The politics of the Sarah Palin wink

Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin gives a wink and a thumbs-up at a rally in Virginia Beach, Va. Times staffer Faye Fiore writes of Palin's winking: Research shows that ambiguous gestures like a wink are risky on a close-up medium such as television, particularly when aimed at an audience that the speaker wants to persuade, said Erik Bucy, an expert in nonverbal communications at Indiana University.