Refudiate?

I promise that this blog isn't going to be "all Sarah, all the time," but she's been so entertaining recently that I just can't stop posting about her. She was actually having a pretty good run there for a while, prior to last Wednesday. Her PAC had raised a respectable sum of money, her innocuous, if mostly substance-free, Mama Grizzly video was getting some positive reviews and serious political commentators were once again talking about her as a serious presidential candidate.

Then came Wednesday morning and the "As Wasilla Turns" (h/t Newsweek) announcement that Bristol and Levi are engaged. Based on that story and all the various follow-ons (Sarah's "holding her nose" press release, Levi's sister's blog post, the ex-boyfriend speaks, etc.,) I had begun writing a post about the Law of Unintended Consequences, in which I wondered if Sarah ever has any regrets about shining such a bright spotlight on her children. Here's the short version of that post:

It is possible to be a national-level politician and still maintain a zone of privacy around your children. Consider: John McCain has seven children, Nancy Pelosi has five and Joe Biden has three. Can you name them? Would you recognize any of them if they appeared on the cover of a tabloid? Hillary Clinton has one daughter and we all know what she looks like, but I think it's safe to say that Chelsea Clinton will never sell her story to Us Weekly. Sarah Palin and her family have taken a different path.

Before I could get that post all polished and published, "Refudiate-gate" happened and Sarah Palin's week went from bad to worse. The background is that earlier in the week, Palin had used the (non-existent) word "refudiate" in an interview with Sean Hannity. Some bloggers picked up on it and posted the YouTube clip but it didn't really go viral. Then yesterday she used the word again, this time in a tweet about what "peaceful Muslims" should do in response to the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. You can read what happened next, including some of the hilariously snarky response tweets, here and here. (Or go to twitter and type "#shakespalin" into the search box.) I like linguist Mark Liberman's take on it in the Language Log blog, i.e., isn't there anyone advising Palin on how to avoid this kind of thing?

So now it's a new week and there are bound to be more Adventures in Palinland to keep us all amused. Entertaining? Definitely. Presidential? Not so much.