Monday, December 07, 2009
From pastoral lyricism to unlikely metaphors, Slate received a wide range of entries for its “Write Like Sarah Palin” contest, held in honor of the popular Republican’s memoir, Going Rogue, which included this real excerpt about her husband: "That day in sunny Texas when the divorce rumors were rampant in the tabloids, I watched Todd, tanned and shirtless, take the baby from my arms and walk him back to the ranch house so Trig could nap while I made calls. Seeing Todd's blue eyes smiling, I chuckled. Dang, I thought. Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd?”
After reviewing 700 responses, the online magazine awarded first place to Ann Sensenbrenner, the wife of Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle’s spokesman, Lee Sensenbrenner. Here is her winning entry:
“One night after a long day of campaigning, when the haters had made my spirits reach a nadir, I looked into Todd’s eyes, which were as blue as the stripes on Old Glory, and too representing truth and loyalty, and he looked back at me with a twinkle of determination which I hadn’t seen since I told him my goal of having another baby in my fifties and naming it Tron, then did I know for sure that I could carry on, like he, and we, have done together all of these years on this long, Iron Dog race of a marriage that is at once grueling and celestial, onerous and majestic.”
Second prize went to Steve Aydt for his entry: “Here’s a little news flash for your Department of Media: Superman’s parents chose life and he was adopted in small-town USA by real Americans who run our factories, harvest our meat-bearing animals, and wave Old Glory down at the courthouse and the churches, not in Washington D.C. by cynical power-brokers and liberal scientists.”
Among the runners-up was this sentence from Kaylyn Munro: "The minute I was on that stage in Florida with all those lights in my eyes and the smell of Alaska still on my fingertips and my family, too, all around out there, I was where I dreamed of all those years on the basketball court and in Alaskas's God given beauty which we must cherish and use as God gave it us to use and in honor of the troops, also."
Of course it’s hard for others to catch the true flavor of the real Sarah Palin, who included this take on the animal kingdom in chapter 3 of Going Rogue: “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come he made them out of meat? I always remind people from outside our state that there's plenty of room for all Alaska's animals - right next to the mashed potatoes. ”
-David Wallechinsky
You Betcha: Madisonian's Faux Palin Wins Writing Competition (by Matthew DeFour, Wisconsin State Journal)
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