Here, we see Sarah Palin realizing, "Darn! Where are my cojones? Why can't I meet the press? Face the nation?"NY Daily News has posted an article, "Palin says Obama lacks 'cojones,' but she lacks real courage," which has this scathing assessment of Sarah Palin after her use of cojones on TeaVee:
... There was Palin with Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday," talking about Arizona's new immigration law, saying that the female governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, "has the cojones that our President does not have. If our own President will not enforce our federal law, more power to Jan Brewer."
What Palin was really saying on this issue, without coming out and saying it, is that each border state now has a legal, and maybe even moral, right to set its own foreign policy. Only if other governors have the balls that she does, mind you.
This is the same Sarah Palin who quit on her stool as governor of Alaska because it was too small a place and too small a stage to contain her ambition for money and power. It is actually kind of wonderful, this newly rich woman who quit her most recent job now wanting to speak for working-class people, and especially working-class women, everywhere. ...
... Maybe when she says that the President lacks "cojones," on immigration and everything else, she thinks he needs to be more like Bush. He was the worldwide leader of cojones and testosterone and bringing back Bin Laden dead or alive, and the result was he got us into wars on two fronts while in office. One of them, the one in Afghanistan, has now recorded two straight months of record deaths for American soldiers - with no end in sight. ...
The article was not kind to President Obama, either.
Let's consider another view of Sarah Palin's use of cojones. It comes from NPR's "It No Longer Takes @#$%& To Use 'Foul' Language," which considers the use of cohones as a euphemism:
On Fox News Sunday, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin used a naughty word: cojones. It's a Spanish word meaning "testicles."
Palin said that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer "has the cojones that our president does not have to look out for all Americans — not just Arizonans, but all Americans — in this desire of ours to secure our borders and allow legal immigration to help build this country, as was the purpose of immigration laws."
That coarse language spoken publicly by coarse people has become commonplace in contemporary America is an old story. That coarse language is spoken publicly by proper, line-toeing people, such as Palin, may be a new twist. Sarah Palin is known for many attributes, but a foul mouth is not one of them. [This is the conceit: Palin is a proper, line-toeing, clean-mouthed, respectable person!]
When a formerly taboo word is used by respectable people, is that when it enters the general lexicon? "Yes that is true. That is the purpose of euphemisms like cojones," says Robert Beard, professor emeritus of linguistics at Bucknell University. "We even have a children's book now called Everybody Poops, for which the film rights have been acquired. How mainstream can a word get?" ...
... Which brings us back to cojones. Palin said that while President Obama, a man, lacks them, Brewer, a woman, has them. Perhaps that bit of linguistic legerdemain lifts the word out of the literal realm and places it in the metaphorical.
As far back as 1996, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright employed cojones when talking about Cuban military pilots who attacked civilian planes: "This is not cojones," she said, "this is cowardice." Albright's comment may not have been politically correct, but it was anatomically correct. ...
... Words, says linguist Robert Beard, are associations of sounds with meanings. The meanings of vulgar words are not taboo. We use them in medical clinics all day long.
It is the sounds of those words, he explains, that are profane or off-color. "The very sound of these words connect them directly to our sense of shame, our moral sense, our sense of right and wrong," Beard says. "So all we have to do is substitute a different sound (such as cojones or crap) and, in most cases, we distance ourselves enough from our sense of shame to get by. Those who use the originals have to lose or ignore that sense of shame."
Assuming, he says, they were raised so as to develop one.
Everything is wonderful and been made right, right?
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11 comments:
Professor Beard would seem to believe that Sarah Palin has a sense of shame about using "balls," so uses "cohones."
Once upon a time people thought Nixon wasn't foul mouthed, also.
To Sarah Palin: Bastantes, estúpido.
You did not have the labia to finish a full term as governor of Alaska.
¡Clávate la mueca!
Love the online Spanish keyboard at http://spanish.typeit.org/
LoLz, 4:50. I don't know much Spanish. I'm told "Bastantes, estupido" means "Enough stupidity," and "Clavate la mueca" means "Nail your face (mouth) shut," as in "Sit down and shut up!"
Washington Post has Mama Grizzly anatomy lesson!
Pres. Obama warns against demagoguery:
Mr. Obama, in an exclusive interview with CBS "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith, said that said he understands frustration over illegal immigration, but he warned against local, "patchwork" solutions.
"I understand the frustration of people in Arizona. But what we can't do is demagogue the issue," he said. "And what we can't do is allow a patchwork of 50 different states, or cities or localities, where anybody who wants to make a name for themselves suddenly says, 'I'm gonna be anti-immigrant and I'm gonna try to see if I can solve the problem ourself.'"
The demagogues are keen on citing numbers for illegal apprehensions ¨that stagger.¨
In fact those numbers are surprising: they are sharply down, according to the Border Patrol - by more than sixty per cent since 2000, to five hundred and fifty thousand apprehensions last year, the lowest figure in thirty-five years.
Many thanks to 4:50 for the link to typeit.org.
That link is for Spanish. Along the left, you can switch to another language. It beats looking up the html code for a non-English character. ¡Que bueno!
She used the Spanish word, incorrectly pronounced of course, as a race baiting, dog whistle word. She could have used balls and no one would have reacted the same way. She's crude, rude, and most of all vulgar.
Balls, cajones ... both are words that should rarely escape an educated politican's lips.
Palin actually DID say "cajones" as Anon @ 1:41 pm said, not "cojones".
They're not synonymous. They're not alternative pronunciations of the same word. They're two completely different words describing two different things.
Sarah Palin said President Obama doesn't have drawers (as in a cabinet , or a bureau -- not the political kind, either; rather, the furniture kind) and that Jan Brewer does.
Ha anyone started up a list of Sarah Palin Malapropisms and Mispronunciations?
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