Talking in public--answering questions and not just reading from a script--is something that we wanted Sarah Palin to do when she became John McCain's startling choice for a running mate. Sarah was kept under wraps for a while, but once she did begin talking without a script, oh my. Some of us wanted to make her stop, and some of us (like my friend Richie, and Leno and Letterman and Tina Fey and all of us Saturday Night Live fans) wanted her never to stop talking. Those were heady times, as we learned more about how the Palin mind worked, and tried to imagine her as Vice President, a heartbeat away from being the first President Hockey Mom. Scary? You betcha! I know that my heart raced faster during those strange autumn days.
So now it's Caroline Kennedy's turn to speak off-script, and you know what, well, let's just say, you know, that she seems like a good and noble person, someone with, you know, great genes, of course, but, you know, she has this verbal tic that, you know, peppers every sentence. Aside from the endless "you-knows," she speaks well. Her sentences don't trail off into silence mid-sentence, like an Alaskan dog sled that has lost its way in the frozen tundra. Nor does she mangle the English language like a certain lame-duck President. In fact, I think it's kind of refreshing, you know, to find that a Kennedy is like the rest of us, you know, and hasn't hired a speech coach to teach her how to control her verbal tic, to find some other phrase to use while forming her answer, or to use silence and pauses.
Even Barack Obama, the most accomplished speaker to be elected President since that actor Ronald Reagan, has his verbal tics. "Well, look ...," Obama says, as he prepares to answer a question, and then we are treated to a brief silence, and we realize that he is actually thinking, that he is not about to repeat some vague generalization. This is a man who taught constitutional law for ten years at the University of Chicago, who stood in front of a group of students who must have enjoyed watching his mind at work.
Obama I can listen to all day. And Caroline Kennedy I want to hear more from, so she is totally forgiven in advance for a million "you-know's." Sarah Palin can say "you betcha" and "golly" and all those colloquial expressions that are just more verbal tics and stalling while she waits for a correct answer, or any answer, to rear its head, like Putin coming into the air space over Alaska. They're still showing reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies on cable, but strictly for entertainment I'd rather listen to Sarah.
Some verbal tics, however, make me scream. My current pet peeve is "I mean." Athletes love this one. "How did you feel when you scored the winning touchdown?" I cringe even before I hear it. I know what's coming. "I mean," the athlete begins, and then throws in a dozen more "I-mean's" before the interview is over, mercifully. At those times I long for a commercial, any commercial to put me out of my misery. Sometimes, If nobody's around, I yell at the TV screen. "You mean?! Don't start your answer with I-mean! If you want to explain what you just said, then maybe you can say 'I mean.'" It's good to vent. I also find that my yelling drowns out most of the interview, so it serves a purpose.
Lately I hear "I mean" as a verbal tic drifting into the answers of some college professors and writers on TV. I mean, it's enough to make you want to, you know, just call up Sarah Palin and ask her if she ever, you know, got so mad at the folks on TV that she pulled out her rifle and shot up the screen. In one of my recurring daydreams I actually do call Alaska, and Sarah answers her own phone, and I ask her about shooting up the TV, and she tells me, "Oh, you betcha!"
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