Saturday, October 03, 2009

TBogg: He shoots, he scores! Best Palin descriptor ever.

Still reading the Ancient City. Plus there are some key football games today including my California Golden Bears playing against USC with a lot riding on the outcome. Not only will the loser be locked out of the Rose Bowl hunt, if it is Cal we will be lucky to get into a second tier Bowl. (Update: my Bears stunk the place out. You can't win the Pac 10 without a top quality quarterback, and so far this guy is showing me nothing here. And crap what is up with Stanford? They were not remotely projected to be this good.)

So as filler I give you TBogg, who is in his own description a 'Somewhat accomplished blogger' now based in the FireDogLake empire. His latest snark is on Palin's new auto-biography 'Going Rogue, an American Life' and in doing so coined an instant classic term. With no further ado:

That's not writing, thats someone else typing
Let's not kid ourselves. Anyone with the bare minimum requirement of one honest bone in their body knows that Snowbilly Virginia Woolfkiller did not spend the past four months holed up in an igloo of her own furiously typing up her memoirs. Sarah provided Christian scrivener Lynn Vincent with tapes and some face time while she was visiting here in San Diego, between taking the kids (Musk, Camaro, Velour, and Baby Brushetta) to Legoland and the outlet malls, and, poof! magic!, a book was born.

But just like those facebook postings and the speech in Hong Kong, Sarah really wants us to believe that she did it all by her own bad moose-slaying self, and so Lynn Vincent gets relegated to the liner notes so as not to clutter up the view/Rich Lowry toss-off target:No "..with Lynn Vincent" or "...as told to Lynn Vincent".

Just like the Bible: God wrote it.

So: Sarah Pain, accomplished author.
I don't expect her fans to get the reference but I think Virginia Woolfkiller captures the essense of Sarah the Writer perfectly.

12 comments:

sammy said...

Sort of like 0bama?

"Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html

"Evidence Mounts: Ayers Co-Wrote Dreams

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/evidence_mounts_ayers_cowrote.html

Bruce Webb said...

My first reply went into e-mail oblivian, Blogger not allowing e-mail comment replies.

Taking the second article first. One I didn't take the lit crit very seriously, you would get the same effect by two authors reading the same corpus of writing. Nor is the argument from mixed metaphors convincing, that the literary quality of a policy piece varies from that of a memoir is not surprising, they are two different genres. Plus even if you grant the claims there is a substantial difference between an editor and a ghost writer.

Now the line can blur, I once helped a freshman girl for whom English was a second language improve her essay so much that her TA accused her of plagiarizing when in fact I was just showing her what was English and what was not. But at a minimum she was there as each sentence was recrafted. But even at that the assertion that Bill Ayers participated at anything like this level is based on nothing other than innuendo, guilt by association, and shoddy lit crit.

Both pieces are marred by the flaw that asserts you should judge writing skills based on published sources rather than the total writing corpus. Between 1974 and 1993 I had 10 years of experience writing essays of varying lengths submitted to, critiqued, and ultimately graded by people who in some cases were world authorities. Peter Sawyer, a top level (if controversial) Viking Scholar as a Visiting Professor at Berkeley gave my essay on ninth century Welsh Kings an A+. A paper I wrote on the Welsh medieval 'kenedl' or extended family got an initial savage critique by my instructor Dr. Rejhon, at which point I reworked it. The final product was much improved but ever sentence was mine. If you don't emerge from any writing/editing/revision process as a better writer you have been wasting your time.

But this is different than just turning the writing over to a ghostwriter.

Bruce Webb said...

Some of my point was lost.

I have never had any of my writing formally published. That does not mean it never existed or wasn't marked by improvements as the years went on. Obama's writing at Occidental was limited to two poems in a campus magazine, it also included term papers and essays which may well not exist any more (I have few if any UG writing assignments preserved). Similarly writing assignments in Law School are not limited to submittals to the Law Review.

The two articles together remind me of nothing more than Buchanans outright assertions that all of Sotomayors accomplishments and opinions should be discounted to zero because she was a person of color who got an assist entering Princeton. Or the lame assertions that Obama is helpless in the absense of a teleprompter when we have multiple instances of his working live in front of an unscripted audience without any mechanical backup.

Innuendo and crap lit crit are not proof of anything except a conviction that Obama is just a jumped up nigra.

sammy said...

Bruce,

You can say the same things about the blogger you linked to regarding Palin's book. They are just educated guesses about the extent to which either wrote their books. No?

Anyhoo, did you see where Sarah Palin's book in ranked on Amazon? Numero Uno. http://www.amazon.com/Going-Rogue-American-Sarah-Palin/dp/0061939897/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254613219&sr=8-1

Jack said...

Sammy, "Anyhoo, did you see where Sarah Palin's book in ranked on Amazon? Numero Uno"
And Elvis was the King, and Jerry Lewis is idolized in France, and hip hop/rap out sells all other musical genres. Have you looked at popular TV programming lately? "Reality" shows dominate the ratings in some what the same way that Palin's reality has its own following.

Bruce Webb said...

Examine the time frames Sammy, we are talking 4 months vs a couple of years , plus Sarah has had a public schedule a little more crowded than Obama's at the time plus a more complicate personal life. Ya think she really banged this out in her spare time? Plus she does in an incomplete way credit her ghost who also has a history of banging out these kind of celebrity puff pieces. The situations are not remotely comparable.

Plus anyone reading or seeing the bootleg video of her Hong Kong speech shows that she was clueless about the implications of delivering a speech that praised Japan to the skies whe trashing China and central planning in a semi-autonomos Hong Kong.

If the Chinese leadership took her seriously they would have been seriously offended, imagine Joe Biden delivering that same speech. But instead the atitude of all involved seemed to fall out on the following lines:

"The wonder of the dancing bear is not how well it dances, but that it dances at all"

Which would be a generous assessment of Sarah "I can see Russia from my front porch" Palin's foreign policy chops.

sammy said...

Bruce said: "The situations are not remotely comparable."

Let's see,

1) Bruce links to blogger who questions how much Sarah Palin wrote her book Blogger cites as evidence that 4 months is too short to write a book.

2) Sammy links to blogger that questions how much Barack Obama wrote his book. Blogger (who has a background in publishing) cites as evidence numerous similarities in the writings of Bill Ayers and Obamas purported book.

If this is not "remotely comparable," it's because the evidence against Obama is better.

Bruce Webb said...

Sammy tolerance doesn't equate to Beckism. Blogger is not a person. If I have to cut you out you out of the conversation I will. This is not a free speech zone.

You don't have to like it. That I choose to limit the conversation to people I condider arguing in good faith just means you don't get to participate in discussions about the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

Pick fights on your own blogger sites. You asked if you could have a neutral conversation, well you failed the test. Good bye, we have better things to do.

coberly said...

Well, damn,

i thought it was a pretty worthless subject, but Sammy made the one point that counts: Sarah Palin has a message that resonates with the American people.

And that scares the hell out of me.

Rdan said...

I stand in awe of your restraint at AB.

Anonymous said...

Nice post as for me. I'd like to read more about that theme. Thank you for giving that information.
Joan Stepsen
Cyprus girls

Anonymous said...

Great story as for me. I'd like to read a bit more about that matter.
Thanx for sharing that information.
Kat
independent Kiev escort