it's the delivery, stupid
Music: Steve Roach: Immersion: One (1983)
Apparently all it takes is a thin resume and the projection of smug confidence to turn around a doomed Republican ticket. I exaggerate my cynicism, of course---or rather, that of others out here in "liberal blog land." After Sarah Palin's Republican convention speech last week, it's reported today that McCain has received a fairly significant bump in the polls, especially among the abstract, almost meaningless category of "white women" (a variation of Billy Idol's "White Wedding" is playing in my head).
Like many of you, I watched Palin's coming-out speech at the RNC and, frankly, was fascinated. While I’m sure there is precedent, her speech seemed to me to strike out in new territory: it was a series of one-liners and zingers strung together with a kind of pep-rally moxie. We learned virtually nothing about Palin except that she had titanium gonads and the "Hockey mom" instincts to defend a toothless "maverick." What we did get was an in-your-face delivery reminiscent of a rude finger gesture. What we did get is a woman.
I've had a number of discussions with folks around the office about the Palin speech. I've yet to run into anyone that thought it was a good speech, or that her tough talk merited the kind of praise the punditocracy has heaped on her persona. Yet it then occurred to me contrasting Palin with Clinton is instructive: Clinton was described as substantive but too masculine; her "style" was not feminine. Palin, however, has no substance but she does have both a strong, "pit bull" delivery while maintaining a feminine appeal (is it the "sexy librarian?"). In other words, there is a contrast between "style" and "substance" here.
In part, that contrast figures into role license: Veeps are expected to be "attack dogs" for their presidential candidate. This means that Palin is "allowed" to talk tough, while Clinton is forced to adopt a less angry tone (remember the "shame on you, Obama!" speech?). There's also the double-standard of femininity: mothers are allowed to defend their children and get mean in the process (e.g., McCain as toothless hockey boy), while mothers are not allowed to promote their own self interests. Palin has stepped into a contextual moment that is both favorable to her persona and, at same the moment, her motherhood. But there's something else.
My friend Barry Brummett has just published a new book, A Rhetoric of Style, with Southern Illinois University Press. Among other things, Barry advances style as an having its own substantive ontological status. In other words, style and substance have collapsed depending on the context. In some contexts he argues, for example, that style is the substantive message, that "more than this," to paraphrase Bryan Ferry, "there is nothing." Palin's speech at the RNC was unequivocally a substance of style. For me, this implies that of all things, tone was the most important part of that speech; her tone was the emotional index of delivery.
Some folks have remarked Palin's tone at the RNC was snide and smug. This is true, however, one person's "smug" is another person's "confidence." In this respect, this much circulated, photoshopped image of Palin as a gun-toting, patriotic bikini babe is an apt homology: it strikes precisely the kind of tonal qualities the Republicans are going for. As I said over on the blogora,
A bikini-clad woman is not pornographic. I see this everyday, as I live next door to the neighborhood pool. What makes this pornographic---here understood as sexual, edgy, racy---is the assault weapon. The gun sexualizes the image because its signification as an instrument of death contrasts with the usual signification of sunbathing as a celebration of life. Thus an interesting homology emerges: how different is this from the standard party line, pro-life but pro-capital punishment? That reckoning is the perverse core of evangelico-servative republicanism . . . . Throw in little chit-chat about prophecy guiding statecraft, and you have the perfect republican action figure, f*!king/killing the way to God.
I've been playing with the idea lately that tone is not simply a sonorous quality, but an imagistic one as well. Nevertheless, my point here is that this image, like Palin's delivery, attempts to strike a balance between what may initially seem like contradictory viewpoints. To some, it appears smug. To others, however, this "pose" is precisely what is wanted: a cultural warrior, ready to defend a right to aggression, but in the name of love.
It's difficult to speak of tone because, in rhetorical studies, we've let the canon of delivery go ignored for almost a century. Thus, the vocabulary I have available to me to describe Palin's successful tone, and the effect it has, is really limited (and to be truthful, to the elocutionists from the 18th and 19th centuries). Since recourse to Thomas Sheridan would take more time than I have this morning, let me simply provide an example: the tone of Bocephus.
When I was in high school, the major culture war was between self-styled "rednecks" and the "punks and goths." Guess which side I found myself on? The redneck anthems were lifted from the central guardian of redneck values, Hank Williams Jr. Now, truth be told today I'm a fan of all the Hanks (especially Hank the 3rd), but at 16 I detested Hank 2 with a passion (you cannot, absolutely cannot detested the original). Bocephus' song, "A Country Boy Can Survive," was hands-down the redneck rally cry, played in the high school parking lot at very loud volumes from trucks with tires taller than me. Key lines from that song really strike the tonal sweet spot that Plain goes after:
Cause you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
Cause one-of- ‘em old boys raisin ole shotgun
And we say grace and we say Ma’am
And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn
[LISTEN TO THE SONG HERE]. That is, we're polite 'cause we raised right, but we love our guns and we read our bible and we don't give a shit about you. This is the tonal attitude Palin exudes. This is her fundamental "redneck values" appeal. It's the same appeal that won Bush II two elections, and if you don't hear it, you're ignoring the delivery.