Sarah Palin's basketball analogy

When Sarah Palin resigned yesterday, she helpfully framed her resignation from her long-ago position as point guard. Here's what she said:

Let me go back quickly to a comfortable analogy for me, and that’s sports. Basketball. And I use it because you are naïve if you don’t see a full court press from the national level picking away right now. A good point guard, here’s what she does. She drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her head up because she needs to keep her eye on the basket and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win. And that is what I’m doing. Keeping our eye on the ball.

This jumbled analogy tells it all. The first confusing point is the language of a full-court defense "picking away." Now maybe she's using "picking" in a non-technical way, but any basketball player knows that a pick is an offensive move. It's what a teammate would do to help create room for the point guard under pressure (say); it's what Todd does for Sarah on occasion.

But the best part is the mixed message (nay, mixed metaphor) about where a point guard ought to keep her eyes. She's right of course in saying that the point guard needs to keep her head up, but in a full court press, she would be wrong to keep her eye on the basket, especially if (as Palin says in the next phrase) she's looking to pass the ball. When one is on the extreme other end of the court, one ought not care where the basket is, unless time is running out (which, hey, that could be significant for Palin's situation). But then, awesomely, she switches from keeping her head up to keeping her eye on the ball, which is exactly what she shouldn't be doing unless she is suddenly playing baseball.

This former point guard's eyes are on one thing, and one thing only: the door. She is fleeing, afraid, and what follows is not going to be pretty.

Comments

[Z]

Brilliant rhetorical and athletic analysis as we've come to expect from you.

Your point about the non-technical use of "picking" is spot on. But I'd push it further. What I think we see here is the irruption of emotion that can't be easily subdued into metaphor. The metaphor is designed to help codify and, I think, pacify her feelings, to make them suitable for a political press conference. But what she's feeling is essentially the exhausted plea of a spoiled six-year-old: "they're all PICKING ON ME, mommy!" And through a kind of metalepsis, because the metaphor of "picking" is used both of teasing and of basketball, it slides in here where it's not appropriate, creating a really wonderful solecism.

Your point about the shift from basketball to baseball in the last line is so great. This is what happens when you have no idea what the hell you are saying and are just somewhat randomly tossing together a cliche salad.

[Z]

Can you please do a rhetorical-analytical Fisking of the entire speech? Pretty pretty please? Instead of your other July writing?

[E!]

ha! as soon as i heard her say this i thought, "i can't wait to read dhawhee's post about it." for realsies.

cliché salad is extremely g.d. funny. reading that phrase was a breath of fresh air when you just can't take it any more because the chips have got you down and so you've got to grab at that brass ring of fresh chips--right off the old block, if you know what i mean.

i hate that woman so much? but i LOVE hating her, too.

[dhawhee]

Z: you are totally right about the picking. picking away! picking on me! and there isn't really available hoops language for what "those at the national level" are doing--trapping would make them look too good. E!: no joke. i love it so very, very much. the resignation makes me a wee bit sad in fact. i wonder if tina fey will go on snl to quit!

[Z]

"full court press from the national level" = AP top 25 journalists? Or is it the ESPN poll she's talking about? Whatever it is, we know it's "national level"--none of this division 2 crap.

[Aspasia]

I expect we haven't seen the last of Sarah Palin. Even though GWB was never featured in Runners' World he was as determinedly ignorant of world issues as is Ms. Palin, and was power-brokered into high office without any visible backlash, then or now.

Which reminds me: saw former Justice Sandra O'Connor on the tube a few days back complaining that nobody understands that the courts make law, and hence are not political. Meh.

Aspasia

[Ed Hawhee]

My take...

"eyes on the basket." (goal)
What goal?

"keeping your head up>" Up what? Hmm.
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