Last night, Sarah Palin used “bless” and its cognates three times, in three distinctly different ways. From last to first:
3. “I’ve been there. I know what the hurts are. I know what the challenges are. And, thank God, I know what the joys are, too, of living in America. We are so blessed. And I’ve always been proud to be an American.” This is the standard acknowledgment of God’s blessings, straight out of church.
2. “You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?” This is “God bless” in the sense of “I couldn’t do that in a million years.”
1.”And that’s why Tillerson at Exxon and Mulva at ConocoPhillips, bless their hearts, they’re doing what they need to do, as corporate CEOs, but they’re not my biggest fans, because what I had to do up there in Alaska was to break up a monopoly up there and say, you know, the people are going to come first and we’re going to make sure that we have value given to the people of Alaska with those resources.” This is the classic evangelical woman’s way of signaling a put-down of a third party; as in: “That Sarah, bless her heart, she couldn’t tell the truth if her life depended on it.”