Sarah Palin’s Christmas: More Is Less

Happy holid … er … scratch that. What I meant to write, Sarah Palin, was Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Phew! That was close. Sarah already got testy with the Obamas earlier this month because of their card that said “Happy Holidays.” She tweeted this in response:

"Merry Christ... er... scratch that. "We Are the Obamas and It's Some Random Holiday!”

I sure don’t want her to think that I am one of those Joe McScrooges waging a war on Christmas.

I wish I could take credit for the fabulous term Joe McScrooge, but Sarah Palin coined it in her 2013 book, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas. She wrote:

“This modern-day Scrooge—lets call him "Joe McScrooge" for short—threatens to destroy every last bit of Christmas cheer we have left.”

I have to say that I am impressed with Sarah for creating such a complex character in Joe McScrooge. On the one hand, this Joe McScrooge seems to be so stingy that he won’t even allow “lets” to have an apostrophe, even though it so desperately needs one. Yet, on the other hand, instead of calling him Scrooge, she calls him Joe McScrooge for short, even though Joe McScrooge has five more letters than Scrooge. In other words, Palin created a character who has the capacity to live either a miserly life or a generous life; he just has to choose. And what particularly intrigues me about Joe McScrooge is his decision to all of a sudden become Irish.

Merry Holidays, everyone!

Too Close for Comfort

My first quarter of teaching English Composition, I introduced the research essay by telling my students that they could write on any topic of their choosing. My second quarter, I introduced the research essay by telling my students that they could write on any topic of their choosing—except the Illuminati.

I wasn’t trying to be mean by banning my students from writing about the Illuminati, but basically half my students would have chosen it as a topic, and it’s a conspiracy theory about a secret society that controls the world. It’s pretty hard to find meaningful research on something that’s being kept a secret. I mean, I guess if my students went undercover and infiltrated the Illuminati, but I could barely get them to show up for class, so you know.

But my students’ obsession with the Illuminati conspiracy theory illustrates how the classroom is just a microcosm of society. Studies show that Americans, in general, are obsessed with conspiracy theories. Almost 25 percent of Americans believe that the moon landing was a conspiracy. Almost 50 percent believe that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy. And over 50 percent believe that the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy.

Regarding 9/11, some people believe that government officials had foreknowledge of the attacks. Some people believe that government officials orchestrated the attacks. And some even believe that shape-shifting extraterrestrials bent on world domination were responsible.

Considering that Americans largely embrace 9/11 conspiracy theories, based on her People magazine interview, Sarah Palin is lucky she escaped becoming the center of one. When asked what she was reading for fun, she said this:

“Do we consider The Looming Tower something just for fun? That's what I've been reading on the airplane. It's about 9/11. If I'm going to read something, for the most part, it's something beneficial.”

Doesn’t her answer kind of make it sound like she thought 9/11 was beneficial? At least at first glance? Of course, she wasn’t saying that 9/11 was beneficial. She was saying that informing herself about it was beneficial. But it just sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

Well, I thought it was hilarious, and I really wanted to include it in my book, but, alas, there’s nothing technically wrong with it. Maybe if I had a chapter called "Too Close for Comfort: The Minimum Number of Words That Should Exist Between '9/11' and an Adjective with a Positive Connotation." Or "Call Me Superstitious: Books I Would Never Read on an Airplane."

Make "American" Great Again

Trump’s election has caused me to ask myself some important questions. Did I grossly overestimate my country’s progress on racial and gender issues?  Is the environment doomed? Have I been approaching the letter of recommendation incorrectly this whole time?

As a college English instructor, I am often asked by students to write letters of recommendation, and I have always assumed that the most effective way to endorse my students’ skills is through cogent thoughts expressed in grammatically correct sentences that transition smoothly from one thought to the next. But, as many of us recall, in the beginning of the election, Sarah Palin endorsed Trump in a rambling, incoherent, grammatically questionable speech, and, as we all know, Trump—a fellow rambling, often incoherent, grammatically questionable communicator— won. So speaking of letters of recommendation, I might need to ask someone to write one for me because my job as an English teacher depends on the belief that proper grammar and strong language skills are necessary for success.

Sarah Palin—the former governor of Alaska, the 2008 vice presidential candidate, and author (well, you know, kind of) of the best selling book Going Rogue: An American Life—has certainly experienced success, yet she utters “sentences” that can be as treacherous as an Alaskan winter. In fact, her words are often a bridge to nowhere. As Stephen Colbert noted, in order to communicate like her, we would have to tase the part of our brains that understand sentence structure. So I can’t help but worry about the future of the English language—or “American” as Sarah Palin calls it.

But I am not ready to kowtow and pussyfoot and bend over and say, “Thank you, enemy.” In other words, I refuse to give up on the future of the English language. So, the pen being mightier than the sword, I wrote a book that comes out in March 2017--Sarah Palin’s Expert Guide to Good Grammar: What You Can Learn from Someone Who Doesn’t Know Right from Write. Here's what it looks like!

It uses Palin’s rogue approach to the English language against her by basing its lessons on excerpts from her autobiography, speeches, debates, Facebook posts, emails and interviews.  

As you can imagine, I accumulated a ton of material, and unfortunately all of it didn’t make it into the book, and I don't want it to go to waste--so I’m going to share it here with you.

Get out those tasers!