Palin's Tucson Rebuttal With the Sound Off: How Dare You!

Regardless how hard she tries to come off as reasoned — and she made a pretty fair attempt at it today, reading off the teleprompter you see reflected in her glasses — Sarah Palin can’t help but function in that very narrow emotional register alternating between greater or lesser shades of exasperation, offendedness, self-righteousness or anger.  The give-away — if you watch her in general, or if you watched her Tucson rebuttal video today with the sound off, as I did, several times — is the strain in her neck and that tight pursing of the lips (or the look of “just sayin’) she defaults to in pausing before the next volley. (I like that self-righteous frame the best where she’s pulled herself so high, there’s no oxygen left to inhale.)

If you have the chance to go through the video yourself, by the way, I’d be interested in any frame you can find that captures the kind of emotion the shooting of Rep. Giffords would naturally elicit right now, including sadness, compassion, and — given even the shared responsibility for an over-heated political atmosphere — regret.

Palin “Blood Libel” video.