House of Eratosthenes

There’s a little bit of a thing going on with the lefty bloggers noticing some scribbling on Sarah Palin’s left hand. Actually it’s more than a thing. It has bounced way up to the tippy-top of the scrolling Memeorandum page. So for today, at least, it is a really big deal.

I’m trying really hard to figure out why certain left-wing blogs are treating this picture of Sarah Palin reading notes off her hand as some kind of major coup. The notes she had written are “Energy,” “[illegible],” Taxes,” and “Lift America’s spirits.” That’s some cheat sheet.

I get that it’s a sort of “turnabout is fair play” from the set that must be very annoyed by now at all the prompter jokes. But it misses the point of why the prompter jokes have caught on. A prompter feeds your remarks to you word for word. The idea that you would need such a device to talk to a room full of sixth graders or a meeting of your own staff is funny.
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UPDATE II: A reader writes:

Hi Mr. Spruiell,

I think the “illegible” part you referred to in your post, as best I can tell, originally said “Corpsman.”

Ha!

Yeah, that last is a reference to this. That’s kind of a real big deal at the moment too. At least, if you are a corpsman, or if you know a corpsman…hard to see how it can be a bigger deal.

I could maybe be sold on the point that scribbling notes on your palm comes off as being a little…rustic…but then again, I don’t have five children, plus a brand-new grandson and a dipshit for an almost-son-in-law, nor have I ever governed an entire state, let alone our nation’s largest.

Be that as it may, as Mr. Spruiell notes above, anyone who tries to make a scandal (or accept one) out of this is missing a point, and rather embarrassingly.

I’m thinking back on my own experiences — when do I not feel quite up to trusting my own memory? When is it that I feel this need to jot down a list on whatever is handy?

Ah…well, when I’m designing an application. Or writing the code. Or debugging someone else’s code. Or…going shopping. Or figuring out what homework my son should have done, when he says he’s done. Remembering to drop off my girlfriend’s shirts at the cleaners, or pick them up again.

Remembering to cover all the bases — in whatever.

See the pattern? Delivering on useful things that help people.

Now if these liberal nitwits want to take this ball and run with it, thereby further substantiating the idea that they’re managing lives chock full of omphaloskepsis — never doing a goddamn thing to help anyone else from one week to the next…and this is what leads to their obsessive-compulsive demands for wealth redistribution in our public policy to promulgate the charity they cannot be bothered to show in their own spheres of influence — they should go right on ahead.

All things considered, if I were a hardcore Bush-bashing pinko-commie hippy-dippy liberal, what with the “corpseman” thing going on and all, I’d just leave it alone. But hey. That’s just me.

Frankly, I love that she wrote notes on her hand.

It’s so … “mom”. 🙂
- philmon | 02/07/2010 @ 20:00
Yeah, kind of like having a pocketful of kids’ used snotrags, but not as gross.
- mkfreeberg | 02/07/2010 @ 20:12
World’s greatest speaker needs a teleprompter to deliver to a room full of sixth graders and the woman who has become the liberal’s synonym for unintelligent rattles off a 45 minute speech based on five words scrawled on her hand. Point (after point, after point) goes to Palin.

I’m willing to give “corpse-man” a pass. The evidence is overwhelming that this guy is uuuuhhhhhmmmm…. (pause to collect thoughts) simply the spokesmodel. I think he would do a fabulous job in Robert Gibbs’ role.

And I don’t think the no-jacket-open-collar look denigrates the office at all. I think it gives him a friendly, familiar look, like an uncle…or a big brother.
- Jason | 02/07/2010 @ 22:34
Aw, crap. I used the three letter sequence “n-i-g” in the thought above. That clinches it, I’m a racist.
- Jason | 02/07/2010 @ 22:34
I’ve got the “balls” to say it:

most guys don’t have the uterus that the Governor has.
.
- OregonGuy | 02/07/2010 @ 22:44
As Brietbart put it in an interview with Instapundit and Dr. Helen in Nashville this weekend, when they hit you with this kind of derision and ridicule, just walk right in to it. Keep moving forward, right at them. (Go ahead. Register at PJTV. It’s free, and it’s great stuff. Me, I’m contributing $5 a month because I love what they’re doing).

This derision is designed to stop you without actually addressing the content of what you’re saying. When you don’t stop, they freak out.

They scatter like cockroaches when their tried and true argument avoidance techniques fail. So don’t let them succeed.

As Stephen Spirell said at NRO in the link Morgan gave us:

“Unlike the guy who needs a three thousand dollar teleprompter to get out of bed in the morning, Palin speaks from concise notes like everybody else. And, like other busy moms, she sometimes writes notes on her hand.” The comeback is so obvious that, again, I really can’t figure out why Palin’s detractors are bringing this up at all.

Hit ’em with it like Mark McGwire on steroids would a hanging pitch.
- philmon | 02/08/2010 @ 09:46
Forget the notes, big effing whoop. She does not deserve to be nit picked in that petty manner.

Bring on the big guns, you know, those ideological ones we small government types like.

That TP speech was pure boilerplate Bush (although channelled through a much more attractive incarnation) and I hope to never see another conservative of his stripe in the executive office ever again. Palin is not an atypical republican politician by any measure. She is a populist figure who espouses the same crap we’re actively trying to expunge from the three main branches.

Why aren’t you guys championing Coburn or Inhofe or Ryan? Truly conservative republicans who actually have plans, ideas, answers and the balls to push their rightness straight into the democrats faces. These men deserve to have their praises and initiatives sung to the rafters and I don’t see any conservative bloggers getting behind their legislation, speeches or appearances.

I’m reluctantly beginning to believe that all you guys really care about is popularity contests and a beautiful face. She’s not the answer, she’s the sideshow and a lousy Bush one at that.
- Daphne | 02/08/2010 @ 16:27
Don’t believe it, Daphne, at least as far as I’m concerned.

I like the woman, and so does my wife. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like her for her looks. She’s a strong, courageous woman with some good principles that heavily overlap mine, and I admire that.

She’s not as conservative as we need … but I believe she’s definitely more conservative than Bush, and waaaaaaaaaay more conservative than what we’ve got.

I don’t think she’ll run for president. I don’t think she wants to. If she does it’ll be because she’s been goaded into it, and that wouldn’t necessarily be good. I do believe she has a good handle on what’s going on in the Tea Party movement, and if she DID run AND win she would govern far more to the right of Bush. If it’s a choice between her and “O”, her and Hillary, her and Kerry, her and … freakin’ name a Democrat right now, it’s her all the way. Is there somebody better? Probably. Will they step up? Who knows? You busy, Daphne?

I think she likes this role, and she’s good in it. Plus she’ll age a lot more slowly 🙂

All that being said, somebody, somebody willing to shoulder a heavy burden and lead needs to step up, and until someone else does … we have to take what we can get.

If you don’t think she’s sticking it right in the Democrats’ faces, I don’t know who you’re watching.

I’m not for a person. I’m for ideas. She’s the one most vocally espousing ideas closest to mine right now. If I’m right and she really doesn’t want to run, someone needs to step into the strong breeze she’s got going and put up their sails.

And whoever does win … we cannot stop being vigilant and vocal about our principles. No time to relax no matter what happens in November or two years from November.
- philmon | 02/08/2010 @ 21:16
We stick with the gentlemen, and the problem with that is they fight that way. Exactly the way the Union generals fought right before Lincoln got fed up with ’em and hired Grant.

One in every ten of them might give off enough of a “vibe” that he’ll “win” a debate. And then, of course, the alphabet soup networks will just declare the democrat the winner anyway. One out of a thousand might make a crack like Reagan’s “I refuse to exploit for political purposes the youth and inexperience of my opponent.”

But nobody with a penis and testicles is doing something like this. Game, set, match.

She beats the sunzabitches at their own game. Routinely. And has fun doing it. Now you find a stud who’s doing the same thing, you drop me a line cupcake.
- mkfreeberg | 02/08/2010 @ 22:14

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