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Opinion

Commentary: 'Refudiate' and the birth of ShakesPalin

Julia O'Malley - The Anchorage Daily News

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July 21, 2010 10:17 AM

Just when I thought no joke about our former governor would ever make me laugh, because, like most of you, I'm so tired of you-know-who I can't even bring myself to type her name and all related humor seems more played out than a Miley Cyrus song, there appeared, sometime on Monday, a phenomenon on Twitter known as ShakesPalin.

And it was kind of funny.

It's not news that She loves Twitter. The ex-Guv tweets 140-character rants and policy points all the time, complete with weird abbreviations and exclamation points. ShakesPalin's roots were planted during a Fox News appearance, something to do with the Tea Party and racism, where she allegedly used a made-up word — the linguistic love child of refute and repudiate — "refudiate."

That might have been a little nothing gaffe, brain-blip under the TV lights. But then, on Sunday, she used it again in a tweet about putting a mosque near Ground Zero. That gave the impression she didn't know it wasn't a word.

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And because she lives under a media microscope, the blogosphere caught hold of the Twitter mistake instantly. The offending post was soon deleted. But the mama grizzly didn't back down. Instead, @SarahPalinUSA picked up her BlackBerry and defiantly clicked away:

"Refudiate," "misunderestimate," "wee-wee'd up." English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!"

Don't ask me what "wee-wee'd up" means, but nonetheless there it was: America's most famous, elite-slamming hockey-mom comparing herself to Shakespeare.

Behold, good gentlemen and ladies, the birth of ShakesPalin.

To read the complete column, visit www.adn.com.

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