So it's ok for everyone else to mock the President of the United States while we are at war against terror, but it's wrong for me to stick up for him? Ok, I get it now....
What's Your Favorite Bushism?
- Thread starter Fraggle Rocker
- Start date
So it's ok for everyone else to mock the President of the United States while we are at war against terror, but it's wrong for me to stick up for him? Ok, I get it now....
How does our mocking the president's speech impediments harm the War Effort™? Or are you saying, perhaps, that we shouldn't hurt the president's feelings?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Athel is right. It's not treasonous to point out a leader's faults, unless you live in a dictatorship and he makes up his own laws. It's certainly not treasonous to criticize the conduct of a so-called "war" if it has not even been properly declared, and that's a fair assertion to make on the Linguistics board. It's also fair on the Linguistics board to assert that by definition a president must be a diplomat, and the most important tool of a diplomat is language, so a person who lacks expertise in that tool is not well qualified for the position. We're lucky that many key world leaders don't speak English so they only hear the cleaned-up professional translations.
It's also fair to note that if this were a true speech "impediment," which is regarded as a medical condition, it would be at least politically incorrect, if not actually treasonous, to make fun of it in any person. But this does not have the consistency and pattern of a speech impediment. It's just a failure to have mastered the English language, or a failure to pay attention to what he's saying because it's not important enough to him to bother getting it right even when billions of people are listening.
You're welcome to pursue this debate so long as it has at least a vague tie-in to linguistics. But to say we shouldn't criticize a man because he's a member of your church--when that's not even the reason we're criticizing him!--is getting way off topic.
What?
I never said W was a member of my church. He's not. I'm just saying the whole "Bushism" mockery is sick. We're at war. Where is the patriotism? Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
You did indeed:What?
Did you not mean "Christian" by "man of God"? Just like you?
Being loyal to one's country is not the same as being loyal to its leader, even in a democracy. To tie this into linguistics, this is not the U.K., where "queen" and "country" are syntactically equivalent.
And the only reason we are "at war" is because he says so and because he has deployed troops. Again, to make sure this is a linguistic issue, it can be argued that the word "war," to be properly used in affairs of state, means a conflict between two nations, or the special case of "civil war" between two formally identified parts of one nation. A war has important formalities that are necessary to defining its boundaries and its termination, including truces, treaties and prisoner exchanges. This may be many things, but it is not a war any more than our incursion into Vietnam was war. That does not intrinsically make them right or wrong, but it certainly changes the way they are conducted. Words are important, I think everyone in this subforum will agree with that assertion.
"Patriotism" is love or devotion to one's country. It does not imply that one agrees to stand mute and passive when the leaders of one's country do wrong. We already went through this forty years ago; you're just too young to remember. Again, to bring in linguistics, the bumper sticker, "My country, right or wrong," was emphatically rejected as an expression of patriotism.
Asguard, you're not helping. Please try to confine your comments to the topic of the thread, or at the very least to a linguistic issue. Sandy has objected to our insulting the president and as moderator I have ruled that our insults must be limited to those that bear on linguistic issues. Please heed that ruling. We have an entire subforum for political debates.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
No, that's okay. I mean we should talk about his language, not who taught him to tie his shoes, that's all.
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Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
That's always possible I suppose. But in that case by American standards it's fair game to make fun of the condition if it's not the result of illness, birth defect or other bad luck.
Please pursue that argument on the Politics board unless you're preparing to tie it into linguistics.
I'm not normally so fussy about discussions veering off topic because we need some bulk to keep this board busy. I have personally inserted posts on biology and history when I thought they would be of parallel interest to the participants in a discussion. But when we get into subjects like partisan politics that are highly emotional and controversial, it changes the nature of the board and we don't need that. I've got some pretty outspoken opinions on a variety of subjects as most of you know, but I try to stifle them here.
"I don't particularly like it when people put words in my mouth, either, by the way, unless I say it." --George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, Nov. 10, 2007
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.''
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."
:roflmao:
"They misunderestimated me."
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.''
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."
:roflmao:
"They misunderestimated me."
Lol, never thought about that. Thank goodness for translations!
It's not a speech impediment, it's called wearing an earpiece and having trouble listening to what his masters are telling him while paying attention to the press corp. This is what GWB would sound like if he was actually preaching his own beliefs, not his masters:
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20060206_bush_dementia/
Here's a couple more Bushisms I find amusing:
"I fully understand those who say you can't win this thing militarily. That's exactly what the United States military says, that you can't win this military." —on the need for political progress in Iraq, Washington, D.C., Oct. 17, 2007
"I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that." —discussing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as quoted by the Sun newspaper, June 27, 2007
- N
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
That's quite a serious accusation. Please take it to the Politics board because I don't see how it belongs in Linguistics. To try to put a linguistic spin on it: anyone who has made his way up through as many levels of politics as it takes to run for president has had plenty of practice in compromising, and in supporting positions that are not his own favorites. If he is being "handled" he would be well-versed in the positions that his handlers want him to espouse, and be able to explain them as if they were his own. He might need prompting on a few difficult questions, but not as often as he stumbles over his words.
I watched the clips and read the accompanying article. The article and the clip captions say this points to pre-senile dementia or "early Alzheimers" rather than "acid-flashbacks," "cirrhosis of the brain" or puppetry by the "oiligarchy." (Nice word, I like that!
) We can speculate about these other possibilities but please let's do it on the Politics board, not Linguistics. He's a public figure so we're free to be rude, irreverent Americans and make fun of his speech even if it's the result of an unfortunate medical condition.Please let's limit this thread to that. Don't make me sorry I started it.
Ah yes, sorry about that.fraggle said:
You'll note it was in extension and reply to one of your own comments - showing how difficult this line is to walk.
dubyaspeaks.com is I believe the authoritative repository, complete with archives searchable by category, of examples - it's hard to pick favorites.
But I think I mentioned before that some of the most arresting (for me) are those delivered to foreign dignitaries upon semi-formal occasions of state, and part of their charm is imagining the translator's dealing with them. It's not quite as simple as this
might imply.nieldo said:
Which brings me to a request: Does anyone have a source for back-translations ? I mean rerenderings into English of on-the-spot foreign translations of some of W's wanderings from the paths of grammar and sense?
If anyone has played Babelpong (bouncing a phrase back and forth through an online translation service) you may know what I am anticipating.
Does anyone watch the late show on channel 10 in australia? (its one of those american comady shows but i cant think which one off the top of my head)
I love how they have the segment on speaches from the presidents
They play all these inspiring speaches from former presidents (on both sides) and then finish with what stupid thing bush said today
Its kind of a sad refection on US literacy if its truly representive
I love how they have the segment on speaches from the presidents
They play all these inspiring speaches from former presidents (on both sides) and then finish with what stupid thing bush said today
Its kind of a sad refection on US literacy if its truly representive
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Who is the emcee ("master of ceremonies")?
It depends on how you measure literacy. If it's just the percentage of the population who can communicate effectively by reading and writing, our rate has risen steadily over the past 150 years like all industrialized nations. But we're nowhere near the top of the list; Wikipedia puts us in a sixteen-way tie for #21, at 99.0%. However Russia and Japan are the only other giant world leaders that are ahead of us, the rest are all little places like Finland, Cuba and Tajikistan.
But if you're referring to level of literacy, we suck. The average U.S. university graduate reads at what my generation called the sixth-grade level (12-year-old children). Many of our government-run universities now offer classes in remedial English for entering students--and they do not target immigrants. Americans can read advertisements and instruction booklets for the latest cellphone. For many of them the rest of their written communication is limited to a 500-word vocabulary of text-messaging abbreviations, and I stand by the wonderful observation by a character on "The Boondocks": "Nothing worth reading was ever written by a person typing with his thumbs."
Even though newspapers restrict themselves to a rather small vocabulary (I haven't seen the figure but I'd guess around 10,000 words, a rating of 8 on my powers-of-three fluency scale), many Americans can't read fast enough for reading to have any advantage over spoken language. As a result they all get The News For People Who Can't Read: television. Abbreviated, digested, selected, and it comes complete with directions for how to feel about it.
He is talking about David Letterman.
It's not a great show but the Presidential speeches segment is very funny.
Bush's ability to get tongue-tied, confused and to appear flat out stupid is quite disturbing.
The axis of stupidity...I mean "shtoopidness..err shtoopitatea...err..I ain't gonna continue this conversat..err interview..I mean addresh to ther nation any longer" * Bush makes indecipherable two handed gesture indicating something between total confusion and abject stupidity..then trails off mumbling incoherently and finishes with God Bless American.*