To Refudiate or Not to Refudiate, That is the Pedestrian

Sarah Palin appears to be channeling one of my favorite standup comics from awhile ago.

Norm Crosby.

You know, the guy who made a living out of malapropisms?

Indeed, Norm Crosby was known as the "Master of Malaprop."

He’s the guy who used to build an entire comic standup routine by stringing together words, words found in the dictionary or not, it made no difference, in order to describe a situation.

He even made commercials stringing one malapropism next to another, but somehow, if you put some thought to it, you created order out of chaos.

Which was probably the whole purpose of letting Crosby do his routine, you had to think about what he was saying.

Or trying to say.

Getting us back to Sarah Palin. I doubt that she had the slightest intention of mangling her words because people already suspect that she is living on the bleeding edge of her ability to communicate. That she gave in at the end and compared herself to William Shakespeare, who is known to have made up some of his own words, is the ultimate in “self-servitude.”

Shakespeare gave us such words, so common in the English language now, as “bump” and “ding-dong.” He formed words from sounds. Sarah Palin formed a word that stands half way between refute and repudiate, but one that actually means neither.

The difference between Sarah Palin and William Shakespeare is this: Sarah Palin is a former politician with nothing of substance to say, and William Shakespeare is the most revered playwright in the English language.

My guess is that if Sarah Palin really puts her mind to it, she can come up with a word that sounds like the sound of the word. Here, for instance, is the word Sarah Palin could come up with that sounds like the act of deep, concentrated thought:

"                ."