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Friday, January 28, 2011
An Obamacy of Dunces
12 comments:
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Kristophr said...
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Good political speeches use few words.
They need to hit emotions, and not reason.
The current crop of politicos are just starting to discover this, is all.
Expect to see more Leni Riefenstahl, and less Patrick Henry in the future. -
1/28/11, 2:32 PM
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Anonymous said...
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While I certainly am not an Obama supporter - in fact I think he is the worst thing to ever happen to this country - you misunderstand the significance of this score. Bad communicators have HIGH scores; good communicators have lower scores. I wrote an article published in law school journal that Florida should adopt a law requiring all ballot measures be written on an 8.5 grade level reading score (Flesch score of 70, if I recall); the reason, the average reading level in the U.S. is 8th grade. Things that even intelligent people have difficulty understanding -- the IRS code, law journals, etc. -- are difficult to understand because of their high grade level; they use long-sentences and multi-syllabic words. GK Chesterton stated it best in Orthodoxy:
Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say "The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment," you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin "I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out," you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."
Thus, while I can't stand Obama, you can't deny he can communicate (or "place under spell") well, and a strong part of that is using simple words. Conservatives could learn a lesson from that.
Its interesting as an aside to note that W was very plain spoken, too. But that is by nature -- he is a plain, unpretentious, simple (in a complimentary way) good person; Obama's is all contrived -- he has learned, unlike many affirmative action types, that flaunting language (which they often don't understand) doesn't help get your message across even if it stokes once pride. -
1/28/11, 2:38 PM
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toadold said...
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Regan was well known for taking a speech written for him and rewriting it into a shorter form both in length of words and the number of words. Hemingway would also write then edit his own stuff down.
Obama on the other hand starts from piffle and thus ends up with piffle light, "A thousand points of trite." His Wax The Furniture slogan for instance, WTF? -
1/28/11, 3:30 PM
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Anonymous said...
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If you think thats bad, wait until the electioneering starts next year and he down-shifts to ebonics.
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1/28/11, 3:33 PM
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clem said...
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Once you've dumbed-down the curricula and tests, you get dumbed-down people, and you have to dumb down your speeches for them.
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1/28/11, 4:12 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Are they counting the "umms", because that would increase the words per sentence.
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1/28/11, 5:01 PM
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Hodja said...
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http://hodja.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/pat-condell-om-mohammedanmark/
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1/28/11, 5:39 PM
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I-RIGHT-I said...
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"Thus, while I can't stand Obama, you can't deny he can communicate (or "place under spell") well, and a strong part of that is using simple words. Conservatives could learn a lesson from that."
God forbid that "conservative" candidates come to believe that "We" are as stupid as our enemies. 'Wanna see the shit hit the fan? -
1/28/11, 7:51 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Pat Buchanan borrowed this quote to characterize Obama's 2011 SOTU speech.
"An army of pompous phrases marching across the landscape in search of an idea."
-- William Gibbs McAdoo comment about Warren Harding
Boneshaker -
1/28/11, 7:54 PM
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Anonymous said...
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BTW -
How many noticed that there was little or nothing in the SOTU speech about the state of the union?
It was just more Hopey-Changey and unicorn farts.
Boneshaker -
1/28/11, 7:58 PM
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Rodger the Real King of France said...
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On second look, I see an uninterrupted incremental decline from Kennedy to Obama. Could it be that politicians are simply adjusting downward, to the lowest common denominator?
How else do we explain where we've come from expectations a century ago? Confiscatory taxation caused stay at home moms to go out and work; and a subsequent lowering of time available to monitor homework, etc. But most important are Liberal educators, whose goal is equality of outcome that's dumbed everyone down (and made possible today's Democrat party). Solution? Ditch the income tax and shoot the educators (in the good way). -
1/28/11, 11:42 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Agree with (Anon 1/28/11 2:38 PM) that a trend away from pretension and obfuscation is a good thing. Disagree that "W" was plain spoken because he was a simple thinker.
- Kerry had nothing to say, so he hid his lack of meaning in fluff.
- Obama is merely a rabble-rouser, using speech and policy to create an emotional appeal despite the disasters he's creating
- W has well researched opinions that he vetted with experts but then explained in simple terms. (I disagree with his outcomes on immigration, entitlements, and non-discretionary funding, but feel his foreign policy will be viewed as the second coming of Reagan within ten years.)
As another data point, I rely on my English-as-a-second-language wife, who gets annoyed at Clinton/Kerry/Obama meaningless emotional appeals but found Bush to be plain spoken but full of substance.
jr in wv -
1/29/11, 8:53 AM
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