether she intended that sexual connotation or not, she used a gesture that–particularly coming from women–has that connotation.
And so, from being a trailblazer that finally brought the Republican party to the place the Democrats were at in the mid-eighties, Sarah Palin has demeaned that trailblazer role, mobilizing all the tired notions about trampy women who will use sex to get power.
How dare you, Sarah Palin, take the responsibility you’ve been given and use it to cheapen the work that all female politicians do.
Update: Rich Lowry was definitely among those who was thinking of blow jobs and masturbation "starbursts."
A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It’s one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O’Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.
I thought she kept winking because her bangs are too long and they get into her eyes.
Bleeeerrrggghh! That’s all she and Johnny have left.
Of course, the rightwingnuts will call US sexist for calling her out for this. “She’s just bein’ friendly!”
Count me among the slobs. The way I put it was:
She’s a cross between a fucking infomercial, a high school pep rally and an ad for sex talk.
I tried to succinctly put into words how she makes me feel, and this is what I’d say: “How could any self-respecting person want to be talked to this way?”.
Particularly, how could any self-respecting man want this? Middle-aged ones who have schoolteacher fetishes, who want to be spanked with rulers, or put in dog collars and pissed on. That’s what I’d say to any man who liked her verbal chastisement. And women? Did you see the rape kit commericial immediately following the debate? Devastating. I’m surprised our corporate overlords allowed it on tv.
You are in good company. My local paper says Palin won the debate. Here’s a quote from W. Wesley McDonald, Elizabethtown College professor and political pundit,
“She’s got great stage presence the way she looks directly into the camera and purses her lips. That connects with people.”
Ha, ha,ha, stop it, no more, I can’t take it. This conservative pundit at a religious school likes the way Palin pursed her lips.
To purse: To gather or contract (the lips) into wrinkles or folds; pucker.
I sorta enjoyed the debate last night. It was a friend’s birthday and several of us were seated at a bar, with Winky on one wall and the Cubs-Dodgers game on the other.
The best part was … the sound was off. We had the subtitles running, and that made her inanity even more evident. The poor transcriber had a hard time keeping up with the canned logorrhea bursting forth.
As we sat, having burgers and beers, I mentioned to one friend that “she’s the woman women love to hate” because she’s flirting with your man. This friend first disagreed, and then she really took a good look and realized I was right.
Meanwhile, that friend’s husband was making a great impression of a frat boy, totally blown away by her hotness and flirting. Didn’t want to take his eyes off Palin, which made his wife annoyed.
Me – I’ll wait for Larry Flynt’s take on her candidacy to come out.
But, EW, you are 1000 percent right about her – she is the ultimate product of the Republicans’ anti-woman backlash. It’s been building since the 70s – when she was in second grade! – and is a grotesque insult to everything.
That said – the wench could sell iceboxes to Eskimos with that wink.
I think you nailed it, Marcy.
Palin’s mannerisms and folksy comments were programmed, encouraged by her McCain handlers. Does anyone think she went through two weeks of practice without doing those things and then just did them spontaneously last night? If she had done that once in practice, and they didn’t want it to happen, her eye lids would have been bolted open last night and we wouldn’t have heard a single dawgonit.
They wanted her to do this, repeatedly, lay it on thick, so she did.
So the question is: what did the McCain handlers seek to accomplish by having her wink, flirt, aw shucks in front of 50 million viewers when answering questions about serious national issues in a nationally televised debate for the Vice Presidency of the US? It obviously had nothing to do with competence or how they’ll lead the country.
Last night was possibly the McCain campaigns most cynical attempt at dumbing down America, the culmination of the belief that with sufficient distractions — this time in the form of a flirtatious high school cheerleader — you can get voters to forget there’s any connection between the abysmal state of the country and the mental derangement and intellectual incoherence of the Party that brought us to this point.
McCain’s campaign’s new motto is: Let them eat eye candy . . . and masterbate in front of their screens while the country goes down the tubes and they steal yet another election.
Damn you’re right:
I am confident this effrontery did not go over well at all with the public. Palin was, frankly, insulting and offensive.
Uh, she winked when she acknowledged her father. For the record I think she talked gibberish conflating deregulation and oversight at every step in a nonsensical sing-song pitch. Traditional Republican rhetoric is tired and does not hold up in the near post-Bush world. So she has beauty contestant poise. So the f**k what?
I will have to watch the entire “debate” again, I had no idea she made so many references to her father…
I only saw one wink. There may have been others. I was cooking dinner.
Many winks, no feral nose scrunches.
Actually I did catch a feral nose scrunch. I don’t remember the context. It was unsettling. But not as much as her line “clear, hold, build” in reference to a possible surge in Afghanistan. What is “clear” again in this context?
The line I remember was “toxic mess on Main Street”, which was an unintended revelation.
I think someone at the Great Orange Satan actually made a screen shot jpg of “The Wink” … she is creepy
I posted this article by former General Janis Karpinski late in a thread last week, but this seems a good place to post it up front…
http://www.truthout.org:80/art…..-back-time
Palin is a cross between Monica Goodling and Lynndie England.
People, people, settle down. It’s not a big deal.
She was winking at me.
She wants me. Who can blame her?
Just a few notes on the quoted comments:
Chris Rock could do a much better job on approaching these comments and making pithy responses. Since I’m not him, please bear with me.
As to (A). When she wants to. That, then is defined in turn by what you have to give her, in advance, and what you can keep giving her. That is also defined by her own ambition. If it advances her ambitions, she deals. Her type is seen frequently in the districts of large cities frequented by the business class. Hers is not the strict pay-to-play setup, but the more subtle type which entails cozening, a little persuasion, and building illusion. She might like you, but she’s only going to come across with the goods after you pick up something at Tiffany’s (or similar high-end place) and have the continuing salary to make it worth her while. You’re a senior I-banker or similar, you’re in.
As to (B). See (A) – and note that there is a correspondence between your own attractiveness and wealth/capacity to advance her own ambitions. If you’re commenting on a blog, you don’t meet the cutoff.
As to (C). Accurate. And that’s all you’re ever going to get out of it, sucker. Hope you enjoyed it.
As one of her previous debate opponents has noted, in past debates, Palin has consistently come off as the less knolwedgeable and less informated candidate, but nonetheless she “won” them because people liked the way she talked.
If you view last night through the lens of clearly expressed, informed and thoughtful policy, Joe Biden had last night, I think, the most thorough “win” I’ve ever seen in a debate. (I think it’s the first time I’ve seen someone “win” clearly, rather than not be the obvious loser.)
But if you view it through that lens that her previous opponent mentioned, she did not do badly at all. The only obvious “ditz” moment that even low-information voters surely rolled their eyes at was the start of her nuclear weapons answer, and even that was not so bad. It wasn’t a train wreck and she did come off as likable.
I did the experiment where I turned off the sound and just watched. And there was a clear choice being offered, if you watched that way: a President (really; Biden looked just like he was the President you’ve seen in every movie), and a friendly-if-overcaffeinated soccer mom. The thing about our pathological political system is that it’s not obvious which of those two choices undecided Americans would prefer to vote for.
I think each of the two camps wanted to get precisely those positions coming out of the debate, so on those terms, Palin was effective.
For the record, at no point during the debate did it occur to me that all that winking meant that Sarah Palin wanted to sleep with me.
The joking about her winks is a form of derision. A lot of her behavior was outrageously inappropriate not just to the forum, but to the time we’re going through as a nation. I’m pretty confident neither Joe nor Jane Sixpack was favorably impressed by her positively lascivious pandering and contemptuous refusal to talk issues. I’m skeptical that teetotaling fundamentalists liked it, either.
Palin is probably a setback to women seeking higher office around the Country, I said it from day one.
Slightly O/T – Palin’s Fourth Branch Exchange in debate (I haven’t seen it covered anywhere – I bolded juicy bits for emphasis):
Everybody gets extra credit tonight.
Palin in a word: VAMP
The smile was the worst for me — that perpetual and unnatural and sometimes inappropriate smile just drove me wild, especially in the segue from Biden’s heartfelt moment about his kids, to which anyone but a robot would have responded with a few empathetic words and a glance at least. She didn’t even look at him, just began babbling ahead.
Regressive behaviour (either playing cute or reverting to cave-man bluster — and both sexes may do either, but we know how the averages play out) is sometimes so hard to resist that it may look natural. Adults who are learning a new language, eg, often find themselves smiling too much when they’re trying to talk to the teacher or a native speaker. That smile is a plea to be excused for being clumsy (’cause at least I’m cute, eh?), and the powerless will do it when they have to. I sure have.
But Palin is something else. That’s not submissive behaviour at all, although it’s highly manipulative. It doesn’t work on me — to me, she’s a robot, a pod person, but then I’m a woman … I get the aw-shucks message, except that for me (and I grew up in a culture not so different from hers), she is very faux-folksy and Biden is entirely believable on that very turf. She’s just artifice all the way, and I don’t understand why anyone responds to that.
I like this point about speaking in a foreign language, though it doesn’t pertain to her smiles and winks (did she slowly lick her glossy lips anywhere in there?), which were rehearsed. I know that when I do I can sometimes be graceless to the point of callousness.
She was speaking a foreign language when talking about facts and policies.
That moment was incredibly telling. She observed Biden having an authentic moment, took it in thinking “wow, that was good, I’ll have to use that to look authentic” and then went into her schtick. She’s using this whole campaign to improve her tennis game back home and roll it out again in the future.
Me too on that creepy smile. This morning at the gym I was watching the replays, and every time we saw her, it was that smile. It raises the apples of her cheeks to a painful height. I’m thinking its that pageant smile, the always on smile, not unlike the smile on the face of a television evangelist.
Another jarring locution: her repetition of the word “hungry”, as in Americans are “hungry for the oil to flow”. Talk about sexual.
A classic case of “equity” envy.
C’mon. She is performing exactly to her nature – a republican woman that hates other women.
You mean she is the Clarence Thomas of women?
mr. posaune’s idea:
a picture of “the wink” with the caption “would you buy a house from this woman?”
I’m a heterosexual WOMAN and even I thought Sarah Palin wanted to sleep with me.
On a completely different topic, I believe this debate was the first time (that I can recall anyway) that I learned a fact from one of the debaters. ‘Bosniaks’ is the appropriate term for the primary ethnic group in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I did not know that.
Apparently, it was also news to Cokie Roberts–and a bunch of wingnuts.
Yeah, but I can use ‘the google’ to confirm Biden’s word. I first assumed it was a gaffe, but then I reflected on the fact that Biden is famous for mastery of this sort of trivia and decided to check it out.
I sure appreciated the way that Biden drug McCain’s Maverick Myth through the mud.
joeedugan @ 59:
“He’s a maverick!”
“John McCain’s a maverick!”
“I’m a maverick, just like John McCain!”
“What can I say: we’re a pair of mavericks!”
“We’re a team of mavericks!”
“That’s just the kind of thing a maverick does!”
That’s why he picked me: ’cause I’m a maverick, too!”
AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
PLEASE,
KILL,
ME.
I can’t take any more of her.
A wink has another universal meaning: inside joke. The winker and the “winkee” are both “in on something” together.
Palin winked at least 4 times. Each time it referenced more than sexuality. It served to define the “us and them”
mentality that mutates truth into falsehood at will. At the wink of an eye, she was saying: don’t listen to him him…we know that is nonsense…
Incompetency outs itself with cheery overconfidance.
“Us and them”, like “us and our spouses”.
Drilling and Tapping….
My wife and I got a big chuckle out of this one in a Wayne and Garth sort of way [1:11:40 of NY Times recording]
“In those arenas John McCain has already tapped me and said “that’s where I want you, I want you to lead.” I said, “I can’t wait to get there and go to work with ya” [Smile].
Yes, yes, I had forgotten that. I had the same vibe. Hilarious!
Wonder how many times she said “tapping”?
“Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position.”
would that be similar to the “tapping” in the warrantless wiretapping program?
according to the cool interactive viewer at the NY Times, 5.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2…..ebate.html
Can you imagine if Hillary “winked” or used the same flirtatious language which was obvioulsy covering up Sarah’s inability to go deep and wide. “Oh Joe there you go again” you silly silly boy your so cute. Tee hee.
A debate between Hillary and Biden or Hillary and any man would be a debate of the intellect, issues and knowledge.
Sarah was stroking Joe Six Pack’s and many other mens reptilian brain stems.
This style may also appeal to women who use those same strategies in life. Or folks who like a leaders body of knowledge to remind them of their own understanding of the issues.
Remember when she said “Talabani”? What the hell was that about?
EW, I think you’ve made an excellent insightful post/point here!
The only thing I wish to add is that “credit” is due Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt for hitting their demographic mark spot on.
Both in VP candidate selection and in VP candidate performance.
What demographic is that you ask?
Why the Bruce Willis Republican. The one with a Demi Moore Feminist as his 2nd or 3rd time around wife.
The demographic where Pole-dancing is considered a “highly-valued and highly-sought-after” occupation because it pays so much more than Wal-Mart.
And they always go to church on Sunday afterwards, and they don’t take all their clothes off anyways.
No, this is exactly the demographic the McSame campaign strategists wanted.
Not “low-information” voters, but “no-information” voters.
Then should we be surprised by MsBull…winkle’s come-ons?
No, both because her choice as VP candidate as well as her public performances was meant to not leave a dry lap…ooops…eye in the minds of their targeted voter audience.
Repug Base Targeting – 101.
Yes it is true that Sarah winked. But the important thing is that she didn’t blink. In asking her to be tapped, she didn’t blink; there was no blinking in her readiness for drilling, there was only winking, which shows her resolve and decisive committment to John McCain, who also has readiness there. A blink shows hesitation, a wink is all about readiness and new energy.
Right: winkin’, no blinkin’.
Colbert’s middle session last night featured one of his specialties, the O’Reilly O’Rant, where he takes a snippet from a reality-based critique, warms it up with a blowtorch of reactionary memes, and then sends it down the Colbert Collider of unrestrained attack under the entire arsenal of dumbed-down culture war winger weaponry, to produce effect of it sucking everything along with it on its route towards the cliff’s edge of political Armageddon, and just before its launched into space, he performs, completely within his character’s contempt for social convention, instead of a segue, an abrupt volte face, producing the author of the critique as his guest-let.
The guest-let de soiree was a Harvard professor, noted lecturer and acclaimed expert on the works of 14th century pop playwright Bill Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt. Besides positing [in response to Colbert’s suggestion of the Scottish regicidal tool of Lady MacBeth’s ambitions offering an appropriate parallel for Senator McCain] that the central theme of Shakespeare’s works based on historical figures was to demonstrate the innate incapacity of military leaders for governance of civil society, Greenblatt raised Midsummer Night’s Dream star Bottom as the proper comparable to Governor Palin, for embodying the sort of heroically ignorant notion of being able to succeed at any job, regardless the at-least notional minimum qualifications to performing it.
Based on having seen a number of the video clips from their joint campaign tour, I in turn posit that it may well form part of the genius of McCain that sees her in much the same way.
The video in question can be found here:
(McCain appreciating Bottom)
“winking”, the new “sighing”?
Thanks Marcy. We late niters were all over the winkies. But aren’t you being a little harsh? They’re still working the winky kinks out of the laser beam of talking points technology. (wink wink)
Sarah’s flow chart
http://www.americablog.com/200…..chart.html
did anyone else notice that she was wearing a pin ABOVE the flag pin on her lapel?
this is not the kind of thing that i would normally care about, but given how the wingnuts raked obama over the coals for NOT having a flag pin at all (and then of course had nothing at all to say when he wore one at the debate and mccain didn’t), it seems relevant.
i’d give a lot to know what that upper pin is on palin’s lapel. someone mentioned it might be the israeli flag, but it looks too small for that.
in any case, it’s a big bad NONO for ANYthing to be placed above the US flag.
just sayin’….
Wonder how many times she has held the baby? She sure used the baby as a prop last night.
Maybe it’s a God pin.
or the Little Dipper asterism – Alaska First!
The Biden-Palin scuffle, Politico, So, which VP hopeful turned in a better debate performance Thursday night?
Joe Biden
85 %
Sarah Palin
13 %
It was a draw.
1 %
30,000 voters
Debate video neatly edited into segemnts:
http://dyn.politico.com/debate/media.cfm
Best line I have read so far about the debate last night. So when Palin meets V.P. Cheney we should assume that her first question or comment will be “Can I call ya Dick”?
I hope Tina Fey is browsing
You know, I was undecided until Sarah tipped the scaled by pursing her lips. Yup.
I won’t link to the NRO, but this is almost as bad as the reddit folks. Rich Lowry:
Is Rich Lowry, like, 14 years old? That’s pathetic.
But it appears that LabDancer’s explained it @48:
Palin’s got the kind of arsenal that scores direct hits on the Rich Lowry’s of the US population. Several women that I know have been fuming that their sons and spouses are claiming ‘Palin’s hot‘!
See scribe @4 for one example of this phenomenon.
But I think for MadDogs’ ‘no info’ voters, it may work.
For those like myself, it’s just more gas on the Palin fire.
With the sound off, she looked even more manipulative to me.
But it sounds like scribe probably had an ideal viewing venue: she looks ‘hot’ but she sounds… verrrrry Barbie.
FWIW, agree with Prof Foland @17 that Biden really, really smacked it out of the ballpark on several criteria. That had to be really tough to avoid the emotional toxicity she was flinging around and still keep focused and level headed. If that wasn’t a Political Trial By Fire for Joe Biden, then I don’t know what would be.
Neil @59:
Yup. Huge mistake for the Dems, and for responsible government.
Since Republican taking heads on network and cable tv (except FoxNews) don’t speak to Joe sixpack because Joe sixpack doesn’t watch political talk, why must the rest of us listen to how wonderfully Palin performed endlessly…
Whoever agreed to no follow-up questions ought to be shot.
I wonder how Tina Fey will riff on the wink. Maybe they’ll spoof the debate – have Tina wink in the direction of the camera and have “Gwen” react like she’s not sure why Tina is winking at her, and then do the same with Biden. Why not play on the misinterpretation of the wink. It’s hilarious and on target.
who plays biden?
Probably Darrell Hammond. He’s the resident impressionist but Hader is pretty good too.
yup. biden does it. i do it very, very rarely and every time i di i feel like a dope.
mccain does it too!
tee hee
mccain winking
I have decided the wink is not really a flirt it’s an “insiders” wink
“I know something, now you know it too”
Keith Olbermann called Lowry out on Friday’s show, even said, “if you want to sit there and masterbate . . . “
Didn’t know one could say that on teevee.
Critique the analysis, please.
Wasilla did not want to pay the cost for rape kits and so decided to bill the insurance company of the patient (crime victim) or the patient directly (crime victim) for the cost of the kit rather than pay it themselves as the state law required. Read on. You’ll see why I believe it.
New Mayor Palin Fires Police Chief, which is her right 1/30/97:
On March 6, 2000, Del Smith, the Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, testified in support of HB 270 (the bill outlawing the billing of rape kits) and the minutes noted:
Gov. Palin under fire for Rape Kit and Bridge to Nowhere by Former Gov Knowles (Wasilla hometown paper The Frontiersman says it’s TRUE.)
A former worker with VCCB notes via 9/22/08 email:
The debunking of this claim is true only if you accept that Wasilla police are in compliance with the law by billing an alleged rape victim’s health insurance or sending the victim the bill and having them seek reimbursement from the VCCB. It’s clear that the Wasilla police chief’s intention was to do so in violation of the law although no records of such billings could be produced. Palin’s hand picked police chief, in trying to avoid $5000 – $14000 per year in evidence collection expenses in rape investigations decided to try and have the expense paid by an entity other than the town, in violation of the statute.