The Education Of Sarah Palin
Yesterday's JFK misinterpretation notwithstanding, becoming the Bartlett's of Twitter may actually be a good move for Sarah Palin. I could see her working her way through the great thinkers of the Western canon one Tweet at a time, educating both herself and her followers as she goes. Bonus points if she can tie each lesson into wholesome Alaskan activities.
You cannot drill an oil field by turning it over in your mind.
–A. Unknown
Cook your meth carefully, for no man is an island. – A. Unknown
So when does she get around to quoting great thinkers like Gary Busey?
I just quit Gawker. They took my star.
Nick is having an anxiety attack about losing Richard and taking it out on the commenters.
I think they disabled support of IE6 at the same time cause I can't even see if my flair is still there. Why does my office still use IE6 you ask? …
I can't see any Gawker comments anymore on whatever version of browser I'm using. I tried to go to Mediaite.com but they said I needed to upgrade my browser, which of course I cannot.
Don't know what is up with the stars. Several people's disappeared, then reappeared again, for no reason. I wonder whether their back end is … um … stable. I tend to think not…
Either that or they just like to toy with commenters.
The latter it appears. On the subject of the number of starred commenters, from Snyder himself:
@…: Literally hundreds. But the list is going to be whittled down to probably something closer to 75.
Here's the explanation:
http://gawker.com/5311027/gawker-comments-are-made-of-stars?skyline=true&s=x
From reading that it seems Nick is blaming the readers for the decline in Gawker Media's quality.
"Take time to take your parents taking fish out of water"
"Parents, take the time to teach your kids to play ball properly, you will never know when you may need an extra throwing arm to chuck a Molotov cocktail at an abortion clinic"
–A. Unknown
"Keep your friends close, and your bear spray closer"
Is this a real quote? A quick search for "hour of play" under the Plato section at http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/index.html doesn't turn up anything.
That's because Sarah spells it "Play Doh". I think I saw that quote under a container lid.
If I were a betting man, I'd bet not. The sentiment isn't very Platonesque.
Paul Shorey's book What Plato Said would probably be the best place to start looking (if one really wanted to be over-diligent).
This is worse than faux-quoting Kennedy. Now she is just balls-out making stuff up and attributing it to famous smart people she has heard of. Next tweet: "The great ones always fish and hunt. And lie. — Shakespeare."
"Winners never quit and quitters never win."
- Vince Lombardi
"Betrayal is the only truth that sticks." – Arthur Miller
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." – Joanne Kathleen Rowling
"You've got a job to do, and because you've got a job to do, you've got to focus on that, so you don't have time for personal considerations" – Richard Bruce Cheney
"Take this job and shove it, I ain't a workin' here no more." – Johnny Paycheck
"Have a good time, ALL the time." -Viv Savage
Sorry, but when you go out fishing, don't you normally sit still and make conversation, instead of horsing around and maybe overturning the boat?
I learned my daughter was knocked up on a fishing trip. If I had a daughter that was knocked up I might have anyway. Or, actually, maybe I wouldn't have.
Wait – are we sure that quote isn't from Playdough?
"Pretty sure Plato was gay." — Mr. Moose
In retrospect, the whole "dialogues" thing was probably a clue:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/09/palin-plato/