Sarah Palin, Sarajevo

[mallorys_camera]

Okay, this is something that's been bothering me for weeks:

I know people who live in Alaska. None of them sound like Sarah Palin.

Where did she get that accent? It's a Minnesota accent.

In other news I'm halfway through The Kite Runner, having polished off A Thousand Splendid Suns last weekend.

When I was 18, I took all the money I had made working as a model in NYC and ran off to Europe. And so it came to pass that some time in the spring of 1970 I ended up in Sarajevo, a city (I remember scribbling portentiously in my journal) that reminded me of Oakland. (I still have those journals but since I make it a point never to reread anything I write in a journal I forget the exact words.) I think what I meant by that comparison, little solepcist that I was, was that Sarajevo's downtown too was filled with all these brown, four-story office buildings cloaked in an aura of benign industrial neglect. I wasn't impressed by it -- it was too much like places I already knew. When I travel I want foreign to be foreign -- I'd like it best if the trees were blue and the sun was purple.

Fourteen years after came the Olympics and right after that came the Seige.

And I was horrified by the seige because this was a place I had been to, this was a place that seemed to follow all the rules I was familar with (although, of course, they spoke another language.) I mean there were traffic lights there!

And suddenly it was all anarchy and machine gun fire and people living in the ruined infrastructure of those boring brown office buildings.

It was my first intimation that when it happens, it happens fast.

It happened fast for the nice, middleclass protagonist of The Kite Runner.

Could it happen here? Or do the oceans insulate us?

Comments

[eleanor.livejournal.com]

Oceans do not insulate us. Our system of government, as flawed and corrupt as it is, does to some extent: three branches of government, checks and balances, and institutional revolution every four years go a long way to cushioning what happens in other places. The FDIC insurance, even at its present rate, helps too. That's not to say it can't happen here, only that we do have things in place that make it less likely.

As for Sarah Palin, I've been commenting that she sounds like a bit actor if Fargo. I don't know what that's about, and it doesn't reassure me, but creeps me out. If my kids dared to speak in sloppy regional dialect, they'd be corrected pretty quickly and wouldn't be allowed out until I heard a reasonable approximation of the english language, not because I'm a snob, but because they need to be understandable and taken seriously by others. Sarah Palin's put-on accent seems like pandering to some misguided notion of middle America. They get CNN and national newscasters in the vowel states, too.

[platofish.livejournal.com]

Yip, when it happens here - and it will - its going to be incredibly fast. One day we will be living a life of lattes and ice cream, the next we will be drinking from creeks and eating raw potato.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think checks and balances insulate us at all. Another 9/11 scenario and there's a declaration of martial law. One of many reasons why this election is so important.

They get CNN and national newscasters in the vowel states, too.

There was a terrific piece about Palin's father in (I think) the NYT yesterday. He's a naturalist and an atheist. They never watched TV while she was growing up.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I can't tell if you're joking or not.

Likely scenario is another 9/11-type event, the declaration of martial law, and the rise of local militias.

[eleanor.livejournal.com]

They also didn't live in North Dakota.

[platofish.livejournal.com]

Nope. I'm not joking...few people are prepared for having no grid supplied electricity or the supermarkets being closed for any more than a couple of days.

Its not difficult to imagine any number of scenarios, natural or man-made, that leave us without power/internet/food.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

few people are prepared for having no grid supplied electricity or the supermarkets being closed for any more than a couple of days.

Well, I know I'm not.

[lacachet.livejournal.com]

I'm from Minnesota, and nobody I know talks like that--but it is the least of what I can't stand about her.

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanuska_Valley

"A few hundred Alaska Natives were joined by small numbers of "Alaska sourdoughs" between 1900 and 1930 when hundreds of "colonists" relocated by the Federal Government in the early 30's colonized the eastern Matanuska Valley between Wasilla, Palmer, and the Butte. The colonists came as part of the Matanuska Colony "New Deal" agricultural experiment sponsored by the federal government."

It doesn't say this here, but these relocated people were from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

http://www.metafilter.com/74764/The-Matanuska-Colony-The-New-Deal-in-Alaska

I've never seen anybody use this to explain Palin's accent, but I think the pieces fit.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Ben has some relatives that live in Minnesota. They don't speak like that but oddly enough their kids do.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. The pieces do fit and I think you're absolutely right. Thanks!

[lethe1]

The protagonist of The Kite Runner nice? I thought he was a jerk. The author certainly went out of his way to make him unlikeable.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

He's a jerk at the beginning of the book. But he redeems himself at the end. Plus, you know, he's all of 13 years old when he betrays Hassan. There's a reason why Pol Pot populated his army with 13 year olds -- they have no loyalty to their past, they're completely amoral and infinitely malleable (sez I, the mother of a 13 year old.) Most of the time they outgrow it.

[lethe1]

Hassan is the same age as Amir and he is a saint throughout. Amir redeems himself at the end, but not until after some serious pushing by his wife and his uncle(?). Adopting the boy was not even his own idea.

I'm sorry, I just hated this book so much! This is the review I wrote: "So drawn out, so much drama, so many coincidences, and characters either utterly good or utterly bad. In short, a soap in book format, and while there is nothing wrong with soaps I don't like having to waste my time on them." I know mine is a minority opinion. Alas. ;)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Interesting though -- I cried buckets throughout the book. Dunno why. It had a huge emotional impact on me. Did you read it in English?

[lethe1]

No, someone I hold dear gave me the Dutch translation* for my birthday last year. I really really really did not want to read it, but I felt morally obliged to at least try. I made it through the first 50 pages or so and read the rest diagonally, plus I looked up a few summaries online (so I could pretend I had read the whole thing).

So I guess you could say my not wanting to read it didn't give the book a fair chance, but I've been hugely disappointed by books I thought I would love and OTOH been bowled over by books I thought I wouldn't like at all. This one was exactly as the hype had made me fear.

Googling 'protagonist kite runner' just now I came across a review which puts my feelings into words quite nicely, and it's actually from someone who sort of liked the book: http://clareverse.wordpress.com/2007/09/06/the-kite-runner-least-likeable-protagonist-ever/

Maybe it had such an impact on you precisely because you are the mother of a 13-year-old.

*From reviews I understand there were a few mistakes in the translation, f.e. a word that denoted a school blazer became a sports jacket in Dutch. Also the Dutch title De vliegeraar means the person who flies the kite, not the one who runs after it. But to be honest, I wouldn't know how to translate 'kite runner' in a concise way. And the translation flowed smoothly enough, I would say.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

The term "kite runner" is not in the popular parlance, at least not in the U.S.

One other reason I may have liked it is (of course) is that it takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area so I was familiar with many of its physical locations.

Hassan's rape was so over the top that I just kind of mentally wrote it out of the book.