Here's lookin' at you, America: Sarah Palin

Here's lookin' at you, America: Sarah Palin aims to charm debate audience with a wink - or five

Friday, October 3rd 2008, 5:40 PM
Applewhite/AP
A wink can mean many things, depending on the person doing the winking - in Sarah Palin's case, it took on a 'It's you and me against the world' vibe.
Is Sarah Palin flirting with America?
The GOP veep pick winked at the camera at least five times during Thursday's debate with Joe Biden, raising more than a few eyebrows among campaign and body language gurus.
"Wasn't that interesting," said Patti Brown, author of "Success Signals."
The wink can be many things to many people, she explained, depending on the winker.
From women, it can be a flirty, even steamy invitation when delivered in certain contexts.
From men, it can by anything from downright lecherous to quaint and endearing, a kind of ocular smile.
But the Palin wink, as deployed by the 44-year-old Alaska governor, is another popular variant - the knowing, we're-sharing-a-little-secret wink.
One example came after Biden hit GOP nominee John McCain for saying the fundamentals of the economy were "strong," even as Wall Street teetered on the brink of collapse.
Palin fired back that McCain was talking about American workers and their strong work ethic, then added, "That's a positive. That's encouragement (wink!). And that's what John McCain meant."
"What she was doing was saying, 'Hey, I am in this with you, it's about you and me middle America, and these guys like Biden just don't know that' " Brown said.
"It's a good tactic if you want to break down barriers and say, 'I am like one of you,' and that's pretty much her whole message," added Lesley Jane Seymour, editor of More magazine, a lifestyle magazine for women over 40. "It's a little folksy, and I am sure she worked on it beforehand."
Palin saved one of her winks for her dad, seated in the front row, a clear peck-on-the-cheek from afar.
But not everyone thought the winks were so chaste.
By early Friday, a video popped up on YouTube video stringing together three of Palin's debate winks, and set them to country singer Neil McCoy's jokey ode, "Wink" ("Don't need to psychoanalyze or have a stiff drink, All she's gotta do is just give me that wink").
"Something tells me that Tina Fey is standing in front of a mirror winking right now," one viewer commented.