Beam Me Up, Sarah: William Shatner Reads Palin's Exit Speech

Sarah Palin still hasn't announced what she will do now that she's no longer the governor of Alaska. Will she run for office? Host a TV show? Write a book? Take rifle and chopper to the skies in order to defend fellow Alaskans from the growing wolf threat? Who knows! Maybe she's missed her calling entirely and, rather than politics, her future lies in poetry—and maybe, if we're lucky, a partnership with the former Captain Kirk. 

William Shatner, hero of my youth, master of spoken-word weirdness, makes the case that Palin is a poet who didn't know it by reading a selection from her recent farewell speech:

 

Keep in mind that this an actual, unedited passage from her speech. Shatner flubs a word or two right around the bit about "ice fogged frigid beauty," but otherwise, this is lifted verbatim. Students of Washington are used to politicians who don't make sense, but this is rather more brazen than is typical. I think I have to agree with Gawker's Alex Pareene: Palin is growing steadily more incoherent as we watch. 

Still, there may be an upside: With luck, the discovery of her lyrical talents will end Palin's terrifying political career and usher in the happy day when aimless lit majors can spend four years puzzling over her "verbiage" in order to turn out papers with titles like "Gertrude Stein and Robert Frost: Sarah Palin's Poetic Lineage." 

Previously, I argued that Palin could be understood as a product of ambition, incoherence, and paranoia. In 2006, Tim Cavanaugh looked at how  Star Trek helped create fan culture. And in May, I reviewed this year's Star Trek reboot.

 

UPDATE: Took down the broken YouTube version, reposted as a Hulu clip.