The political blogosphere, if it isn't already, will soon certainly start hashing out exactly what interpersonal Republican dynamics led to Karl Rove telling the UK's Telegraph that quitting governor and reality show host/contestant breeder Sarah Palin* and her career choices might lead the American people to believe she lacks the "gravitas" to be president.
Unfortunately, especially for those of us who are interested in the answer to that question being a resounding "Hell no!", Google's Hot Trends might help us guess the answer:
I've been told that earlier it was #1.
By the way, in case anybody else has come here looking for the definition, let me be servicey for you:
- dignity: formality in bearing and appearance; "he behaved with great dignity"
- Gravitas (from Latin) is a quality of substance or depth of personality.
- Seriousness in bearing or manner; dignity; substance, weight
- A sense of physical weight, the illusion of mass, the appearance of maturity or advanced age, and the elusive quality of dignity.
* Failed-Governor Palin was once "She Who Will Not Be Named" on this site. Unfortunately, she's not going away anytime soon.
UPDATE: Someone at Metafilter, where I learned about this, brought up the excellent point: should we make fun of those who don't know the defintion of words but also those who go through the trouble of looking it up. For that, I say 'touche' and I stand corrected. It's a crass thing to do, even if many of those people would be the same that would say "dont' come to America if you don't know English."
I just hope that those who have looked up the word because they are being told by Palin-adoring bloggers that they should be outraged take that opportunity to look at the reality show hosting and the Facebook misspellings and think of gravitas like pornography: I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it (and it's something that I want)
