What is the single worst sentence in Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue? According to Slate’s Going Rogue index, it comes on Page 102: “As the soles of my shoes hit the soft ground, I pushed past the tall cottonwood trees in a euphoric cadence, and meandered through willow branches that the moose munched on.” Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times didn’t have to read past the first paragraph for her nomination: “I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier.”
These sentences have the markings of what might be called the high Palin style (her writing, as opposed to her speeches): multiple references to local flora and fauna, heavy use of PSAT vocabulary, slightly defensive tone, difficult-to-parse meaning.
Do you think you can write like Sarah Palin? If so, we want to hear from you. The goal is to write a sentence that could be mistaken for one from her book. Keep it to a single sentence of fewer than 150 words and send your entry to writelikepalin@gmail.com by Wednesday. We’ll publish our favorites later in the week.
