Legal Commentary

Sarah Palin "falls apart, babbling nonsensical non-sentences that prompt nasty quips about whether the former Pentecostal is speaking in tongues."

Ha ha ha. I get it. What a hilarious idea for political humor! You pick a religion that the candidate has some past relationship to, then you pick some aspect of it that seems ridiculous to a cloddish nonbeliever, then you attribute that trait to the candidate.

Okay, thanks, Michelle! Come on everyone! Let's come up with some cool new wisecracks! Let's test out th is new comic device on Barack Obama.

What's the matter, Michelle? You don't think it would be very nice to use your comic device against him and against Muslims?

Oh, you say you didn't actually yourself ridicule Palin for seeming as if she's speaking in tongues like a Pentecostal, you said that her "non-sentences ... prompt nasty quips" abut whether she's speaking in tongues like a Pentecostal. So that wasn't you making that quip. You were just reporting the quips that come from out there somewhere. "Prompts nasty quips" gets those quips out at some distance from you. You didn't cite the conventional "some people" -- or "wags" -- but they are in there, implicitly. And you even chided them for their nastiness.

Got it. So, remember, when you use Cottle's comic device, decorously preface the religion mocking with the phrase "prompts nasty quips" so you don't get your hands dirty.

Good lord, "prompts nasty quips" is itself an awe-inspiring rhetorical device that should empower us to say all sorts of crude and politically incorrect things!

Do you approve, Michelle?

Full post as published by Althouse on October 02, 2008 (boomark / email).