intraordinaire 

code switching

Put simply, if Palin says “Barack Obama consorts with terrorists”, she is making the assertion that he supports acts of violence against American citizens and the media will refute this obviously false assertion. If, instead, Palin says he “pals around with terrorists”, she’s used code-switching to mask the seriousness of the charge, obfuscating her meaning enough to get away with making an assertion that inevitably calls for the imprisonment or even assassination of a political opponent.

This clever use of language only hides Palin’s meaning from members of the press.

Anil Dash, What Sarah Palin is saying

Anil Dash décrypte les intentions derrière le langage familier de Sarah Palin. Les passages sur le code switching sont particulièrement incisifs : la dangerosité de cette femme ne vient pas de ses opinions, mais de sa capacité à s’adresser directement à sa base électorale rurale blanche en passant sous le radar de la presse, qui semble ne s’intéresser qu’au langage soutenu…

désolé papa, je vote Obama

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

Christopher Buckley, Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama

Christopher Buckley, éditorialiste au très républicain National Review, et fils du fondateur du journal, a choisi de voter pour Barack Obama en novembre… et se fait virer pour ça trois jours plus tard.

But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

C’est bête, ces temps-ci j’avais tendance à dire à qui voulait l’entendre que nous avions des leçons à prendre des États Unis en matière d’ouverture politique…