ventura“You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.” With that line, former Gov. Jesse Ventura cemented a place for himself alongside U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, rapper Kanye West, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on The Yale Book of Quotations editor’s list of the top ten quotes of the year.

Ventura may round out the list by at number 10, but his is one of only two quotes that Yale librarian and editor Fred R. Shapiro picked from the first half of the year. And Ventura demonstrated his ticket on the vanguard of the zeitgeist is still good. His somewhat dated reference to the Sharon Tate murders, which likely meant little to many who heard it, was made more current by the recent arrest of film director Roman Polanksi (in Europe, on a separate conviction), who was Tate’s husband at the time of her death.

Then again, fans of Palin’s husband Todd resurrected the name of Tate’s true murderer at a “Sportsmen for Coleman: rally in Northern Minnesota during the 2008 presidential campaign.