Palin once more shows why she's an idiot.

[General Zod]

Define "bad". Do you mean morally wrong, unfunny joke or something different.

Take your pick.

Look, Eion claimed the joke was unfunny because the mechanism didn´t work, or at least that´s what i get from:

"... she couldn't even craft one that is factually accurate."

I´m saying that the thing that makes this a joke is precisely this inaccuracy.

Sounds to me like you're missing the point, which was basically pointing out that her whole joke was a strawman and she couldn't even find something real to lampoon.

[salm]

Perhaps Eion meant it differently but Serefina a couple of posts later certainly didn´t when she brought up the the bike/kerosene example.

Maybe you just need to read the thread again.

[General Zod]

Perhaps Eion meant it differently but Serefina a couple of posts later certainly didn´t when she brought up the the bike/kerosene example.

Maybe you just need to read the thread again.

It's still a-okay-ish as a joke you could tell to your friend, like that bar-joke. As a political joke, it aims at an actual issue without being too rude. But that doesn't change that it's just plain stupid - at the least it makes her seem dumb for not knowing that you don't feed babies with cow milk.

I'm thinking I'm not the one who needs to read this thread again.

[salm]

You quoting this sentance doesn´t appear to make any sense...

[General Zod]

You quoting this sentance doesn´t appear to make any sense...

Maybe you should try clarifying your previous post instead of being vague. Are you saying Serafina thought the joke was unfunny because the mechanism didn't work? Because that doesn't seem to be the case.

[salm]

I don´t know what´s supposed to be hard to understand about my position? My position is that the mechanism isn´t bad.
By now it should be a no brainer that i consider Eions and Serefinas posts to convey the opposite or else i would hardly have addressed them.

If they meant it differently they can speak up. Until then i see no point in you speculating about their posts.

[General Zod]

I don´t know what´s supposed to be hard to understand about my position? My position is that the mechanism isn´t bad.
By now it should be a no brainer that i consider Eions and Serefinas posts to convey the opposite or else i would hardly have addressed them.

If they meant it differently they can speak up. Until then i see no point in you speculating about their posts.

It seems to me that it's a no brainer they're not talking about the mechanism.

[eion]

Sorry it took so long to jump back in, night classes and all.

Salm, what I meant when I said that given the opportunity to crack a joke that Palin couldn't even craft one that represented the facts of the issue accurately I meant that lacking such an ability demonstrated another un-presidential quality of the half-term Governor. Presidents are expected to sum up complex issues in pithy, sometimes funny statements, but they're also expected to do so well.

"Death Tax" might be one example of such presidential hyperbole. It's supposed to be funny in the sense that Democrats are SO fond of taxing (How fond of taxing are they?) Democrats are so fond of taxation that they even make you pay a tax when you die!

Is such a statement a massive oversimplification of a complex economic issue regarding whether a state is motivated in discouraging the accumulation of money in large estates? You bet your ass, but it does get enough of the facts right to make for effective campaigning. As the saying goes, if you have to explain the joke: it isn't funny.

For instance, Ms. Palin cracks a joke at Ms. Obama's efforts to encourage breastfeeding because of the myriad health benefits to the child and mother instead of being an adult and congratulating those efforts, Caribou Barbie decides that to agree with THE ENEMY on even such a "puppies are cuddly" issue is unthinkable and belittles the efforts by cracking wise.

Palin's joke might be funny, but it isn't effective political rhetoric, which is self-evident in that rather than us talking about whether the first lady encouraging breastfeeding is a good idea, we're all debating whether Palin was making a joke, should she have made a joke, was the joke funny, etc. If you are running for office you want to talk about the issues not the process. It's another of her many un-presidential qualities that will make it unlikely that should she ever decide to actually run for President (I'll bet you $20 bucks right now that she won't be a candidate for 2012) she'd never win.

[salm]

Ok, thanks for clearing this up, Eion.

Are you sure, though, that this isn´t effective rhetoric?
If i understand correctly this whole brestfeeding thing is quite an issue in the USA and oppinons are split about it, at least about feeding in public. The opponents tend to be from the more conservative circles.
Now, currently the potential candidates are promoting themselves for the primaries so they have to look good mainly to people who are very conservative.

[Serafina]

Ok, thanks for clearing this up, Eion.

Are you sure, though, that this isn´t effective rhetoric?
If i understand correctly this whole brestfeeding thing is quite an issue in the USA and oppinons are split about it, at least about feeding in public. The opponents tend to be from the more conservative circles.
Now, currently the potential candidates are promoting themselves for the primaries so they have to look good mainly to people who are very conservative.

Well - effective rhetoric on whom?
I suspect that it will not work on women with children (and therefore their families) all that well, at least if they think about it for a second. Even if you read "milk" as "baby formula", then it's still stupid because breast feeding has a lot of benefits and is not just some replacement for baby formula poor people use or something.

Imagine the following line of thought: "What, does Palin think i only breast-fed my children because i could not afford baby formula?". Potentially quite upsetting, and enhanced by the fact that Palin makes a big deal out of her being a mother.

[salm]

I doubt the line of thought will go that far. The target audience will go: "luLz, Palin said that 0b4ma makes stuff expensive and our kids see teh b00bieZ, hurr, hurr, funnay!"
If somebody allready is more or less friendly with someone they are more likely to find an insensitive remark funny which might be considered offensive by others.

She´s marketing herself to people who think that pc is out of control.

[Serafina]

I doubt the line of thought will go that far. The target audience will go: "luLz, Palin said that 0b4ma makes stuff expensive and our kids see teh b00bieZ, hurr, hurr, funnay!"
If somebody allready is more or less friendly with someone they are more likely to find an insensitive remark funny which might be considered offensive by others.

She´s marketing herself to people who think that pc is out of control.

This isn't about political correctness. It can be interpretated as a genuine insult to mothers who breastfed their babies, because Palin links "breastfeeding=no money for milk", whatever milk means in her statement (it can only mean cow or formula, because you don't buy breastmilk)
It doesn't necessarily induce outrage, but "hey you dumb bitch, i'm breastfeeding because it's healthy for my baby, not due to any milk prices" seems like a pretty likely reaction to me.

Any by the way - if Palin (or anyone else) wants to complain that we put too much scrutiny on her statement - that's whats happening when you are president. If you can't handle it, don't run for president.


Okay, current possible interpretations of Palins statement:
-"Milk" refers to cow milk. In that case she is very dumb and knowns nothing about raising children, because you don't feed babies with cow milk.
-"Milk" refers to baby formula milk. In that case the price of cow milk has little impact on it.
-She is potentially linking breastfeeding to poverty
-She is potentially not recognizing the health benefits of breastfeeding over using baby formula.
-Her critizism of milk prices is probably accurate. However, it is unclear how much the Obama administration is responsible for it, and it ignores that there are other reasons to advocate breastfeeding.

Her joke MIGHT appeal to her target demographic, but if that is the case then only because they are a bunch of idiots anyway. The joke was not really clever: Attacking someones program for reasons that have nothing to do with that program and are not that persons fault is not really a smart move.

[salm]

You´re still overlooking the possibility that she intentionally created this false link. Without it there would be no joke.
Like said before i think that´s the only possible way to realistically interpret this.

If feels like we´re talking at cross purposes but i can´t figure out why.

[Hillary]

While I personally think the joke is pretty retarded but otherwise inoffensive, I think the article makes a good point:"...if she wants to sound presidential, then sticking to what really matters (as Palin puts it) without throwing in little cracks about a universally agreed-upon problem would be a lot less, in a word, distracting."

Ronald Reagan and George W might disagree with that statement; they were hardly known for avoiding wisecracks in their speeches. She's playing to her public; they'll lap this sort of stuff up. Going back to parallels with GW and RR, one of their big appeals for the electorate was that they were good ol' boys you could watch football and drink (non-alcocholic ) beer with. She is going for that sort of appeal and this type of thing fits right in. A normal person, a soccer mom, not bound by PC and someone you can have a joke with.

She is also, of course, the polar opposite of Obama in almost every way - on a superficial level at least.

[eion]

Ok, thanks for clearing this up, Eion.

Are you sure, though, that this isn´t effective rhetoric?
If i understand correctly this whole breastfeeding thing is quite an issue in the USA and opinions are split about it, at least about feeding in public. The opponents tend to be from the more conservative circles.

According to our friends at the CDC, it's lifetime as a political issue may be coming to an end. As you'll see, women like breastfeeding, and surprisingly enough, the wealthier they are they more likely they are to do it (in 1999-2006 74% of high-income mothers breastfed vs. 57% of low-income mothers).

So clearly the economics of this are fuzzy at best. You have two issues to deal with when it comes to opposition to breastfeeding: there's the puritanical crowed (ARGH, BOOBIES!) and the economic crowed (Martha, only poor people have to breastfeed). The latter crowd has been around for centuries and is the reason the wealthy hired wet-nurses, it was seen as undignified for a lady to breastfeed until quite recently. Now, that trend is reversing and mostly you see such an attitude amongst lower-income mothers who wish to emulate what they believe to be upper-income behavior due to trend-lag.

The BOOBIES! crowd is slowly dying away too. While we just recently had an attorney general who insisted on clothing a naked female statue, the acceptance of mother's breastfeeding in public is fairly broad. It is a legally protected activity in all 50 States & D.C. after all, and the federal law was passed in 1999 during a Republican majority.

Now, currently the potential candidates are promoting themselves for the primaries so they have to look good mainly to people who are very conservative.

Let's construct an average Republican primary voter. Now, while they might like attacks on Michelle (sounds French!) Obama, I'm not sure how well they'll respond to anti-breastfeeding rhetoric. It's unproductively divisive because as we've seen richer mother's tend to breastfeed more often. The issue isn't also likely to resonate with the poor because 1) the poor don't like being told they are poor and 2) if they dislike breastfeeding it is because they see it as a lower class activity and are resistant to it for aspirational reasons. The only group likely to respond to anti-breastfeeding rhetoric across the board based on the prevalence of breastfeeding are black voters, and there aren't too many of those voting in Republican primaries.

So what has Ms. Palin gained by attacking Michelle Obama and breastfeeding? She's shown dislike for something the first lady is encouraging, okay. Michelle Obama = bad, got it. Palin seems to have a hard-on for attacking Michelle Obama that I still fail to understand but suspect has something to do with her own sense of achievement vs. a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law. But it's come at the cost of looking lazy at best and stupid at worst. That is a perception that Ms. Palin will have to shed if anyone outside of the primaries is going to be willing to make a mark next to her name. She is seen as neither capable nor presidential by a wide margin of people.

But again, Sarah Palin doesn't want to be President. She couldn't even stand being governor of Alaska, arguably one of the easier states to administer, so what exactly makes you think she'd enjoy the 5AM to 11PM schedule most POTUS's maintain? It's hard work, and the last thing Sarah Palin enjoys is hard work.

So why does she tease us with thoughts of throwing her bad beehive in the race? Because it makes her money, the same way it makes Newt Gingrich money. You have to be seen as doing something other than flying around the country giving speeches for massive sums and writing books for there to be more speaking engagements and book deals in your future, and pretending to run for President is a good way to be seen as doing something. Hell, you even get invited to go on big news networks to promote your book for free under the guise of discussing your plans on running.

It's a put-on. It's a scam. She's not going to register as a candidate, she'd have to give up too much of the life she currently enjoys to do so.

[Serafina]

Good analysis, eion. I already pointed out some of the reasons why anti-breastfeeding-rhetoric, especially when linked to economic issues, isn't really going to be a vote-winner, but you did a much better job at it.