Oldies

Roy Edroso on Palin's endorsement of Trump.

Steve M.—

Ever watch an aging Top 40 group run through a medley of decades-old chart-toppers? No song gets played to the end. The lead vocalist asks the audience to sing half the words. The band just has to go through the motions.

That's Palin. She knows her audience spends every waking moment watching Fox, listening to talk radio, or watching the latest Trump interview on Morning Joe -- so she doesn't have to finish any of her thoughts....

Here's the formula: Take half a dozen ten-minute Fox or talk radio segments. Boil each one down to the takeaway bullet point. String these multiple bullet points together. Now you've made one Sarah Palin sentence:

Tell me, is this conservative? GOP majorities handing over a blank check to fund Obamacare and Planned Parenthood and illegal immigration that competes for your jobs, and turning safety nets into hammocks, and all these new Democrat voters that are going to be coming on over border as we keep the borders open, and bequeathing our children millions in new debt, and refusing to fight back for our solvency, and our sovereignty, even though that’s why we elected them and sent them as a majority to DC.

So few words, so many grievances! In a way, it's artful. Except for the awful draftsmanship, it's compressed like a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, or a Bosch canvas.

Palin's audience doesn't need any of this explained. Palin's audience lives on these grievances, wallows in them, has them burned into memory via endless repetition in the right-wing media. The audience doesn't care if Palin plays any of the hits all the way through -- just play the chorus! just play that one riff!

In comments, Yastreblyansky adds—

Yes, I think that's exactly right, it's all affect. What she does isn't that different from Limbaugh, or Trump, or Rubio for that matter, it just looks funnier written down. I think it's important to note that you can't in fact coherently narrate the story of whatever the audience is so made about, because you can't really make it add up to a story, as has been the case with all these things since Whitewater. You just utter the words--BENGHAZI! Lead from behind! Free stuff! to make them shake with rage. And I hate to say it, but you know who else gave rambling, incoherent speeches full of dark accusations that didn't really make any logical sense.

Or as a Driftglass commenter, bluicebank, said last week of this footage—

Ten seconds in, and the Historical Memory kicks in: "We've seen this before, but it was in black-and-white. In another country."