Sarah Palin’s 8 rules of parentin’
Nonsensical speech makes complete sense if adapted to assist in child rearing
When Sarah Palin talks, the world listens.
It’s been this way for nearly a decade. And so it was on Tuesday, when the former governor of Alaska stormed Iowa to endorse Donald Trump.
If you missed her historic speech, you can recreate the experience by listening to an audio version of A Clockwork Orange in reverse while beating yourself senseless with a Styrofoam bat.
Garbed in a bolero jacket that was trimmed with a distracting bugle-bead fringe, Palin looked like a half-shaved porcupine doused with mercury. She sounded, as she usually does, like an unhinged street preacher who chews wads of sandpaper and takes hits off a giant helium bong before railing against the establishment.
When she offered her Middle East analysis — “Where they’re fightin’ each other and yellin’ ‘Allah Akbar,’ calling jihad on each other’s heads, forever and ever” — even Trump looked mildly alarmed.
He glanced around with the grimacing smile of a man receiving a stripogram while at church with his family.
But after listening yet again to Palin’s peculiar yakking style — the clipped inflection, the rap-meetsslam-poetry rhythm, the baffling digressions, the gospel flourishes — I had a revelation. Instead of mocking Palin, as we always do, what if we talked exactly like her when dealing with our kids? In fact, if you dissect her Trump endorsement, you will find linguistic rules of great benefit to child rearing.
Rule No. 1: Don’t make sense “Right-wingin’, bitter-clingin’, proud clingers . . .”
Next time your child balks at wearing a scarf, don’t waste time explaining wind chill. Just bounce around the foyer and spit out gibberish: “Ear-bleedin’, wee-wee freezin’, human snow cone . . .” Your child will stare at you in silence and then ask for extra mitts.
Rule No. 2: Make up words “We’re paying for some of their squirmishes that have been going on for centuries.”
“You want to watch Cinderella again? But that movie is saptroying my will to live!”
Rule No. 3: Randomly stop midthought “Exactly one year from tomorrow, former President Barack Obama.” Why have we wasted so much time with complete sentences? Why not just boost obedience by relying upon cryptic cliffhangers? “Children, there are nutrients in broccoli that.” “Children, under your bed.” “Children, I hate to say this, but in six months.”
Rule No. 4: Invent your own acronyms and abbreviations “He doesn’t get his power, his high, off of OPM: Other People’s Money.” “This election is more than just your basic ABCs: Anybody But Clinton.”
“If you don’t go to bed right this second, you’re getting a MLOC (Massive List of Chores). Stop fighting with your brother or I’ll SYBOTI (Sell You Both On The Internet).”
Rule No. 5: Always be the victim “I was told left and right, ‘You are going to get so clobbered in the press. You are just going to get beat up, and chewed up, and spit out.’ ”
Your child wants another Star Wars toy? Remind him of the time, before he existed, when you had disposable income. But now, thanks to pint-sized elites given to frivolous extravagance and programmed to keep slurpin’ off the gravy train, what’s left of your heavily taxed income is earmarked for liberal corporations. Son, do you think Jesus had three Millennium Falcons when he was a boy?
Rule No. 6: Use violent and inappropriate imagery “In fact, they’ve been wearing a, this, political correctness kind of like a suicide vest.”
Struggling to get your child to do homework? Let Palin be your inspiration: “Go ahead and keep watching YouTube, honey. But if you get an F, it will be like an atomic bomb exploding on your hopes and dreams, you betcha. It’s time to drill, baby, drill down and drill deep into these drilly drills before you turn into radioactive dust.” Behold six straight hours of studying.
Rule No. 7: Create shadowy conspiracies “Well, Trump, what he’s been able to do, which is really ticking people off, which I’m glad about, he’s going rogue left and right, man, that’s why he’s doing so well. He’s been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system.”
“Kids, don’t you get it? What do mice eat? Which character is Disney’s mascot? Who is really behind Chuck E. Cheese? Do I need to spell this out?”
Rule No. 8: When all else fails, lie vmenon@thestar.ca