Sarah Palin’s Cherished Words and Phrases

by Liz Colville

I’m not sure Sarah Palin’s book can actually top her recent episode of verbal finger-painting, “I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism,” but the surprising and satisfyingly unsurprising word tics in America By Heart have their moments.

Salon has compiled a pretty comprehensive list, with the top slots apparently going to God (100 mentions), Ronald Reagan (33 mentions), and Barack Obama (32 mentions). There is also:

“city on a hill” — 6
“Mr. Smith goes to Washington” — 5
“freedom isn’t free” — 3
“lame stream media” — 1

Crazily, Martin Luther King, Jr. is mentioned nine times, and John Kerry is mentioned an entire five times. Also, Palin mentions Calvin Coolidge a relative ton, calling him “one of our most overlooked presidents.”