Jive Talkin’

I tried to watch the Veep debate, I really did. I played Palin Bingo, and was a single “Working Mom” away from winning when she delivered the punchy soundbite she’d set up the minute she walked on the stage and asked Senator Biden if she could call him Joe. That zinger, that you know McSame pundits just pissed themselves over was this: “Say it ain’t so, Joe”.

“Say it ain’t so” is a line from baseball legend, the apocryphal tale of a small fan asking Shoeless Joe Jackson if he had, in fact, been involved in the plot for the Chicago White Sox to throw the 1919 World Series. Yeah. 1919. Except for baseball junkies, and movie goers who saw the film “Eight Men Out” (which was the movie we went to see the night the Anti Christ and I split, and he moved out, and which, in my head will forever be “Nine Men Out”), who knows what that phrase referenced? In terms of archaic humor, this little guy is a whiz-banger. Twenty-three skidoo!

Next, instead of saying “yer darn tootin’” or one of her other patented down-homey colloquialisms, Ms. Palin will be exclaiming that her running mate is the bee’s knees. I can’t wait to see them cut a rug, maybe doing the Turkey Trot or the Charleston. Good lord, how pathetic is this? And they’re claiming that Obama and Biden are out of touch? Let’s practice speaking McSame, shall we?

“That Sarah Palin is a bearcat in cheaters.”

“She tried to sound like she knew her onions, but it was all a load of chewing gum.”

“John McCain is a flyboy who keeps saying things are jake, but he can tell that to Sweeney.”

Your turn. To help, a list of Jazz Age slang can be found here.