Five Historical American Political Speeches… Sarah Palin-ized

Earlier in the week, I wrote about Sarah Palin’s insane “baptism via waterboarding” line from her address at the NRA’s “Stand And Fight” rally. Ever since she arrived on the scene in 2008, I’ve been trying to deconstruct her speechwriting style and in my waterboarding post, I think I came pretty damn close to figuring out how best to describe it:

[Palin’s] speeches could generously be described as having been dictated into the worst speech-to-text app via an iPhone that was accidentally dropped into a bowl of pudding, then translated into Korean using Google Translate, then translated back into English, then recited by marble-mouthed InfoWars goon Dan Bidoni back into the crappy speech-to-text app, and voilà! A Palin speech.

So for fun I decided to try it using a passage from a very famous political speech, dropping the speech-to-text steps for simplicity’s sake. I copied the most memorable section of President Kennedy’s inaugural address, clicked over to Google Translate, translated it from English to Korean, then I translated the Korean text back into English. And sure enough, a brilliant paragraph had been fully Palin-ized into her special brand of authentic frontier gibberish.

Okay, on with the experiment. I’ve selected several chunks of historical political speeches and processed them through my English-to-Korean-Korean-to-English translation formula. Here now, otherwise well-written historical speeches as if they had been written and delivered by Sarah Palin.

1) John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address Palin-ized: “In the long history of the world, only a few generations only of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger to be given to the role. I am responsible for — I do not welcome it out. I have none of us any other people or any other generation is not going to exchange places with. We are trying to import energy, faith, and devotion to our country, and it — the light of the fire service is truly light the world who all turned on. Now, the American people: do you what you can do for the country you are — questions about your country can do, do not ask.”

2) Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address Palin-ized: “Remaining before us — we are here dedicated to the great task is rather — to honor their commitment to their death, we gave the last full measure of devotion to the cause of increase — that we here highly resolve these dead in vain do not die — this country is under God shall have a new birth of freedom — of people, and the government of the people, for the people on earth will not go away ever.”

3) Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” Speech Palin-ized… READ MORE

By: Bob Cesca

Bob Cesca is the managing editor at The Daily Banter (www.thedailybanter.com) and a Huffington Post contributor since 2005. He's worked in journalism since 1988 as a print writer/editor, a radio news anchor, a digital media columnist/editor, a book author and blogger. He's the co-host of the Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show podcast and a Thursday regular on the syndicated Stephanie Miller Show. He's appeared on numerous other radio shows including the John Phillips Show and Geraldo Rivera Show in Los Angeles. Bob has been a commentator/analyst on the BBC (TV and radio), MSNBC, Current TV, CNN and Sky News. Following him on Twitter: @bobcesca_go