Since our last post, we've been asked many times to comment on Sarah Palin's mannerisms. Her Body-Talk is not as blatant as her running mate, probably because she has a background as a performer in beauty pageants and television. She has learned to conceal the smirks and clenches that play so openly across the countenance of John McCain.
In our work we call body language the Five Flags, because there are five major ways human beings react when they're not speaking the authentic truth. Twitches and jaw-clenches are examples of Flag #1, Body-Flags. To understand Sarah Palin, though, you need to understand Flags #2 and #3, Voice-Flags and Attitude-Flags. The English word 'personality' comes from two Latin words, per and sona, "through sound." The Romans knew that the personality comes through in the tone of voice and other vocal aspects.
From thirty-five years of clinical experience, we can tell you a lot about Sarah Palin's real personality and why it makes many people even more nervous that John McCain's.
Attitude-Flag #1: The Aggressive Confidence Of The Con-Person
Sarah Palin has mastered one fundamental requirement of a Republican president: she can smile and look you directly in the eye while telling an outrageous lie. At least when John McCain lies, his body screams his discomfort by putting on an eye-catching display of twitches, phony smiles and robot moves. McCain's body language is so strange that it's easily observable; he appears to be operated by a puppeteer who is a couple of triple-espressos over the line. That's a good thing, though. We'd much rather have a presidential candidate who reads like a comic book when he's lying than one who conceals those whoppers under a grin and a wink. Sarah Palin belts out her deceptions and distractions with a radiant confidence we usually only see in sociopaths and infomercial pitch-persons. The last public figure we saw who could grin and lie with that kind of sunny confidence was O. J. Simpson.
Voice-Flag #1: The Exaggerated Folksiness Of The Huckster
Our partisan colors may peek through subtly from time to time, but we do our best to be non-partisan lie-catchers. We cringed when Bill Clinton did his famous "I did not have sex..." line. We immediately looked at each other and said "uh-oh," because his body language let us know loud and clear that he did indeed have sex with "that woman." About ten minutes after Clinton's declaration, our phone started ringing from producers of talk shows wanting us to comment on Clinton's body language. They knew they'd seen something, but they couldn't figure out exactly what.
More recently, we cringed when we heard Sarah Palin start using more of those pseudo-folksy expressions such as "You betcha" and "doggone-it." She was droppin' so many g's on-stage at last week's debate that the janitorial staff may have had to work over-time pickin' 'em up, by gum. The last eight years have taught us all a sobering lesson: you don't have to be smart to be the President of the United States. However, we hope that America is smart enough to see Palin's exaggerated folksiness for what it is, a cheap trick to cozy up to us so they can sell us four more years of Bush Lite. We hope America will hear those "You betchas" and send Mc Cain/Palin a message right back: Just because you pretend to be dumb and folksy, you don't automatically get to live in the White House.
Voice-Flag #2: The Metallic Shriek Of The Fear-Monger
To emphasize certain points, Sarah Palin takes her voice up the tone scale to a metallic shriek. This tone will be familiar to many of us: it's the voice your mother employed as a last resort to get you out of bed when you were a teenager. It's designed to scare you, to rake fingernails across your inner chalkboard. She often uses this voice when she first takes the stage at a rally. It works quite well there, because it cuts like a knife and jolts any of the faithful who might be dozing to sit up in their seats. We hope Americans are not so sleepy as to vote in favor of hearing this tone of voice for four years.
Here's the bottom line: The McCain/Palin campaign strategy is based entirely on stirring up fear. It's a classic way to distract people from thinking about real issues and to cover up the lack of any real solutions. Their thinking goes like this:
•If we can get people scared that Obama might secretly be a Muslim or a terrorist, maybe we can get them not to think about the real issues.
•If we can get people scared that Rev. Wright might turn the inaugural benediction into an anti-American rant, maybe we can get them to believe America's economic problems are just something cooked up by the elite media as a way to play "Gotcha" on poor Sarah and John.
•If we can scare people into thinking Barack HUSSEIN Obama is going to put Louis Farrakhan in charge of the annual White House Easter egg hunt, maybe people won't notice that we have absolutely no solutions to the real problems they face.
Barack Obama has so far opted to run a positive campaign based on hope and thoughtful solutions. It's our fervent desire that he continue to do so, because it's about time we turned our national attention to positive possibilities. Over the past eight years we've had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime.
(Stay tuned! In our next post we'll look at two more important bits of body language that we all need to be paying attention to during the campaign. We've noticed these flags at play in both Joe Biden and John McCain, and they spell trouble for all of us.)
Related:
The Obama Relationship: A Major Benefit No One Is Talking About
Body Politics: What McCain's Smirks, Tics And Jaw-Clenches Really Mean
The Obamas' Greatest PDA Moments: SLIDESHOW
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This Dude is scary to watch !!!!
We cite Merriam-Webster:
personality- from Latin persona (actor's mask, character in a play, person), probably from Etruscan phersu (mask), from Greek prosōpa, plural of prosōpon face, (mask) — more at prosopopoeia
Please do learn to use a dictionary.
Having some familiarity with Latin, I was struck by that goofiness immediately.
Also, some of that blog is just silly.
The last sociopathic liar we've all known isn't O.J.. It's W.
C'mon.
I gather these 2 are being paid, by tv people, some big bucks to snow 'em.
OK by me.
But here at huffpo, you have to be more careful.
Some of us are schooled in various disciplines and know b.s. when we see it.
Did he choose her............. because he was told to? ...........out of spite, because he wasn't allowed to have Lieberman as his running mate? .......... because he honestly thought that she was the most qualified person for the job?
For now, Mac and Sarah are mostly staying away from the press. Maybe someday, even if it is after the election, we will get to have our questions asked, and our curiousity satisfied. However, somehow I think that if they manage to win the election, we will see a continuation of their policy of hiding everything from the American people, including the truth.
Nothing else about the VP pick of Governor Palin makes sense to me.
You haven't made any progress at all. In fact, you've made reverse progress because any time your candidate was criticized or questioned for ANYTHING, his campaign silenced everybody by screeching "ra ci sm". A candidate who pole vaults on r aci al blackmail sets ra cerelations back by decades.
There's also something odd about Senator McCain. I understand that he may have limitations on his movement due to injuries sustained during his captivity, but his tone at key moments is entirely mismatched with his words. His line, "Fight with me! Fight with me! Fight with me!" was delivered in a near monotone; most speakers would ramp that up on each repetition.
McCain and Palin also use the 'sage nod' - McCain says something, and either Cindy or Sarah are there to nod sagely. The message, of course, is, "Yes, you should agree with John." -- but it's a technique that works two ways. On behalf of the speaker, it guides - we unconsciously tend to mimic people as part of our social behavior. On the part of the listener, if you start to nod after I or a surrogate initiate that behavior, I know I'm getting into your head - and I can either continue along the same lines, or feed you questionable facts now that your mind and body are subconsciously agreeing with me.
Please! If you claim to have so much taste then taste the bitterness coming from the Republican side, and wise up!
lordbaal.wordpress.com/
I ever heard her or saw her live, at the RNC over network TV in a nursing home of all places!
I was a visitor to the nursing home, by the way. Staff did let me leave, after our lengthy scuffle.
The VP debate verified my initial feelings on Palin. I shook my head: Is she real? You betcha,
in her own dear and false way. Her performance sent a genuine Wassila chill up my spine.
Your article sums up the entire Republican campaign for president 2008. I too have remarked
to such effect over various blogs. Many voters are catching on, even or especially hockey fans.
I respect each person choice for this election. However, instead of praying that one party to be elected just because they are christians, pray that we'll have peaceful election and that God will bring us the president He knows that will be better fit to this country. In the end, who ever wins this election is God's will.
I don't suppose you have any proof of that statement?
It is ironic that those so-called christian values seem to be as ephemeral as a gust of wind. In fact, when people have to point to their so-called qualities, watch out! If someone says, "trust me," I automatically don't. Similarly, when someone starts spouting off about Christian values, I automatically feel my hackles rise.
Mine are that Catholocism, whether you think it's false or not, promotes selflessness, and can lead to a better sense of justice. Some far-out sects of Christianity (note that even though I think they're wrong, I still gave them the respect of capitalizing the name of their general religion) are a 'bit' extremist, but don't take their bad example to say the whole of the Christian religion is a bad gust of wind... it's over 2000 years old, with roots back paralleling the Jewish religion (since the beginning of recorded history). We've been around a long time, and in that time a couple 'members' have done stupid things, like "priests" raping children. Trust me, they've been excommunicated, and you don't have to worry about the whole of Christianity being an evil plague wiping over the Earth. Just worry that the media is enjoying blowing incidents out of proportion.
And it's "shackles" not "hackles"
-Joe
...lol... where's America's spirit these days? If there's a will there's a way. Who has will? Anybody?
Anyone? (hint: let's be nice and work together on this one)
-Joe
Media=Democrat
Truth=Republican
Hollywood isn't real life
I know that Bush has convinced you that it's not necessary to think before you act, but try it sometime, and you'll see that thinking before you strike is actually a good thing.
The President is one story, but you shouldn't be so quick to take Obama as something completely opposite, lol...
-Joe
By the way, how does the Kool-Aid taste?
=)
Now, although I'm gonna have to disagree with you on "You'd never see the Democrats going negative," I'm not one to point the finger in one direction, either. I use both fingers, and point in both directions.
Everybody is so partisan these days. This election seems to be more of a popularity contest than anything else. I don't trust either party anymore, because they're attacking each other more than the problems in this country. Grow up, before a second Civil War breaks out.
I want my children to grwo up in the UNITED States of America...
-Joe
-Joe
After due process, of course.
Or just Google it.
How do you assume to know what most Americans want?
Palin may not be an elitist in your eyes but she has been found to have betrayed the public trust in her current office as governor.