Carpool Mother W/ Tourette's Syndrome: "Buenos Aires or Bon Jour"?

Our Internet pal McGravy-tasse was kind enough to let the world see some of Sarah's stuff from a Canuck charity event. Here's the entire speech (if that's the word) for those who care.

Today, we get context from PuffHo & Mrs. David Frum, who is probably a secret lesbian or atheist, because she doesn't use her husband's name. (Or just embarrassed. Also, feminists, it's really your father's name, not yours. Screwed again, huh?)

The event was a charity fundraiser for inner-city Hamilton kids. My father and I attended as guests of the Toronto Sun newspaper, a sponsor of the event. Palin collected a fee somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000 (according to which press report you read) for a speech, book-signing, and VIP photo-session.

I think we all know charity begins at home. Not the homes of these inner-city kids (And stop calling young humans "kids." They are not goats, they are people!) but the home of the grifter.

We parked and joined a sea of guests dressed to the nines, as if for a wedding. Palin had issued elaborate advance rules: No jeans. No cameras or recording devices during the speech. (It was permitted to photograph her as she drifted through the lobby.) No questions from the media during the question and answer portion of the evening.

[...]

Before the program began, the dinner chair had warned the audience that nobody was to approach the dais uninvited. Again, I've never before attended a political dinner at which it was thought necessary to say such a thing out loud. (If anyone ever drunkenly worked up the courage to do so, a Reagan or Thatcher would be unfailingly gracious while a security guard swiftly intervened to escort the guest back to his or her seat.) And as the evening proceeded, a preselected few were escorted up by charity officials to say hello. But no one else dared to do so.

It might seem--may I say elitist?--for Palin to flinch from chatting or signing autographs. And it became apparent that this impulse wasn't, in the end, out of her desire to receive celebrity treatment a la Angelina Jolie or Alex Rodriguez (God forbid a random Joe Six Pack wearing jeans might actually approach her to ask for an autograph!): Clearly, Palin feared any unscripted or unmanaged engagement--and not for what the unscreened person might do or say, more out of her own insecurity about what she might do or say.

[...]

But as I was witnessing at this regional performance--far away from the ruthless Beltway critics, surrounded by friendly, polite Canadians paying to see her for goodness' sakes--she would not risk even a single random encounter. One of my tablemates was a reporter who had been awarded an "exclusive" interview with Palin before the dinner--part of the deal of the Sun's sponsorship of the event. Palin had given her 30 minutes, then just before the interview cut it back to 15, and then five minutes. Five minutes. Just enough time to have her photo taken and answer one question (which turned out to be the familiar, Are you running in 2012?). And even that question had to be submitted in advance.

[...]

Dinner speeches by politicians normally adhere to a few simple rules. The politician begins by thanking her hosts and any person in the room who might be insulted if overlooked. She follows with a couple of tested jokes. Then she speaks for approximately 20 minutes (this is key for a dinner-time speech, when the audience is tired), making no more than three key points. It's not rocket-science.

But Palin couldn't manage it. Her 45-minute speech rambled all over the place, from her challenges as a mother facing a teenage pregnancy and a Downs-syndrome baby to Todd's Iron Dog racing to the tea partiers to Alaska-Canada ties, wildlife, the Al-Can highway to God helping us take back this nation and stand up for small business, to common sense solutions, to Plato telling us to be nice to others, to gettin' our economy workin' again, to the importance of community, to ice hockey and the Olympics — in short, her familiar carpool-mother-with-Tourettes-syndrome.

It was hard to figure out whether she was working up some Christian motivational routine, or just kvetching about her poor treatment by the media, or trying to demonstrate her political cred by hitting the right "facts" about Canada-U.S. relations.

If you tried to parse it, you couldn't. There was not a single memorable line, not a single new political idea, not a single proffered solution beyond the cliché of "needing new solutions." And when the moderator "opened the floor to questions," guess what? Even those questions had to be written down by the tables and submitted in advance, to be selectively chosen by the moderator. Our table mischievously submitted, "Who is your favorite Canadian Prime Minister?" but for some reason it wasn't asked.

Let's hear it for freedom!! Freedom of Speech!! Rah rah rah!!!