Main
Language Archives
God Bless Mike Huckabee
Two people have now elevated themselves thanks to Rev. Wright and his tirades.
One, of course, is Barack Obama.
The other is Mike Huckabee, who (as I see via Andrew Sullivan and others) dared speak as a human being rather than as an on-message apparatchik in his comments about Obama and Wright. More specifically, he spoke as a "hate the sin, love the sinner" Christian, as a preacher who has delivered extemporized sermons of his own, and as a white product of the segregated South who did not blind himself to how that world would look if he were black. Consider and be in awe of this:
And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..."
And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
Actual honest and empathetic discussion about race...! We've come to expect that presidential campaigns will be the equivalent of World War I trench slaughter, in which there is a "winner" at the Somme but really everyone loses and it's a matter of who is farthest from being bled dry at the end. But the idea of actual discourse about real issues -- it would be nice to think that it could happen.
It was a moment like this that first drew John McCain to my attention as a politician, nearly 30 years ago.
Continue reading "God Bless Mike Huckabee" »
Instant reaction to Obama's speech from other side of the world
I didn't mean to stay up so late to see this speech -- have to get up in a few hours for a hinterland trip -- but I am glad I did.
This was as good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney's speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy's famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.
A reminder of a non-obvious but crucial principle in speechwriting. Make the language simple, clear, vivid, and comprehensible -- of course. But never, never talk down.
Will this defuse the Rev. Wright issue? Who knows what cable news will make of the speech. But it was a great moment, to which Barack Obama rose.
(Update: while considering just staying up until the hinterland trek, I will correct the preceding sentence. It was a moment that Obama made great through the seriousness, intelligence, eloquence, and courage of what he said. I don't recall another speech about race with as little pandering or posturing or shying from awkward points, and as much honest attempt to explain and connect, as this one.)
This is not, in itself, reason to oppose a candidate....
... but Hillary Clinton is plummeting rock-like to the bottom of the crucial "boiled frog" primary.
I still have not seen any evidence of Barack Obama using this hackneyed, heartless, and flat-out ignorant formulation. ("You throw a frog into a pot of boiling water....")
That is, he has not used it, "as far as I know."
John McCain? Again, as far as I know, he is boiled-frog-free.
But Senator Clinton goes there again and again.
When Senator Obama wants to start fighting tough on the stump, the path is clear. "Senator McCain has a lifetime of resisting boiled-frog idiocy. I have a lifetime of resisting boiled-frog idiocy. Senator Clinton has her boiled-frog speech."
(As promised for months, results of the exciting "come up with a replacement for the boiled frog cliche" contest will be announced any day now.)
On plagiarism
The "plagiarism" flap over Barack Obama is bogus and overstated. It makes me think worse about whoever is pushing this complaint, rather than about Obama himself.
Continue reading "On plagiarism" »
The State of the Union, now with Gouverneur Morris!
For the fifth exciting year in a row, line-by-line commentary on President Bush's State of the Union speech here. Previous installments:
2004
2005
2006
2007
Last year, Dikembe Mutumbo. This year, Gouverneur Morris! All the details, including why this speech ended with the three most dreaded words in presidential rhetoric, here.
Why I won't end up voting for Ron Paul (updated!)
The Daily Paul has a ringing new endorsement, based on.... the (cliched+ignoramus) boiled-frog principle!!!
I've heard more and more people on the forums wondering why the average Joe out there just ~doesn't get it~. Here is an analogy that I use when talking to people to get the point across... it's odd, but it works.
Take a frog and throw it into a pot of boiling water. It'll jump out as quickly as possible! Take the same frog, put it in a pot of cold water, and heat it up slowly... it will sit in the water until it dies. (I've not had the heart to bench test this theory, I'm just going with what I was told.)
Close readers will recall that Hillary Clinton also went in for boiled-frog balderdash before her defeat in Iowa. As far as I can tell, she's steered clear ever since -- and look at the results! Maybe this is what people mean when they say the Clintons will do whatever it takes to win. If only the Paul team had her discipline....
(Thanks to Dylan Matthews. And note to any sincere Ron Paul supporters who come across this item: I actually have a lot of sympathy and admiration for his role in this campaign. This is less about him than about my ongoing lament over the moron-ization of American political rhetoric. Update! Judging from recent entries in my email inbox, I guess I need to make something a little bit clearer. This post is not really about Ron Paul. It is a what we English-speakers refer to as a "tongue in cheek" reference to a bit of political bombast I am determined to shame people out of using: the inaccurate "boiled frog" story. Sometimes the term used is, "a little joke." No offense meant to Paul-dom!)
A distraction from New Hampshire news
For a little glimpse of life in a not-quite-new apartment building in Beijing, and as a way to pass the time while the NH vote comes in, see if you can guess why my wife and I are spending so much time studying sites like this one.
(OK, if you don't want to click, it's about how to tell if you're being poisoned in your dwelling by sewer gas. Ah, the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent!)
For further amusement and distraction, feel free to tell your friends that in China the overnight news will cover primary voting in the state called 新罕布什尔 or sometimes 新罕布夏, xin hanbushier or xin hanbuxia. Yes, those are two versions of "New Hampshire," the second apparently with a Boston accent.
The NYT introduces a wordsmith
Wow.
Suppose you had just received one of the most important opportunities in opinion journalism: a regular op-ed column in the New York Times. Suppose it was all the more important because it gave you a base in what would normally be considered enemy territory, right there alongside Paul Krugman and Frank Rich and the NYT's own editorials. Suppose your debut column came at a moment of peak political excitement, with the surprise of the Iowa caucuses just behind us and the New Hampshire primaries one day away.
In those circumstances, would this be the best you could come up with for the very first paragraphs of your very first column? It is what the new NYT columnist William Kristol has offered to introduce himself:
Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you.
But gratitude for sparing us a third Clinton term only goes so far. Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat. Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.
I'm saying nothing about the content here. Indeed the subject -- how the GOP should run against Barack Obama -- is one on which readers would want to hear a well-connected Republican's views.
I am talking instead about the breathtaking banality of expression.
Continue reading "The NYT introduces a wordsmith" »
Maybe this is why Hillary lost in Iowa? (Boiled-frog dept)
A head start for the historians: Perhaps it was because in the final weekend of campaigning she fell back on that hoariest and most boneheaded of political cliches, the boiled-frog canard?*
“If you want to boil a frog, don’t put it in hot water because it will jump right out,” she said. “You put it in cold water and then turn up the heat gradually and it’s a goner.”
Mrs. Clinton punctuates the parable by declaring that “we have got to figure out how not to be the frog in cold water.”
OK. But we have also got to figure out how, for the sake of scientific accuracy, freshness in language, and the dignity of the poor frogs, we can stop talking about them in this heartless and formulaic way. (By the way, minus points to the New York Times for reporting the episode as if Sen. Clinton were using a clever image.) Soon, I will release the results of the contest to find other words to get across the point that people can get used to slowly worsening circumstances that would shock them if confronted all at once.
If you're ready for more on the topic, try this, this, this, this, and this. And I'm an equal-opportunity frog defender: I'm picking on Hillary Clinton at the moment because she's the only one I've noticed picking on the frogs.
* Yes, yes, I understand the irony of using canard to describe a tale about les grenouilles
The essential exchange of the New Hampshire Democrats' debate
It involved Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, on the power of words in presidential leadership.
Each made his or her respective point clearly, calmly, and appealingly. This was not an ambush or a gotcha or a gaffe or an unintentionally revealing quicksilver exchange. It was the expression of thought-through and well expressed views. And on the merits I think it left the Clinton camp at a terrible disadvantage.
Clinton, after pointing out that Obama voted for an energy bill that was full of the special-interest tax breaks he now criticizes in speeches:
So you know, words are not actions.
And as beautifully presented and passionately felt as they are, they are not action. You know, what we've got to do is translate talk into action and feeling into reality. I have a long record of doing that, of taking on the very interests that you have just rightly excoriated because of the overdue influence that they have in our government. And you know, probably nobody up here has been the subject of more incoming fire from the Republicans and the special interests, so I think I know exactly what I'm walking into and I am prepared to take them on.
Then, after an appeal by John Edwards to the Teddy Roosevelt tradition of head-on trust-busting, this response from Obama:
Look, I think it's easier to be cynical and just say, "You know what, it can't be done because Washington's designed to resist change." But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we're in one of those moments right now. I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes -- not incremental changes, not small changes....
[T]he truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.
Of course each of them was right. Each expressed part of the job of a president, or any leader. Words and deeds. Talk and action. Poetry and prose. Presidents obviously do best when they can do both.
But only Obama captured what is unique about a president's role. A President's actions matter -- Lyndon Johnson with his legislation, Richard Nixon with his opening to China -- but lots of other people can help shape policies. A President's words often matter more, and only he -- or she -- can express them. Grant led the Union Army, but Abraham Lincoln, in addition to selecting Grant, wrote and delivered his inaugural and Gettysburg addresses. Long before Franklin Roosevelt actually did anything about the Great Depression, his first inaugural address ("the only thing we have to fear...") was important in itself. The same was true of Winston Churchill just after he succeeded Neville Chamberlain. It would be years before the Nazi advance would be contained, but Churchill's words and bearing were indispensable to Britain's recovery.
Certainly Hillary Clinton knows this. And she knows the political record of poetry-vs-prose matchups in the past. Kennedy vs. Nixon. Carter vs. Ford (yes, Carter was a man of healing-America poetry in those days). Reagan vs. Mondale. And of course the first Candidate Clinton against his Democratic rival Paul Tsongas and then against the first President Bush. She is playing the hand she holds, but it's worse than the other hand.
One extra thought on this point, from Jimmy Carter himself. This is the way he described the words-vs-action tension in the major speech that laid out his human rights policy, the commencement address at Notre Dame in 1977. I am partial to this formulation, because I was involved in putting it together. But I think it, like Obama's comment, is closer to what Americans expect of their president than what Hillary Clinton has been left with, the "let me handle the details" appeal. Especially what they'll expect of the next president:
We live in a world that is imperfect and which will always be imperfect--a world that is complex and confused and which will always be complex and confused.I understand fully the limits of moral suasion. We have no illusion that changes will come easily or soon.
But I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue the power of words and of the ideas that words embody. In our own history, that power has ranged from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream."
More on foreigners and their exotic tongues
Two reader reactions to my bemusement about Germans taking me for one of their own:
1) From Ward Wilson, of Trenton, NJ:
My friend Richard - a wonderful big Mississippian with a civil-war beard
and a slow drawl went to Paris to play classical saxophone. You know
they always say that thing about "If you just /try/ to speak their
language, they'll appreciate it and everything will go so much more
smoothly"?
Richard went into a corner patisserie or something and said to the
beefy, angry-looking Frenchman behind the glass case: "Ave vous . . . un
. . . croisant du . . . chocolat?" You have to imagine this done
haltingly in a heavy Mississippi drawl.
The big Frenchman leans toward him, hands on the glass case and says, "Spick Anglish! Do nut /waste/ mah tahm!"
2) From Mike Schilling, of the East Bay area in NoCal:
True story: I was out for a walk in Amsterdam and discovered that I was a bit lost. I stopped a passerby to ask directions to the Rembrandt museum.
“Excuse me, do you happen to speak English?”
(*very* irately) “Of course! I went to school!”
Continue reading "More on foreigners and their exotic tongues" »
Stop the Madness! (Gail Collins, Hillary Clinton, and Boiled Frogs)
From Gail Collins in Saturday's New York Times:
The Democratic Party seems to be gradually acclimating itself to the idea that Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee. It’s a little like that frog in a beaker of water that Al Gore talks about in his global warming speech — the one who won’t notice he’s being boiled to death if you turn up the heat ever so gradually.
NO NO NO NO NO!
I'm not talking about the politics of the thing*. I'm talking about the poor frog. Ms. Collins may be off the hook in attributing the frog metaphor to Al Gore -- he used it in An Inconvenient Truth, and he keeps right on using it. But he is flat wrong -- right on Global Warming, wrong on Amphibian Warming -- and so is everybody else who tries to explain things this way.
Summary of the undisputed science on this point: If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will either die or else be so badly hurt it will wish that it were dead. If you put it in a pot of tepid water and turn on the heat, the frog will climb out -- if it can -- as soon as it gets uncomfortably warm.
Continue reading "Stop the Madness! (Gail Collins, Hillary Clinton, and Boiled Frogs)" »
More on Burma v. Myanmar
A reader in Yangon/Rangoon says this about the "Burma" v. "Myanmar" question:
In your article you miss one critical point.
Burma was the name given by the British, and is a corruption of Bamar. The Bamar people are the ethnic majority of the lowland areas of the country, referred to as divisions eg, Yangon Division, Bago Division, Mandalay Division. The other parts of the country are known as States, where other ethnic groups form the majority eg Chin State, Shan State, Karen State each named after majority ethnic group.
Therefore, to insist on calling the country Burma (Bamar) falls into the trap of Bamar nationalism, identifiable not just to Military but to the NLD as well, but always to the exclusion and the expense of the many other ethnic groups.
Unfortunately, Burmese nationalism has been a problem in the country for centuries (and made worse under the British policy of divide and rule), and unless the more inclusive Myanmar is used will continue to be so no matter who is in charge.
If you decide to use this info, please attribute it to ANON in Yangon (the historically correct name for Rangoon), and be assured I am not a stooge, but have friends here from pretty much every community !
Actually we don't disagree. As I said the first time around, within Burma there have been serious arguments for years about what the country should call itself, to reflect the relations among its component ethnic groups. If Burma wants to call itself Myanmar for internal purposes, no outsider should object.
But as for the name outsiders use, here is the plain fact: nearly 20 years ago the brutal SLORC commandos insisted on the change to Myanmar as a way of aggrandizing and legitimizing themselves and of suggesting a Year Zero, history-starts-with-us outlook on the country. There is no reason for outsiders to go along with them, especially now.
I still hate pinyin, but I gave the wrong example
(Updated)
My hatred for pinyin, the convention for rendering Chinese words in Western script, is undiminished. But a little while ago I used the wrong example to make the point. As readers Jake Fleming, Joshua Rosenzweig, James Roy, and others promptly pointed out, the Western spelling Urumqi, for a city's name that most Chinese pronounce approximately wu-lu-mu-chi, illustrates complications other than pinyin-ization.
Urumqi (it turns out!) is the Uighur spelling of the city's Uighur Mongolian* name, the Uighurs being a mainly-Muslim, Central Asian people whose stronghold in China is the Xinjiang "autonomous region." The spelling is a actually good approximation for how they would pronounce the name, with "qi" roughly as "chee."
The four-character Chinese name 乌鲁木齐 is the Chinese attempt to phoneticize the name into Mandarin. Given the phonetics of Mandarin, such renderings are often awkward at best. So, bad example! I apologize!
Why do I still hate pinyin? I think that 99.9% of native English speakers, seeing pinyinizations like deng, men, cai, shi, or zhou are guaranteed to mispronounce them. For instance, dung, rather than deng, might look vaguely embarrassing but would take English speakers closer to the desired result. But I bow to the power of pinyin and struggle along.
By the way, the Xinjiang Suntime Wine is still good.
* Per James Millward of Georgetown University, among others! Now it seems that place names south of Xinjiang's Tian Shan mountains, which run roughly east-west and which were still snow-covered when we saw them in late summer, are indeed mainly Uighur. Those north of the mountains, including Urumqi / Wulumuqi / 乌鲁木齐, are largely Mongolian (or Chinese) in origin. I'm not touching this topic again! Instead I refer all comers to Millward's own recent Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
Michael Gerson, columnist (updated)
Let me stay out of the fray over Michael Gerson's behavior in the White House. On the one hand, when I worked with Gerson ten years ago (after hiring him at US News, and liking and respecting him there), he did not behave in anything resembling the way described in Matthew Scully's article. On the other, circumstances were different, and Scully certainly has a lot of names, dates, places, and quotes on his side.
Instead let me reinforce a point made recently by Matthew Yglesias, Brian Beutler*, and others about Gerson's fundamental miscasting in his new role as regular newspaper columnist. There are two big problems Gerson will have to surmount if he wants to succeed.
Continue reading "Michael Gerson, columnist (updated)" »
How to keep an idiot busy: use chiasmus!
We know and love the hoary jokes on this theme: You write "How to keep an idiot busy (please turn over)" on both sides of a card, or send people to an animated site like this.
My nominee, from an otherwise very interesting new Wall Street Journal story (subscribers only) about tensions between China and Japan:
Keeping the peace has benefits for both sides. Japan's top trading partner is China, and China is Japan's No. 3, after the European Union and the United States.
There is a certain "I'm my own grandpa" charm to this passage, in addition to its ability to keep anyone busy for hours trying to figure it out. And it's delightful to speculate about where it came from.
Continue reading "How to keep an idiot busy: use chiasmus!" »
On the etymology of "New Jesus"
It turns out that there is a reason I wasn't sure whether it was James Thurber, in The Years with Ross. or Brendan Gill, in Here at the New Yorker, who had discussed the origins of the "New Jesus" label at the New Yorker magazine. (New Jesus is the role in which Gen. David Petraeus is now being cast.) They both did, in different ways. Thurber described how Harold Ross, the founding editor, had seized on each promising new hotshot as the new Genius who would save them all. By the time Brendan Gill got to the magazine, the term had been converted to the new Jesus. Gill says:
I sensed that, young and old, many a writer had sat in the cubicle before me and had vanished forever into that Sheol where all Ross's failed "Jesuses" might be imagined as dwelling... ("Jesus" was the office corruption of "genius," the epithet that Ross applied to every promising reporter he discovered in the early days of the magazine and upon whom he would immediately thrust the fugitive honor of the managing editorship.)
Here at the Atlantic, of course, we speak of hotshot arrivals as the "New Ralph Waldo Emerson," he being one of our founders 150 years ago...
Unconvincing article by Michael Gerson
Back in the Reagan era, Republicans used to go on the warpath against the first sign of “moral equivalence.” This was the idea that the warts and imperfections of the United States were in any way comparable to those of the Soviet Empire. If Democrats like Mario Cuomo (the rhetorically-entrancing Barack Obama of his day) or Walter Mondale said that Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy was too aggressive or his military buildup too costly, a Republican chorus would immediately spring up to say: There they go again! It’s “moral equivalence” to put any blame at all on the United States rather than focusing all criticism on Soviet tyranny.
I agree that the American idea is attractive and good. I agree that the Soviet empire was brutal and bad. But in practice “moral equivalence” was a way of trying to delegitimize any critical analysis, by Americans, of American policy. Sort of the same function as “we are a nation at war” or “that will only help the terrorists,” when those phrases had silencing power in the first two or three years after 9/11.
Now we have a breathtaking example of moral equivalence from an unlikely source. It’s Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for our current president Bush, lamenting in the Washington Post the abandonment by both political parties of the “centrist” tradition of Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush
Continue reading "Unconvincing article by Michael Gerson" »
You say Pataki, I say Pataca
I am in Macau again, another southern Chinese haunt I’ve seen nearly as often as Shenzhen.
I know it is wrong, very wrong — and ignorant, too! — to judge this way, but: Macau will seem more august when its currency is called something other than the “pataca.” “That will be 2,000 patacas, please.”
Or maybe it’s not that wrong. Maybe Macau’s Chinese-speaking majority agrees! The Portuguese words printed on Macau banknotes (this was, of course, once a Portuguese colony) say cinquenta patacas, etc. But the Chinese characters on the pataca bills list the currency as 圓 — our old friend yuan, the same name used throughout the Chinese mainland on People’s Republic of China banknotes. (There it takes the “simplified” form 圆.) Here is one case where oddly-translated Western words are actually a blessing.
No wonder I can't find anything
Several days ago I was looking for the entrance to one of the big Carrefour outlets in Shanghai. This is the French-based retailer that is second to Wal-Mart in overall global sales but is far more successful than Wal-Mart in China. A Wal-Mart official once told me that he thought hostility to recent U.S. foreign policy had been a drag on the firm’s brand-image in China. Who knows — that certainly hasn’t slowed down McDonald’s, Apple, Dell, Buick, or Starbucks.
On a sidewalk I asked a security guard, in Chinese, where the store might be. The “could you tell me where” part of the question seemed to come across serviceably. But the store’s name, as I phrased it, led to a look of utter bafflement on the guard’s face. I used the Chinese sounds I thought most comparable — ka ri fu ah — and added the words for department store, but I got nowhere.
Then I stepped back and looked up, and saw that the guard and I were standing right in front of Carrefour’s main entrance. I thanked him and stepped into the store, only to wonder: how can this be? I mean, apart from cognitive failure on the guard’s side, and linguistic on mine?
Continue reading "No wonder I can't find anything" »
Defining the "op-ed book" (David Frum edition)
Imagine my surprise when, in a wee-hours bout of jet lag on the first evening back in Shanghai, I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune. No, the surprise was not the radical shift in media experience: the previous morning, in Washington, I had waded through the thick heap of that one day's New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, feeling like an explorer cutting through the jungle with a machete. Now, I had one slim, precious little document in my hands, which I felt I had to guard carefully and every one of whose articles I intended to pore over.
Rather the surprise was what my poring-over revealed.
Continue reading "Defining the "op-ed book" (David Frum edition)" »
Oddest advertising slogan in America? (this week)
In the olden days -- that is, last month, before my hiatus in the US -- listening to NPR broadcasts on the internet meant using either the Real or the Windows Media player, or iTunes. Now NPR appears to have its own proprietary NPR Audio Player. It works fine, and -- good for NPR -- has space for a billboard-ad sponsor, bringing at least some revenue to the network.
Right now the sponsor is the British tourism agency, which is flogging the motto: "Be a BRIT different."
Huh??? Did any native speaker of, well, American, get a look at this campaign before it went live?
Continue reading "Oddest advertising slogan in America? (this week)" »
The hot frogs ask: Et tu, Al?
I finally took the unwise step of searching Google News for recent uses of the (totally fictitious) boiled-frog cliche.
Sigh. Of the many examples, these two were most dispiriting:
Continue reading "The hot frogs ask: Et tu, Al?" »
Translation tool bonus: Pera-kun and Wakan
In the current issue of the Atlantic, I have a tech column about new translation tools by Google and Yahoo for coping with "hard" languages, notably Arabic and Chinese.
Here are two more free utilities I learned about too late to include in the column, but which I now use frequently for dealing with Chinese.
Continue reading "Translation tool bonus: Pera-kun and Wakan" »
The boiled-frog myth: hey, really, knock it off!
Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is scientifically impressive, politically important, and no doubt personally redemptive for Gore himself, who has endured an injustice that would leave most people screaming all day every day. Plus, it's an Oscar winner! But as noted several months ago, the movie also contains one moment of pure ignoramus-hood: the perpetuation of the boiled-frog myth. ("Put a frog in a pot of boiling water and he'll jump right out, but just raise the temperature slowly and he'll let himself be cooked." In reality the situation is more like: "Put a frog in a pot of boiling water and he'll be scalded to death, but give him a chance to escape when the slowly-warming water gets uncomfortable, and he will hop right out.")
Comes now The Economist, to give Gore (and countless other speech-makers) company.
Continue reading "The boiled-frog myth: hey, really, knock it off!" »
Tech column on web translation tools now at Atlantic site
This tech column about improved online translation tools, especially from Google, is now on the Atlantic's site. (Subscribers only.)
Biggest surprise for me while reporting the story: such systems have gone from being pathetically flawed to becoming useable and even, gasp, "useful," within tight constraints.
Continue reading "Tech column on web translation tools now at Atlantic site" »
Full State of the Union "deconstruction" now posted...
... on the Atlantic's site, here. A less artful looking, but perhaps easier to read, version begins immediately below.
Here are the big points about this speech, then some line by line comments.
Continue reading "Full State of the Union "deconstruction" now posted..." »
And by the way, if anyone is watching Jim Webb...
I am biased, but I thought this was the most formidable response to the President's speech the Democrats could possibly have offered. The controlled ferocity of the last two minutes of that talk, which covered what is often called "up and down" loyalty -- the loyalty and respect troops owe their commanders, but the competence and judgment their commanders owe them -- had the good-for-TV quality of being hard to turn away from, and the unfakeable sense of coming directly from Webb's mind and heart. More on this speech, too, tomorrow. (And, yes, it ended "God Bless America.")
State of the Union Address 2007: instant analysis
As over the last few years, line-by-line speechwriter style analysis available on the Atlantic's web site tomorrow morning, U.S. time. Main point right now:
This was two different speeches, perhaps three. The first speech, on domestic policy, was list-like, uninspired, and uninspiring -- apparently even to the President himself, who trudged through it as if seeing the text for the first time. The second speech, about terrorism, Iraq, and foreign policy, reawakened Bush's own interest and advanced his case about as well as a speech at this point could.
The third speech, the brief, closing "Lenny Skutnik" portion, was the best part of the speech and the most skillful execution of this ritual that has been seen in years.
And, oh, yes, the President couldn't help himself. His text took the bold step of not ending with "God Bless America." But this apparently was so startling that President Bush had to say, "God bless....." to know that he was done.
A trivial-seeming but important detail in the "surge" speech
These were the last words of President Bush's speech just now defending the commitment of more troops to Iraq:
We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.
A spiritual allusion? Sure. One of the skillful and continuing traits of George W. Bush's rhetoric has been the deft use of religious references that will be noticed by the part of the audience most likely to welcome them and that will skid right past the parts of the audience they might annoy. In many of his early speeches, written on the Michael Gerson watch, the President used "Providence" to similar effect. Like Author of Liberty in this speech, Providence was capitalized in the released versions of the speeches, to make the spiritual resonance clear.
But the most startling aspect of the conclusion was the phrase it did not include.
Continue reading "A trivial-seeming but important detail in the "surge" speech" »
The thoughts of Jimmy Carter, as channeled through George W. Bush
Even though I spent the last six months of Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign as his #2 speechwriter (after Patrick Anderson), and even though I then spent the first two years of his Administration as chief of his speechwriting office (before Hendrik Hertzberg), I had very little to do with his inaugural address in 1977. The shaping of that speech was left in the hands of people much closer to the President-elect -- and as with all his major speeches, the most important touches were applied by Carter's own very distinctive prose-styling hands.
I do remember, though, pushing hard for one idea about the speech:
Continue reading "The thoughts of Jimmy Carter, as channeled through George W. Bush" »
Has Bush been smart all along?
Maybe it's just because the event happened between 2am and 3am China time. But I listened with mounting amazement to President Bush's post-election press conference on Wednesday.
It was not simply the tone of relative reasonableness and contrition -- or as close to it as we've ever heard in public from this man -- that was so surprising. Contrition? What the transcript renders as "It was a thumping," and what was actually delivered as "It was a thumpin'," was more frank-sounding than anything the President has ever said about, well, Iraq.
The amazing aspect was that this man sounded smart.
Continue reading "Has Bush been smart all along?" »
The boiled-frog myth: stop the lying now!
A twelve-hour flight from Shanghai to San Francisco has its drawbacks, but one of the plusses is the chance to catch up on a whole slew of movies. Oddly enough, it was under these circumstances that I finally saw Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. Since I found him persuasive on the big points, let me mention only a small one: the "frog in boiling water" myth that simply won't go away.
Continue reading "The boiled-frog myth: stop the lying now!" »
Review of David Frum's book on the 1970s
My review in the March, 2000 Washington Monthly of David Frum's "How We Got Here: The 1970s -- the Decade that Brought You Modern Life" is here, on the Monthly's web site.
| 
Blind Into Baghdad: America's War In Iraq
Free Flight: Inventing the Future of Travel
Breaking the News
Looking at the Sun
