William Shatner Performs Sarah Palin's "Poetry"

Last night, on The Tonight Show, William Shatner performed a section of former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin's farewell address:



Having only watched brief clips of Palin's resignation speech I thought to myself, there is no way that Shatner read that verbatim from her speech. I mean, her resignation announcement was a bit of a rambling mess, but what Shatner read was borderline nonsense.

Well, he did take that verbatim from Palin's speech. You can read the transcript here and I will post the videos to her speech below a few highlights from the transcript:

OK, today is a beautiful day and today as we swear in Sean Parnell, no one will be happier than I to witness by God's grace Alaskans with strength of character advancing our beloved state. Sean has that. Craig Campbell has that. I remember on that December day, we took the oath to uphold our state constitution, and it was written right here in Fairbanks by very wise pioneers. We shared the vision for government that they ground in that document. Our founders wrote "all political power is inherent in the people. All government originates with the people. It's founded upon their will only and it's instituted for the good of the people as a whole." Their remarkably succinct words guided us in all of our efforts in serving you and putting you first, and we have done our best to fulfill promises that I made on Alaska Day, 2005, when I first asked for the honor of serving you.

[...]

Alaskans will remember that years ago, remember we sported the old bumper sticker that said, "Alaska. We Don't Give a Darn How They Do It Outside?" Do you remember that? I remember that, and remember it was because we would be different. We'd roll up our sleeves, and we would diligently sow and reap, and we can still do this to carve wealth out of the wilderness and make our living on the water, with strong hands and innovative minds, now with smarter technology. It is what our first people and our parents did. It worked, because they worked. We must be prudent and persistent and press for the people's right to responsibly develop God-given resources for the maximum benefit of the people.

and her supporters eat this stuff up. Her speeches are a mix of barely intelligible random thoughts and carefully placed zingers that make the crowd go nuts.