A man in Florida sends what may be the ideal example of reader mail, combining as it does aerodynamic theory, politics, economics, and presidential rhetoric. If only there were a China- or beer-related angle... Seriously, his critique of how the Obama team has explained the continuing collapse of the U.S. employment base is insightful. Although it is obviously too late to adjust the rhetoric with which the Administration launched its economic recovery plans, arguments like this reader's could help shape the ongoing discussion.
"I'm really confused by how the Obama administration has handled the narrative and voter expectations for this recession. I clearly understand that they had to carefully balance early 2009 dire warnings against economic pessimism, while making a case for the stimulus package, etc. But once the stimulus was passed, I believe that they should have boldly stated how bad things really were, how their economic policies were the correct choices (even acknowledging Krugman's critiques of "too little"), and emphasizing that even the best possible management of the 2008 economic trainwreck would see significantly increasing unemployment as a lagging indicator.
"One analogy I've thought of often, aligned with your interests, is an economic analogy of an aerodynamic stall. When commerical credit froze and consumers reduced spending, the prevailing economic "lift" was gone. Stall! Conservative knee-jerk reactions for tax cuts were the equivalent of "pulling up" on the stick- intuitive but deadly. Obama's expert advice was to gain speed by spending (diving), even at the cost of altitude (deficit/debt). High unemployment was destined from the moment the stall occurred. Only when sufficient airspeed/angle of attack (spending) had been reached could the economy begin to pull up, and the unemployment would be analogous to the altitude lost even after the decision to finaly "pull up" had been made. Passenger relief (consumer confidence) would follow long after the immediate recovery (i.e., GDP), and no one would be "satisfied" until the plane came in for a (economic) "soft landing."
"There are probably numerous logical errors with this analogy [JF note: seems pretty good to me], but the simple point is this: If "Joe six-pack" clearly understands that Obama saved his economic life, while Conservatives would have driven the plane into the ground, he's more likely to appreciate and reward the unpalatable choices that Obama made. His appreciation would be enhanced if he understood all along that the pilot had no choice but to lose altitude, and the pilot explained that altitude (jobs) would take a long time to regain. This administration sorely needs a narrative that citizens can grasp and accept, otherwise the cynical partisan naysayers will continue to fill the void....
"I came across this, published online by Irwin M. Stelzer on 12/19/2008 in the Weekly Standard (hardly a liberal apologist):
'Bush knows that Obama is inheriting a very difficult economic situation indeed. So does the president-elect. Economists with whom I have spoken--and these are the people listened to at the highest levels in both parties and at Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve Board--believe that the unemployment rate, now at 6.7 percent, will hit double digits sometime in 2009, and stay there well into 2010. They expect house prices to drop another 15 percent and share prices at least another 10 percent before finding a bottom.Worse still, they are predicting an extraordinarily sluggish recovery. Since unemployment is what economists call a lagging indicator--job creation doesn't start until a recovery is well under way--the unemployment rate might remain high well into 2011.'
"None of this is news to you. But if the Weekly Standard could articulate this in late 2008, why hasn't the Obama administration made sure that average Americans understand the "pre-destination" involved with unemployment?"
As an answer to the final question, my guess is that a combined message of uplift and caution is among the most difficult for leaders to convey. Obama and his economic team had to keep sounding optimistic, since so much of a recovery is affected by "animal spirits." But they also needed to acknowledge that for a long time ahead more people would be losing than gaining jobs. The dual message is not impossible, but it's tricky, and as the reader suggests the proper balance has not yet come across.
November 6, 2009
Lavar Arrington: the new Will Shortz
One of many media discoveries about the USA of late 2009 is Lavar Arrington on the radio. (This is a good media discovery. A bad one: the McLaughlin Group is still on the air!!!! Jeesh.) When we left town in 2006, Arrington was a big talent just ending a troubled run with the Redskins. Now, he turns out to be a surprisingly charming and erudite sports-talk host. I find it easier to listen to him when running, in the gym, and otherwise sweating than to absorb the latest news from Afghanistan. (Lavar, left; Will, right.)
Just now, on his show (with co-host Chad Dukes), Arrington was talking about Gregg Williams of the Saints, who was the former defensive guru for the Redskins. He said that even though Williams was gone from DC, his influence remained because he had left behind "his prodigy, Greg Blache," now the defensive coordinator.
That didn't sound right, and I realized after a second that the word he was looking for was "protege." But if Blache was good enough, "prodigy" could also make sense, which leads to the Will Shortz-like question Arrington could have been setting up: I can't at the moment think of another situation in which three words with different meanings that sound very much alike -- prodigy, protege, and (even) progeny - could all sort-of work in the same sentence.
Yes, it's cheating that they sound alike, since they all come from the same pro- root. And yes, progeny is a little different -- but you can imagine it working figuratively. Still it's interesting to me -- and is the kind of thing that occurs when trying to avoid thinking about the team itself, or the next lap on the track. Watch out, Will Shortz!
November 1, 2009
Language politics: Germany, Japan, Cote d'Ivoire
Following this item about how China and America had one attitude toward foreigners trying to speak their language, while Japan, France, and (arguably) the Ivory Coast had a different view, some assent, dissent, and elaboration. These are long but if you're interested in language, then the detail is interesting.
About German speakers:
"Vigorous agreement on the American attitude towards foreigners speaking English, as contrasted with (in this case) German-speakers. My mother, an Austrian, always used to watch as my dad, an American, inevitably got mocked in her homeland for his imperfect German accent, and, indeed, imperfect German (which was still pretty good). She notes this would never happen in America -- it is rare for Americans to actively mock a foreigner's accent. When they do, it's usually in a way that somehow includes the foreign speaker. (We have a young family friend who sometimes says a word or two in "Churman" to make fun of her -- but he doesn't know any language but English -- he isn't lording any linguistic superiority over her -- knowing 2-3 languages to him is like ESP, a genuinely remarkable capacity.) Mom always says that the most common American reaction to her accent is a genuinely curious and open, "You have such a nice accent -- where are you from?"
"Those German-speakers aren't being malicious -- something about the relative difficulty of the language instills this attitude in them. It's just hard for a foreigner to avoid mistakes that every educated German-speaker learns to avoid at the age of five. Also, note that in German there is a sharp distinction between "Hochdeutsch" and the vernacular German that the unlettered masses speak, meaning that a fairly substantial percentage of the population isn't even really trying to speak German correctly. English doesn't really recognize any such division -- we're all speaking English, one way or another. (Also, it fascinates me that the dictionary in German is known as the "Fremdwörterbuch" -- the book of foreign words -- you know, those hard Latinate words that you sometimes need to look up -- everyone knows the core German words. Mongrel English treats all words the same, regardless of origin.)
"My mother, whose English in the meantime is excellent (but with an accent), observes that the thing about English is that the first stages of learning the language are easy -- anyone can learn it. And then comes the huge chasm to true fluency. English's vast vocabulary creates endless nuance in expression, which is just damnably difficult to master. But the first stages are easy, a linguistic open-door policy."
About Japanese:
"I agree with your comments about the Japanese language. I am a 2-year
resident of Tokyo with fairly strong Japanese skills. [After some university study in Hiroshima and London] I mastered the
language not by learning it from textbooks, but doing it on my own
will-power. So, by speaking to people in Japanese almost non-stop, by
reading books and newspapers in Japanese, watching Japanese television
programs and listening to Japanese music and the radio, and by making
requests by emails and fax for work in Japanese. Dating a Japanese girl
for 3 years who only spoke Japanese, helped too. (we're no longer
together, but I am grateful to her for the hours we spend talking
together) I'm still learning day-by-day, but I am approaching the
upper-intermediate level."
Ivory Coast = France = Japan, in language habits at least
In this scene from Dan Chaon's very bleak but memorable mistaken-identity novel Await Your Reply, a young American woman named Lucy goes into a hair salon in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. The country is French speaking, and Lucy is apprehensive about communicating. She addresses an African woman in the shop:
"Excusez-moi," Lucy said stiffly. "Parlez-vous anglais?"
She was aware of how clumsy she sounded... She remembered how, back in high school French, Mme Fournier would grimace with pity as Lucy tried to bumble her way through a conversational prompt. "Oh!" Mme Fournier would say. "Ca fait mal aux oreilles!" ... The African woman nodded at her politely. "Yes, mademoiselle," she said. "I speak English."...
The woman's name was Stephanie, and she was from Ghana, she said, though she had lived in Cote d'Ivoire for many years now. "Ghana is an English-speaking country. That is my native language," Stephanie said. "So it's pleasant to speak English sometimes. That's one characteristic with the Ivoirians I don't understand. They turn to laugh at a foreigner who makes a mistake in French, so even when they know a little English, they refuse to speak. Why? Because they think the Anglophones will laugh at them in turn!"
I can't help myself, so when I read this passage, I thought not so much about French and English but about Chinese and Japanese. With allowances for obvious differences, it's useful (as I've mentioned before) to think of Japan's attitude toward its national language as being similar to France's, and China's attitude as being similar to America's.
That is: in France and Japan, the deep-down assumption is that the language is pure and difficult, that foreigners can't really learn it, and that one's attitude toward their attempts is either French hauteur or the elaborately over-polite and therefore inevitably patronizing Japanese response to even a word or two in their language. "Nihongo jouzu! Your Japanese is so good!" Correspondingly, like the Ivoirians in this novel, Japanese people (to generalize) often seem self-conscious about potential errors in English. Of course, French speakers of English are marvelously non-self-conscious, even jauntily willful, about retaining their French accents, especially the trademark "z" sound for "th." " Zees ees what I mean..." (Yes, I am aware that the fricative th phoneme is the most difficult sound in English for non-native speakers, our counterpart to r's in French.)
The American attitude towards English is: everyone should get with the program, there are a million variants and accents of the language, all that really matters is that you can somehow get your meaning across. Because there are so many versions of Chinese in use within China, my impression is that the everyday attitude of Chinese people toward language is similar: You're expected to try to learn it, no one will spend that much time mocking your mistakes, mainly they are trying to figure out what you are trying to say. Probably both the U.S. and Chinese attitudes reflect the outlook of big, continental nations that encompass lots of internal diversity -- and in America's case, absorb huge numbers of immigrants. In any case it was interesting to see what I am considering the French/Japanese outlook also depicted in Francophone Africa.
October 19, 2009
More on US presidents as Japanese words
Several readers, plus my raised-in-Japan Atlantic colleague James Gibney, have reminded me that Barack Obama is not the first American president whose name has been converted into an ordinary word in Japanese. After the first President Bush fell ill and vomited on Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa at a state dinner in Tokyo in 1992, the term Bushu-suru -- ブッシュする, "do a Bush" -- became a joke staple of Japanese slang. Bush understood how Montezuma must have felt about having his name appropriated for gastrointestinal use.
Real time picture, via Wikipedia, of Barbara Bush and PM Miyazawa coming to the aid of the stricken president (behind napkin):
Via Google Books, an account from the Encyclopedia of Political Communication of the meaning of Bushu-suru, though I prefer my own "do a Bush" English version.
I don't know whether doing "a Clinton" -- クリントンする -- came to mean anything in Japanese.
"To Obama" in Japanese
Last week the NYT ran a story about how Barack Obama's version of spoken English has become a huge hit in Japan, emerging as the new standard for language-learning. This rings true to the fad/blockbuster nature of many commercial and cultural phenomena in Japan. And, we can all think of worse versions of English for them to emulate. (Carville? Stallone?)
But I thought that this item from the Ampontan blog, written by a foreigner in Japan, was more fascinating. It is about the way the invented verb Obamu -- オバむ, "to Obama" -- has gained currency among some Japanese youths. Explanation:
"obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and
inconvenient facts or realities, think "Yes we can, Yes we can," and
proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally,
as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One
explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose).
"[Japanese bloggers] give the following example:
:ほら、何落ち込んでいるんだよ。オバめよ、オバめ。
"Or, "Hey, why are you so down in the dumps? Cheer up, cheer up!"...
"One more Japanese-language citation is from a Twitter tweet, which defines it simply as believing you can accomplish something.
"Those familiar with the language will understand immediately that
such a coinage would sound very natural, and that it is typical of
Japanese creativity and their sense of humor."
The absorptive-and-transforming power of the Japanese language is indeed one of its charms. It will be a good sign for Obama if his name continues to be used in this mainly-positive context.
October 11, 2009
The speech Obama won't ace (plus, WaPo gaffe followup)
So far, as noted here, Barack Obama has faced mounting expectations through a sequence of high-stakes speeches, from the "race" speech that saved his campaign 18 months ago to the Joint Session address on health care that appears to have changed momentum for his proposal. So far he has met or beaten expectations just about every time, most recently here.
I confidently predict that this string will end with his address in Oslo on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. My argument is probabilistic: of the hundreds of addresses that have been given by Nobel laureates (last year's here), exactly one is frequently quoted or referred to. That is William Faulkner's address on receiving the literature prize 60 years ago. The transcript is here, including the best known line: "I believe that man will not
merely endure: he will prevail." It's only three minutes long, and you can hear him delivering it below:
Will Obama give the second-ever memorable speech? That would be impressive but seems unlikely. For context: Martin Luther King's quite long speech here; T.S. Eliot's here; Winston Churchill's here, which includes the Onion-esque line, "The world looks with admiration and indeed with comfort to
Scandinavia." ___ Also, to follow up on the WaPo Nobel editorial gaffe from yesterday: I mentioned soon after moving back from China that the New York Times looked like the same newspaper I remembered, while the Washington Post sadly did not. This is the kind of thing I had in mind. The NYT has its lapses and embarrassing errors (as do we all). But for this lengthy, lead editorial to have appeared in the Post yesterday, it had to have passed through at least three people's hands -- and probably many more. Those three would be: the editorial board member who wrote it; the editor of that section; and the copy editor who was on duty for the page as a whole. In reality, other people almost certainly saw it before publication.
The editorial as published -- with its recommendation that the Peace Prize should instead have been given posthumously to the martyred young woman Neda from the Iranian uprising -- required that none of those three people was aware that Nobel prizes are not given posthumously. That's surprising for people in those positions, on general-education principles, but in no sense negligent. We're all ignorant, just of different things. Before the current flap, I had never heard that Peace Prize nominations had to be filed by February, which would have ruled out figures from the Iranian uprising this summer.
But it also required that none of the three people was curious enough or worried enough to check, before publishing not a blog post or a real-time update but a major paper's main editorial. That is a surprise. I don't think we can imagine a similar gaffe in a NYT lead editorial -- other problems, sure, but not a general-knowledge fact-check howler. More to the point, I can't imagine a comparable error in the WaPo's own sports section, which has been outstanding for years and still is now. (The counterpart might be a column about the World Series noting that the NL pitchers looked better when at bat than AL pitchers did, and wondering why that might be.) FWIW the Neda editorial is still online, with no correction note or update.
October 9, 2009
Obama's Nobel remarks: four very skillful paragraphs
Six months ago I mentioned that it would be hard to improve on Barack Obama's impromptu press conference answer as to whether he believed in such a thing as "American exceptionalism." I think the same is true of his remarks this morning about the Nobel Peace Prize. Each of the first four paragraphs was surprisingly artful, given the obviously short notice on which he spoke:
Let's take them one by one:
"THE PRESIDENT: Good
morning. Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning.
After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the
Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!" And then Sasha added,
"Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it's good to
have kids to keep things in perspective."
No one is going to sound truly modest in these circumstances -- you've just won the Nobel Peace Prize -- but the obligatory opening bout of self-deprecatory humor can sound more or less forced. This is about as natural-sounding and effective as it can be, meanwhile offering a glimpse of both vitality/youth and as much normality as can intrude into an American president's existence.
"I am both surprised and deeply
humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I
do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an
affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in
all nations."
Surprised, yes; humbled, something that is necessary to say. But very effective to turn at once to the idea that this is not his reward and recognition but that of the country as a whole. It won't keep his detractors from talking about his narcissism and vainglory, but nothing would; it is what his supporters would want to hear, and probably what the prize committee had in mind. He has probably figured out to say at every turn that this is an award not for him but for America and its ideals. And he can leave unsaid the reality that, from the prize committee's perspective, it's an award for returning to those ideals after an unpleasant hiatus.
"To be honest, I do not feel that I
deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've
been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the
entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace."
Again a compulsory note of modesty, which sets him up for the crucial following paragraph:
"But I also know that this prize
reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to
build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding
documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has
not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a
means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept
this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common
challenges of the 21st century."
This was the most important and shrewdest thing he said, because it is where he acknowledges an uncomfortable fact that everyone knows to be true.
Of course the award can't be in recognition of projects he has already
achieved and completed, because there aren't that many of them. In these third and fourth paragraphs, Obama acknowledges that point -- but adds the news-analyst's argument that often the Nobel committee awards these prizes as encouragements, signals, or what it hopes will be momentum-changers. If other people are going to say that, Obama does well to signal his understanding of the point himself. And from there he's off to the rest of the (fairly brief) statement, enumerating the sorts of common challenges he has in mind.
My point here concerns rhetoric and persuasion. Agree or disagree on his deserving the award, but reasonable people have to note the skill with which he used this opportunity.
On a related topic: Jerome Doolittle, my one-time colleague in the Jimmy Carter speechwriting office, posted a set of tips early this morning for Republican reaction to the award. So far his predictions are holding up well.
October 2, 2009
More about visualizing words
I mentioned two days ago the very nice tool for mapping word-use in presidential inaugural addresses, created by Jonathan Feinberg of IBM.
I should have mentioned the underlying open-ended tool Wordle, also by Feinberg, which allows you to create "word clouds" from any arbitrary piece of text (or web feed etc). You can find it here, and I've used it just now to create clouds from two recent Atlantic web posts. This is how one recent post about obesity-and-class looks when word frequency is converted to graphics (most of the contents here comes from readers' letters; click for larger):
And here is how my post from a few hours ago about David Petraeus's comments looks with a slightly different layout scheme:
No cosmic point here, but interesting. Try it out -- an email from the boss, company vision statement, etc.
September 30, 2009
A nice tool for envisioning rhetoric
At this IBM research site, an interesting way to assess the themes in presidential inaugural addresses. The researcher, Jonathan Feinberg, uses fancy math to analyze which words in an address are most similar to those other presidents have used -- and which are most distinctive. The larger the words in the diagram, the more often a President used them in a given speech -- and the bluer they are, the more unusual their use is, compared with other speeches. The pink words are ones "conspicuously absent" from a speech -- ones showing up in other inaugural speeches but not this one.
For instance, this is the graph of GW Bush's Wilsonian-sounding Second Inaugural Address, with its commitment to "the expansion of freedom in all the world." Blue words are those distinctive to this speech; pink ones, those strikingly missing.
Disappointingly, the tool is not yet sufficiently honed to track the Reagan-era-onward emergence of "God bless America!" as the unvarying conclusion of presidential speeches. (In fairness, Obama left it out of the prepared text of his address this year.) And it's not set up to let you feed new rhetoric into it for analysis -- for instance, the tantalizing possibility of sluicing in newspaper columns, to depict the phrases a writer stresses and avoids. That's why researchers must still toil on. Thanks to Henry Farrell.
September 28, 2009
More on Ls and Rs in Japanese
As mentioned yesterday, the risk in correcting others is that you get exposed to correction yourself. So it turns out to be -- sort of -- with my comments about the L and R sounds in Japanese. Major point: it remains correct to say, as I did, that Japanese speakers do not "lallate" -- use Ls in place of Rs, and vice versa. Minor refinement! It's not quite right to say, as I also did, that the Japanese phonetic system "has no L sound." Its writing system has only Rs instead of Ls (when represented in the western alphabet), but the sound is more complicated. Representative messages:
"I think it is more accurate to say that Japanese has a single sound that is somewhere in between English 'l' and 'r'. The Japanese 'r' is certainly not standard US retroflex 'r'. Say the name "Richard" and feel where your tongue goes (it's back towards the roof of your mouth). Now say "baseboru" with your best shot at a Japanese accent - you'll find that your tongue is further forward in your mouth and just taps the ridge of your gums. Now say "Lilly" - your tongue will be even further forward. The 'r' in 'baseboru' is somewhere in between "Lilly" and "Richard". " [JF note: this corresponds to my experience in coping with Japanese.]
And, from someone raised in America whose husband was raised in Japan:
"Yeah - they use "R" when they write those syllables in Roman alphabet. I've learned though that my pronunciation is somewhat less comical to the listener if I pronounce it closer to the English "l" sound. As best I can make out, the tongue position makes it something of a cross between our "r", "l", and "d". I believe there is research showing that a newborn is able to "hear" most any of the sounds you can make, but by the time you are 3 or 5 (or somewhere in there) your brain has specialized for the sounds you normally hear. My husband simply cannot hear the difference between the spoken "l" and "r", because there just aren't those distinct sounds in spoken Japanese. "
Update: Just after posting the item below I learned of the death of William Safire, who for three decades wrote the NYT Mag's language column, among his voluminous other works. Sorry for a querulous-seeming note under the circumstances. On the other hand, this is the kind of distinction that Safire himself reveled in. My condolences to his family. ___
There is a big risk in writing items on the lines of: "Everybody thinks X, but everybody's wrong. Actually Y is correct." The risk is that, as the corrector, you can be wrong yourself. I know! I've been there before, and no doubt will be again.
Unfortunately, I think that the estimable Jack Rosenthal of the NYT, in today's "Language" column in the magazine, is there too. Most of the column is devoted to correcting widely-practiced misuses of "phantonym" terms -- "disinterested" to mean bored (wrong) rather than impartial (right), etc. I'm with him on all of these! Then he adds this multilingual note:
"The Japanese love besuboru, reflecting the phonetic phenomenon of lallation, reversing "r" and "l." "
Not really. Rather, in keeping with my opening note of caution: to the best of my knowledge and experience, this is incorrect. Japanese fans of the Hiroshima Carp or the Nippon Ham Fighters do indeed refer to the sport as either besoboru or, more formally, 野球, yakyu. But they don't say besoboru because they are switching Ls and Rs. They say it because the Japanese language does not have the L sound. Where English speakers would use either L or R, the Japanese language has only R.*
Therefore when Japanese people speak English, they often have trouble with Ls and may even "lallate," mixing up Ls and Rs. Much as English speakers, raised in a language with no gender, often mix up le/la or der/die/das in gendered languages like French or German. But when they're speaking Japanese, they say besoboru because that's the way their language works. (And if Rosenthal meant that the change wasn't caused by lallation but simply illustrated the use of an R where there had been an L -- OK. But it's still a bad illustration, since both Ls and Rs in English will become Rs in Japanese. Saying that it illustrates lallation implies that Rs would become Ls in Japanese -- Balaku Obama, etc. That doesn't happen.)
OTOH, a very nice homage to one of my long-time Atlantic friends and colleagues in the Cox-Rathvon acrostic in the same magazine today, and a lot of unusually elegant clues. Check it out. ___ * Primer on Japanese sound system here and here. As anyone who has studied the language knows, its syllabary has the ra / ri / ru / re / ro sequence of R sounds, but nothing involving Ls.
Foreign words are often brought directly into Japanese and and converted to Japanese phonetics -- in contrast to Chinese, where the concept behind the foreign word is often re-rendered in Chinese. Thus "computer" is konpyuta (コンピュータ) in Japanese, but dian nao, "electric brain," (电脑), in Chinese. And thus in China I had a whole invented Chinese name with little relation to my original name, whereas in Japan, within the limits of Japanese sounds, my last name became ファローズ, Fuarohzu.
"The one I've always used for this kind of thing is the male pattern
baldness combover. Makes sense at first, but when do you decide that
today is the day you now look like an idiot."
Thematically-related contribution from The Onion here.
September 23, 2009
By popular demand: Volokh on frogs and slippery slopes
Recently I made an oblique allusion (last line of this item) to an article by Eugene Volokh, of UCLA Law School, in defense of "slippery slope" reasoning.
Apparently it was a little too oblique, so in response to a number of queries let me come right out and say: Eugene Volokh has written in defense of "slippery slope" reasoning here, in a Legal Affairs article with David Newman from 2003, and here or here, in versions of a Harvard Law Review article that same year. I think these pieces do a reasonable job of showing why the slippery slope may be useful as a legal concept, whether or not the phenomenon exists in the natural world.* (Sort of like the legal concept of the "reasonable man." Never mind, just a little joke.) Stay tuned for more reader nominees for most plausible real-world example.
And while we're on the legal-concept theme -- ie, slippery slope as a rhetorical device, not a reality -- here's another related entry:
"I think there are some good uses of slippery slope arguments. One example is the general constitutional idea of safe harbor, which I became acquainted with while reading the transcripts and decision in Reno v ACLU, where it became clear that the law was written in such a way that there were large number of sites which would not be considered to be pornographic under the normal understanding of pornography but which the statue would allow to be prosecuted. The prosecution (in Reno vs ACLU) essentially argued, "Oh, we don't intend to prosecute those cases" and the court in effect said, but the law doesn't allow anyone to be sure they are doing the right thing."
Back to the search for real-world examples soon. ___ * Volokh unfortunately lards his argument with specious boiled-frog references, but at least in the Harvard Law Review version he redeems himself by admitting -- as Paul Krugman recently did -- that he's referring only to fictional figure-of-speech frogs, since real ones would probably try to save themselves.
September 20, 2009
More slippery slopes
This is not the only subject on my mind at the moment (eg, the Redskins' unimpressive victory over the Rams just now, Barack Obama's more impressive TV fandango this morning, the ever-interesting Chinese tire tariff question, etc) but it's the one with the biggest backlog of worthwhile incoming material. From reader BJ in Florida:
"Three thoughts on your "slippery slope" dialogue:
"1) As your reader Webster Marquez hinted, the frequency of a slippery
slope argument actually bearing out seems to be quite rare. In fact, if
a scientist or statistician was looking at this question, it seems to
me that they would be comparing the number of times that a "slippery
slope" argument did NOT bear out, versus the number of times that one
actually DID bear out. When looked at this way, history is seemingly
littered with thousands of failed "slippery slope" arguments, versus a
precious few arguments that may have been considered true.
"2) One good, general recurring slippery slope argument may be the
drawing of colonial boundaries that ignored the indigenous geography of
ethnicity, language, culture, religion, etc. Once formalized, the
results appear to inevitably be tragic whether it's Palestine, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Kenya, Nigeria, etc.
"3) I'm almost ashamed of myself for suggesting the following, but not
ashamed enough...If there was ever a valid "slippery slope" in politics
(albeit not policy-related), it surely must be (literally and
figuratively) the initiation of an extramarital sexual relationship.
Once that "little step" is taken, the results are almost universally
predictable:
Harmonic convergence dept: frogs, China Daily, etc
I realize this may be more interesting to me than to the public at large, but: Somehow I feel fulfilled to find my favorite newspaper, the China Daily, taking my favorite factually-erroneous cliche, the boiling frog, and putting it to excellent and unexpected use. Today's China Daily illustrates the frog problem -- but, for once, in an accurate way! As the water is getting hotter, the little froggies are jumping right out. Just like in real life, except for the tiny backpacks. (Parachutes?)
The editorial is about universities in Australia making things "hot" (get it?? ho-ho!) for international transfer students, including those from China. Great headline too: Well done all around. Let's learn from Asia! Thanks to numerous informants.
_____ Harmonic convergence part deux: Article six years ago in another of my favorite publications, Legal Affairs, that melds boiling frogs and slippery slopes in a less factually scrupulous way.
"If
once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and
Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once
begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many
a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought
little of at the time. Principiis obsta-that's my rule."
Principiis obsta -- resist the first inklings, "nip it in the bud" -- is of course the slippery-slope concept with a college degree. Thanks to J. Stein, even though this one does not win the "most convincing real world example of a slippery slope" award. More to come.
September 18, 2009
Slippery slope updates
A few more from a very nice array that has arrived. Original post here.
Serious:
"With the exception of the birth-death sequence of life, our notion of free will tends to negate the unavoidability of the slippery slope - to our great benefit, I would have thought."
Serious in a different way:
"Trying is the first step towards failure." Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
A powerful real-world example:
"The birth-to-death suggestion is not a valid example of a "slippery slope," in that it is not so much "slippery" as perfectly smooth. Mortality is an inevitable straight-line progression missing the essential element of choice. There is no option to "back up" the slope, to pause, or to go faster. In principle, the reader's example is no different than that of striking a match in a windless room, something that will inevitably turn the match to ashes. Nothing slippery about that, although matches flame out quicker than lives.
"The best example of a "slippery slope" in the realm of public policy may be the American journey toward racial equality. It's taken more than 100 years. There have been pauses along the way, with some temporary backtracking. We've gone from the Emancipation Proclamation, to the Anti-Slavery Amendments, to the Jim Crow era of "Separate but Equal," to Brown v. Board of Education, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to improvements in these statutes, to the Supreme Court's abolition of antimiscegenation laws (Loving v. Virginia). Focusing only on the "de jure" aspects of this, African Americans have traveled the complete journey, beginning as the lawful property of white men and ending with full legal equality. "
I think there is a lot to this last point. (Indeed, to all of them.) In American history the slippery-slope Cassandras whose worst fears have been most vividly realized were the segregationist hard-liners of the pre Civil Rights-legislation era. They warned that once you blurred the racial barriers you'd have race-mixing of all sorts, including intermarriage. And once you headed down that road, you'd have these mixed people all over the place... in the extreme nightmare version, even at the White House.
More in the queue. And later today, a long-promised update on whether slippery-slope thinking applies to the Chinese tire tariffs.
September 17, 2009
Early "slippery slope" contender
Many fine entries in hand; keep them coming. One line of reasoning predominates, well illustrated by this submission:
"Birth consistently leads to death. There are often events of interest to someone between the two. Aside from fairy tales, I know of no more reliably consistent slippery slope.
"More pop into my head, but following on their heels are exceptions.
"Here is a chain of events for you:
"Birth leads to toilet training. Toilet Training leads to puberty. Puberty leads to adulthood. Adulthood leads to death. Of course, it isn't entirely consistent given that some do not achieve all steps."
More later.
Political rhetoric question/contest: "slippery slopes"
Due no doubt to the few years I spent producing political rhetoric and the many decades I have spent ingesting it, I'm obsessed with endlessly interested in the connection between the words we use about public life and the decisions we make and attitudes we hold. For instance, that's the point behind the "God bless America!" or "boiled frog" watch. These are cases where language actually takes the place of thought. Yes, I realize that I'm not the first person to have noticed this connection. Indeed in my GBA/frog campaigns I am remiss in not having quoted Rule #1 from the modern classic work on the misuse of language in political discourse:
"1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."
Which leads to this open question, suggested by reader Webster Marquez:
"The health care debate (and, indeed, the debate around Obama's and
Democrats' agenda) is filled with rhetoric about "slippery slopes." To
wit: health care reform => government takeover => tsarist
communism! Somehow!
"Can you find any examples of a slippery slope argument actually bearing out? A leads to B, which leads to C, all the way to Z?
"How is it that an argument that is considered a "classic informal
fallacy" (per Wikipedia, but I remember this family of concepts from
college philosophy) is given so much currency across the media and
political spectrum?"
Although the finest and most famous example of pure slippery-slope rhetoric is Ronald Reagan's renowned 1961 broadcast about the risks of socialized medicine, it's worth noting that this reasoning can be applied from any part of the political spectrum. Eg: Patriot Act => elimination of civil liberties => fascism in America. Just this morning I heard a representative of ACORN used the "criticism of us => return of McCarthyism" form of the argument. Similarly, most objections to the Obama Administration's decision to cancel European missile-defense plans concern not the Czech/Polish sites themselves but the "sign of weakness => encourage agressors => appeasement brings on Another Hitler" concept. (Image from here.)
I know that for some people, Mr. Marquez's question is too easy to answer. If you think we already live in Fascist Amerika, or that it's been a one-way trip down the road to moral collapse since [Elvis Presley, the Miranda ruling, choose your starting point], real life is a living confirmation of slippery-slopeism. But as a de-politicized, purely analytical question, I wonder what the best real-world example of this phenomenon is. To be clear, we're talking about a situation where one step leads unavoidably to another -- in which people end up with Consequence Z, which they never would have chosen, purely because they took initial steps A and B. Almost as if they started down a slope, and began to slip, and then... Nominations welcomed; results will be announced.
September 15, 2009
"God bless Precinct 8"
Courtesy of a reader in Texas who has my undying gratitude:
"State
Rep. Kino Flores, D-Palmview, said today he
will not seek re-election.
"The
announcement comes two months after he was indicted by a Travis County grand jury. He is
accused of omitting hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of income
from financial statements that elected officials are required to file with the
state......
" 'As
my former boss, the late Bob Bullock, used to say, he left Texas better than it
was,' Flores said in the press release. 'Well, as anyone can see,
there is no doubt that I will leave House District 36 better than it was. God bless Texas, and God
bless District 36.'"
On the other hand, I regret to announce that a previous dispatch scoffing at the idea that John Adams, rather than Ronald Reagan, had started the country down this unfortunate rhetorical path seems to have been, ummm, flat wrong. Several readers wrote in to make this point. Let me give the microphone to Joshua Friedman, who adduces actual historical evidence:
"Abigail Adams wrote a letter to John on July 21, 1776, describing her
experience of hearing the Declaration of Independence read aloud from
the balcony of the Massachusetts State House. 'As soon as [it] ended,"
she writes, 'the cry from the balcony was, "God save our American
States," and then three cheers which rended the air. The bells rang,
the privateers fired, the forts and batteries, the cannon were
discharged, the platoons followed, and every face appeared joyful.'
As noted here more than a few times (eg this), U.S. presidents before Ronald Reagan did not end their major addresses with "God Bless America!" to indicate "The speech is now over, and I'm not going to bother thinking of a real concluding sentence." Presidents from Reagan onward have used the phrase in an "Amen!" sense. The anonymous author of the Jotman blog writes in with new historico-linguistic evidence, of the biopic variety:
"In a recent post you complained -- yet again -- "about the tritehackneyedvacuousportento-pious lazy
comforting and beloved three-word ending for all presidential addresses
since the time of Ronald Reagan: 'God bless America!'"
"You are clearly mistaken. If I may set the record straight...
"The
"God bless America" tradition did not begin with Reagan. In fact, the
tradition goes all the way back to the the first reading of the
Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.
"The proof is on video. Watch this YouTube clip from about the 6:00 mark until 6:40 and you will see what I mean."
Then Jotman moves out of sarcastic mode:
"P.S. Of course, Americans of the founding
generation weren't such ninnies. They would not have sought "comfort"
in such a banality as this phrase. The inclusion of this
modern abomination not only ruined the whole scene for for me, it also
broke the
"historical spell." I no longer believed I was watching a serious
attempt to portray events as they might have actually have happened in
1776. The director lost my trust. Actually, hearing the phrase
misused in a historical drama irritated me exponentially more than
having to listen to any modern American politician. It's one thing
when politicians help to ruin the American character of the present
generation through repetition of a lousy rhetorical innovation, but
it's far worse when the custodians of American culture project our
flaws backward in time; when they make it appear as if the lamest, most
pathetic inventions of our own times have deep historical roots.
"It's a slippery slope. At this rate, some future documentary about
the Revolutionary War is bound to include a water-boarding scene. Or
show Alexander Hamilton founding Homeland Security in 1790."
After the jump, a Marine combat veteran with thoughts on patriotism.
I don't know how many people stayed tuned in to watch the whole hour-plus of this speech, counting intro and so on. But, once again among his major addresses, it will bear long-term study for its range, tone, and clarity:
- Conciliatory: You Republicans want to talk about tort reform? Let's hear your ideas. - Tough: When you tell lies, we will call you out. - Clarifying: For the first time ever, I felt as if I glimpsed a "larger idea" behind the Obama plan. - Big picture: The role-of-government soliloquy at the end, including the connection to the moral and social-contract histories of Social Security and Medicare. - Emotional, sans schmaltz: As he got ready for the end, I feared that he would tell the story of all the Lenny Skutnik figures in the First Lady's box. Instead, he told Ted Kennedy's story, with allusions only to Kennedy's Republican friends. - Simple performance dynamics: Well delivered, including at crucial points talking over the applause to keep the rhythm going. - Manners: Will it pay off for the Republicans to have booed him and, in the case of Rep. "Gentleman Joe" Wilson of South Carolina, to have yelled "you lie!" at the President? We'll see. Update: An ActBlue site supporting an opponent to Wilson raised more than $25,000 within three hours of his outburst. Via Simon Owens.
There will come a time when Barack Obama cannot pull himself out of pinch with a big speech. And obviously we don't know how this debate will turn out yet. But he hasn't fallen short on the big-speech front yet. More tomorrow.
September 8, 2009
I was wrong (again)
I've seen the light. No longer will I complain about the tritehackneyedvacuousportento-pious lazy comforting and beloved three-word ending for all presidential addresses since the time of Ronald Reagan: "God bless America!" I won't complain, that is, as long as the words are always presented in the style of the clip below. See especially from time 2:00 onward.
Remaining holiday-festival updates, #9 - 999, all in one place
Labor Day weekend has, sigh, reached its close, and with it the feeling of summer. To clear out the list of update topics for this weekend-long festival:
- #9Striking gold in China. I mentioned previously my skeptical response to the story of Americans showing up in China and suddenly finding great jobs. Seems that this was pretty much the response by the expat community in China too. See this and this from last month -- plus after the jump, a reply today from someone who showed up a year ago in China and has put the "Chinese streets are paved with gold" hypothesis to the test.
- #10Is China (unfortunately) starting to learn from the TSA? Secondly after the jump, an account of a new wrinkle in Chinese airport security: having passengers take off their shoes, just like in the U.S. Not sure whether this is a local aberration or the beginning of a new policy. - #999 President Obama speaks to the schoolchildren. I was all in favor of this earnest buckle-down, back-to-school pitch until I saw the way the presentation ended. Sigh. And that brings us to the end of this holiday weekend special! _____
Today's McCaughey, euthanasia, and general falsehood update
Several more objections, clarifications, and additional bits of evidence following the much-bruited -- and to me somewhat anticlimactic -- Betsy McCaughey-Jon Stewart smackdown two days ago. (Previous reactions here.) On the origins of Betsy McCaughey's argumentative style: A reader suggests they have one obvious source:
The reader explains:
Cleese's character is armed with all that one could ask for: keen wit, boundless vocabulary, perfect presence of mind, and all the facts on his side. And yet, even he can be played to a draw by a liar who maintains a sufficiently unshakable facade of conviction.
On the details of why "death panels" are so preposterous A reader in Maine writes:
Another absurdity in the argument of Betsy McCaughey is her claim that there is something wrong with doctors having to follow a patient's wishes as expressed in a living will. There are two major problems here: 1) People can always change their living will, just as they can change their will at any point. The later living will supercedes the later one. So if a person makes a living will when healthy and sees things differently when ill, the sick person can express different wishes in the new living will. 2) Why shouldn't doctors have to respect people's wishes on end-of-life care? I have heard countless stories of living wills being ignored. The provision on living wills is effectively an implementation provision, providing for accountability and for the wishes of the patient to be respected.
Further on the Living Will point: Reader Zach writes:
I'm surprised you didn't mention this. McCaughy's twisted logic is
basically that after you draft a living will it will be enforced
ruthlessly by doctors seeking to up their quality rating even if you
personally object. Backing her up is an anecdote about her apparently
hearing a woman telling her to hurry up and help as a doctor suffocated
her with a pillow or something. Her point is that, by rewarding
adherence, we're making doctors stick with the patient's initial stated
intent. However, if you're conscious you can amend, annul, or
otherwise do whatever you want with your will, living or otherwise, at
any time you want. If you're conscious enough to tell someone not to
pull the plug, you haven't triggered your living will yet.
I think this really could be the end of the Felix the Cat saga, most recently chronicled here and here. Next few items will concern software, China, and of course frogs. But before we turn the page, let us consider Felix's implications for: US-China relations; differences between England and America; and the proud heritage of New Jersey.
I. Felix as distinguished son of the Garden State Walter Maier, curator of the "Famous New Jerseyans" web site, gives Felix a prominent place among the state's honorees. As he points out, "Felix was born in New Jersey." Go here for details.
II. Felix in the context of Chinese reformers Taking an admirably post-racial stance, one reader writes in to say: "Surprised you haven't quoted Deng's 'It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.'!" ("不管黑猫白猫，捉到老鼠就是好猫." If I were king, the standard version in English would be "Black cat, white cat -- as long as it catches mice it's a good cat.") Bottom line: if Deng Xiaoping were writing the notorious "Obama reminds me of Felix" essay, he would have begun, "It doesn't matter whether a president is black or white, so long as he fixes the economy."
[Deng, left, not with Felix but with another fine American]
III. Felix as lens for Anglo/American contrasts A reader writes:
Just a stray observation, which may be outdated by now, based on
initial Peace Corps experience meeting with Brit expats in Ghana during
the late sixties, but remaining fairly intact after 40 more years of
sporadic relevant dialogs with random but typically well educated
British folks at home and abroad.
I'm consistently (nearly 100%)
struck by the difference between white British and liberal US
perceptions of what we both call "racism" or "racialism."
A point that has fallen through the cracks in the contretemps is that Ferguson's characterization of Felix the Cat is just plain wrong -- he's not lucky, he's plucky and resourceful. His characteristic pose in the early cartoons is pacing back and forth, hands behind his back, deep in thought as he ponders his way out of the fix he's gotten into. Then he brightens, and snaps his fingers -- he's thought of a way out. There's a gag that refers to Felix's trademark pose in Buster Keaton's Go West, which should show you how far back the character goes. Also parodied on The Simpsons, where the earliest Itchy and Scratchy cartoons adopt the style of silent Felix the Cat cartoons.
[Felix pacing and pensant, in 1930:]
[Felix post-pacing, having figured out the answer:]
From a reader in Shanghai:
Mr. Fallows, Mr. Ferguson, it sounds like *somebody* needs a beer summit!
1930s Felix from here; animated-pacing Felix here.
August 17, 2009
Ferguson, Obama, Felix the Cat -- and Pluto
Let me tell this one in order:
On August 11, last Tuesday, Niall Ferguson wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times whose theme was that Barack Obama reminded him of Felix the Cat? Why? "Felix was not only black.
He was also very, very lucky."
Later that day, I did an item marveling at the column. Its final line was, " I look forward to Ferguson's discussing this over a beer with his Harvard colleague Henry Louis Gates."
Two days later, on August 13, I got an irritated note from Ferguson. Its subject line was "Rubbish." It included a quote from H.L. Gates saying that there was no problem with the Felix line -- the reported quote from Gates was "What a load of rubbish" -- and it ended with a request that I publish it. To be exact, a challenge: "I shall be interested to see if you post this on your blog."
Soon thereafter, I did indeed publish it. I sent Ferguson a note saying that I had done so, with the explanation that I took his note as a request that I share his views.
An hour later, he wrote back and requested that I remove the item from the Atlantic's site so that he could check further with Gates. Within minutes I did that, putting up this placeholder announcement instead. Since the original had been up for a while, it survived in many search caches. But I saw no reason to be difficult -- or to pretend I didn't get Ferguson's "please take it down" note; so I complied.
Over the weekend, I didn't hear from Ferguson, and on the "life is short" policy resolved to let the matter drop.
Then this afternoon, I received a followup note -- sent jointly to me and Paul Krugman, who had written in a similar vein. In its entirety it says:
Dear Paul and James,
As you both took exception to my comparison of the President
with Felix the Cat, my favorite cartoon character, implying it was racist and
recommending I consult Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., I have now done so. He
has taken the trouble to consult others in the field of African-American
Studies, including our colleague Lawrence D. Bobo, the W. E. B. Du Bois
Professor of the Social Sciences, and has written to me as follows:
"None of us thought of Felix as black, unlike some of
the racially-questionable caricatures Disney used. Felix's blackness,
like Mickey's and Minnie's, was like a suit of clothes, not a skin color. ...
You are safe on this one."
As he has made clear, you are free to publish this on your
blogs. I hope that you will, and that you will also add an apology to me for
the imputation of racism as well as, in Paul's case, the gratuitous and
puerile accusation of "whining" (i.e., defending myself against a
slur). I remain of the view that you took this line to avoid engaging with my
central points that President Obama's administration has no visible plan
for stabilizing the finances of the federal government even over ten years, and
that Congress will likely impede whatever steps he may take in this direction.
Yours,
Niall Ferguson.
On the requested "apology": Sadly, No. I don't think and didn't say that Niall Ferguson is a racist. Probably like him, I lament the way indiscriminate use of that label -- or "sexist," "anti-Semite," now "socialist" -- can shut down discussion. But there's no getting around the clumsiness of what he wrote. If Felix the Cat's blackness is a barely noticeable aspect of his identity, why on earth would anyone begin a comparison of Obama to Felix by saying "Felix was not only black"? Thought experiment: Suppose I wrote a column about Jackie Chan -- or Cabinet members Steven Chu and Eric Shinseki, or Yo-Yo Ma, or new PGA champion Y.E. Yang -- that began exactly the way Ferguson's did. "Jackie Chan reminds me of Pluto. One of the best-loved characters from the Disney studio, Pluto was not only yellow. He was also very, very likable."
I could go on to discuss policy aspects of Jackie Chan's controversial comments about democracy in China -- as Ferguson goes on to discuss Obama's problems with the budget deficit. But 99% of the readers would think, What the hell? And if asked what I was doing, I would not try to relitigate the case, as Ferguson is now doing in several venues, but would recognize that I'd blundered and back off. But apparently that's just me.
I have pulled back what I posted here a few minutes ago (yes, I know that the ambitious can still find it in a cache) in response to a follow-up message from Niall Ferguson requesting a delay. His original message concerned his "Felix the Cat" / "black, and very, very lucky" column. Stay tuned.
July 13, 2009
Peace on the boiled frog front
I can have no complaints about Paul Krugman's use just now of the hoary (and phony) parable, which begins this way:
"I'm referring, of course, to the proverbial frog that, placed in a pot
of cold water that is gradually heated, never realizes the danger it's
in and is boiled alive. Real frogs will, in fact, jump out of the pot --
but never mind. The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a
very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep
up on you a bit at a time."
If this becomes a "hypothetical" frog, a "proverbial" frog, a "useful metaphor" to get across a point, then it enters the company of "the streets were paved with gold" or "his eyes were bigger than his stomach" in being a useful way of conveying an idea, although no one thinks the image itself is literally true. At it can exit the realm of the "cautionary revelation from the world of science" that it typically occupies in political speeches or, sigh, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. It's still a cliche, but you can't have everything. I had not previously thought of Paul Krugman as a peacemaker or placater, as opposed to a provocateur, but he may now have shown a new field of achievement.
June 17, 2009
More on Obama and "educational" rhetoric
Several days ago I argued that what made Barack Obama's "big" speeches sound unusual was that they attempted something that among politicians is indeed rare: Not expressing our preexisting views with new clarity and edge but instead asking us to change our minds. I also said it was no accident that Obama had saved these ambitious speeches until he was in the White House, since a campaign was a time for troop-rallying rhetoric rather than asking people to think too hard.
Herewith one message in agreement and one in dissent. First, from Eric Redman, author of The Dance of Legislation (and longtime close friend of mine) who had been a devotee of Richard Neustadt's famous presidential-power analyses in college and eventually delivered a eulogy for Neustadt and contributed to a memorial volume about him. The turn in Obama's rhetoric after the election, Redman says,
made me think of Neustadt's enigmatic advice in 1968 when I was about to take time off from school to go write speeches for Senator Magnuson. Dick had written campaign speeches for President Truman. His writing was finely worked, highly polished. I asked for
advice in the craft. He frowned and thought carefully. Then he said,
"Remember, a campaign is not a good time to educate the public." I puzzled over that for 35 years, and repeated it, partly for a laugh (which it produced), in my eulogy at his memorial service.
It was not until I was doing the research for "Neustadt in Brazil" [in the memorial volume] that I listened to him on tape explain (in response to a questioner criticizing Lula [da Silva, prez of Brazil] for not living up to his campaign promises) that the time to educate the people (impliedly with speeches) is when you are in office. Neustadt was not only recommending that Lula do it, he was explaining why it would work. Then it all made sense to me, and I was even able to explain to some who had heard the eulogy and, like me, been puzzled ever since hearing the original advice.
Now, and after the jump, dissent from Carlyn Meyer, who thinks I am under-valuing the content of Obama's stump speeches through the campaign:
While I appreciate your annotation of the five big speeches since his
election (plus the race speech), I have to disagree that the basic
stump speech differed in quality. If anything, he used it to test out
his broad concepts and way of speaking to people. Here's why:
Belatedly, on the Cairo speech & Obama rhetoric in general
Ten days ago I was writing a dispatch about Barack Obama's speech in Cairo, when the internet service where I was (in Shaanxi) cut out. The elections in Iran and general question of political change in the Middle East are a topical reminder to get back to this point:
As I started to say earlier, here is a way to think about why Barack Obama's "big" speeches of the past 15 months seem different from normal political rhetoric. It's because they are.
Here are the ones I'm counting as big speeches, starting with the most recent and working backward:
I'm not even counting convention speeches, the inaugural address, his State of the Union, or a bunch of other performances. They were all fine but more like other, normal "good" political speeches.
These six -- including an astonishing five of them in an eight-week burst -- were different from normal rhetoric in the following basic way:
Most of the time, "effective" speeches boil down to finding a better, clearer, cleverer, more vivid, or more memorable way to express what people already think.
Two ads right next to each other at Beijing's Capital Airport on Monday night, part of an ongoing "Fly more" campaign.
First, this one:
About ten feet away, this one:
How I convert this into an "are you used to China?" test: 1) You have to not wonder, "what does this mean at all???" Ie, "leaping depend on vision." 2) You have to not wonder, "how could they have noticed an English grammar problem in one but not bothered to fix it in the other?" [The one-character difference in the Chinese versions has nothing to do with the one-letter difference in the English renditions.]
I just thought, "Huh, look at that," rather than wondering why, what, or how. I guess I'm finally acclimated.
June 4, 2009
On the Islam speech
More about this in a few hours: literally have five minutes left at an internet place in Shaanxi province (long-scheduled trip away from Beijing this afternoon) (More about Beijing on this June 4 later too).
The main point is: this was yet another in the series of speeches that individually and as a group really are out of phase with anything we have known in contemporary political rhetoric. I mean a sequence that began most noticeably with the "race and America" speech in Philadelphia 15 months ago and has continued with five or six clear high points since then (most recently at Notre Dame, as discussed here) and no obvious flop. I did not see or hear coverage of this speech but based only on the text, which I've just read, I have a hypothesis about the trait that makes this discourse unusual and welcome.
The five minutes are up, so To Be Continued a few hours from now.
May 21, 2009
On Obama's security speech
Carried overseas on BBC, and in prepared text here from the Washington Post. WhiteHouse.gov site, by the way, is once again weirdly behind-the-curve in getting material up.
Argumentative crux of the speech to the left (emphasis added):
I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that
our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver
accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there
are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced
interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can
work through and punish any violations of our laws.
This is the reply to people, including me, who think there needs to be some kind of investigatory commission. Taken at his word, he's saying: Congress can do the investigating, the courts (and my Department of Justice) can prosecute. In theory, this works out well. A new president moves ahead; the System provides accountability. We'll see.
Argumentative / explanatory crux of the speech to the right:
I do know with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda. Because the
terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate
America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we
stay true to who we are.
This has been, from the start, the central indictment of the Bush-Cheney approach to al Qaeda. Anything-goes tactics may or may not win battles, but they certainly lose wars. Dick Cheney's speech, cut off by BBC about ten minutes in, is ineffective not just because of its anger/contempt but also because what is billed as a response is in fact one cycle late, simply re-stating the claims Obama went out of his way to rebut (rather that keeping up with the cycle by answering anything Obama said).
Subtle harpoon crux of the speech, in the last paragraph:
We will not be safe if we see national security as a wedge that divides
America - it can and must be a cause that unites us as one people, as
one nation. We have done so before in times that were more perilous
than ours.
The entirety of the Bush-Cheney approach rested on the assumption that there had never been a threat as great as the one demonstrated by 9/11. Condi Rice said this explicitly, in her disastrous (and, in a just world, career-damaging) "al Qaeda was more dangerous than the Nazis" comment at Stanford. The parts of Cheney's speech I saw today, and everything we know about Bush's decisions and statements in office, assumed without argument that they faced choices between due-process and national security more painful than those that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or FDR wrestled with. A reminder that others have faced difficult choices and dire threats is useful for judging our response and placing it in the long context of American values that Obama repeatedly emphasized.
May 18, 2009
I'm joining the GOP
First Al Gore, buffeted Democratic champion ca. 2000, propagates boiled-frog ignorance in his (otherwise laudable) An Inconvenient Truth.
Now Barack Obama, victorious Democratic champion ca. 2008, relies on bogus boiled-frog imagery in a Newsweek interview (as my comrade Jeffrey Goldberg has pointed out).
Did you consult any former presidents or celebrities about the fishbowl effect in raising the girls?
Well, you know, the truth of the matter is that the campaign was the
equivalent of me being the frog in the saucepan of water and the
temperature slowly being turned up. By the time the inauguration had
taken place, we had pretty much gotten accustomed to it.
Say what you will about the linguistic habits of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin; but at this moment I don't remember any of them talking about boiled frogs. The image of young Dickie Cheney in 8th grade science lab with a frog, though, is one to force from the mind. And if these people did in fact talk about boiled frogs, I'll have to join the Greens.
What should they be talking about instead? The kitty-litter box analogy, as so brilliantly laid out by Don Rose in the Chicago Daily Observer a few months ago. You have cats in your house; you think everything is great; then visitors walk in through the door, reel back in horror, and say, "What is that godawful smell?" And I say this as a lover of cats. Or as Rose put it, in a column about the colorful ex-governor Rod Blagojevich:
Out of towners often ask me how it is that folks in Chicago and
Illinois put up with all the hanky and panky that goes on in our
political snakepits.
I tell them about my cat litter box.
Currently I have two cats--once I had nine. In any case, I used to
think I kept their potty clean and odor free. Then, every so often
someone would come to the door, sniff the air and whisper in
confidence, "I think your cat box needs changing."
They were right, of course. They came from cat-free environments and
could sense a drop of urine at 30 paces, while I had grown so
desensitized to the aroma that my schnozz would tell me I was romping
through a fresh pine forest.
So it is with the denizens of our city and state.
And so it should be with us all. As recently as a few hours ago, I was impressed by Obama's use of language. And now....
On eloquence vs. prettiness
Based on its transcript -- here at the Washington Post site, oddly not yet in any obvious place at WhiteHouse.gov [Update: it's now on the White House page, here]-- Barack Obama's Notre Dame commencement speech was another extraordinary performance. "Extraordinary" meaning that it was like his speech last year in Philadelphia about race relations, his speech last month in Prague about nuclear weapons, and, only slightly less impressive, his speech last month at Georgetown University laying out his long term economic plan. Or, on a small scale, his answer in Strasbourg about "American exceptionalism."
What made these presentations extraordinary was not any single phrase or sentence, nor any paragraph-long flight of fine language. Indeed, I can hardly remember any phrase or sentence from any speech Obama has ever given. (Phrases or sentences are to be distinguished from campaign slogans, like "Yes we can" or "not 'red states' or 'blue states' but the United States of America.") Instead the power of those speeches comes from the quality of their thought -- from the ideas and truths the speaker is trying to grapple with:
In the case of the race speech, the different burdens and resentments Americans of all background held, and why we had to face and work through them. In the nuclear speech, the dangers that remained long after the Cold War had ended, and America's special opportunity and responsibility to find a solution. In the Notre Dame speech, the difficulty of resolving, in an open democracy, differences of moral certainty that are fiercely held on all sides. And so on. A passage from this latest speech after the jump.
This kind of eloquence is different from what I think of as rhetorical prettiness -- words and phrases that catch your notice as you hear them, and that often can be quoted, remembered, and referred to long afterwards. "Ask not..." from John F. Kennedy. "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat" from Winston Churchill. "Only thing we have to fear is fear itself" from FDR. "I have a dream," from Martin Luther King. Or, to show that memorable language does not necessarily mean elevated thought, "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" from the early George C. Wallace.
At rare moments in history, language that goes beyond prettiness to beauty is matched with original, serious, difficult thought to produce the political oratory equivalent of Shakespeare. By acclamation Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address is the paramount American achievement of this sort: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right..."
The reason to distinguish eloquence of thought from prettiness of expression is that the former tells you something important about the speaker, while the latter may or may not do so. Hired assistants can add a fancy phrase, much as gag writers can supply a joke. Not even his greatest admirers considered George W. Bush naturally expressive, but in his most impressive moment, soon after the 9/11 attacks, he delivered a speech full of artful writerly phrases, eg: "Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our
enemies, justice will be done." Good for him, and good for his staff.
Rhetorical polish, that is, can be a staff-enhanced virtue. The eloquence that comes from original thought is much harder to hire, or to fake. This is the sort of eloquence we've seen from Obama often enough to begin to expect. ___
Embarrasingly literal-minded note on "First they came for..."
A peril of today's interconnected world is that people from widely varying language backgrounds can read the same
material and come to widely different conclusions, based largely on
command of the language itself. This is especially true right now of
English, which hundreds of millions of people use as their native
tongue -- and hundreds of millions more can understand as the dominant language of international business and media, but naturally with different levels of comprehension and subtlety.
In a way this is like the problem I've recently described for politicians, who simultaneously address an internal and an external audience. A U.S. or British leader needs to assure the local citizens that he or she is defending their interests -- without doing so in a way that will offend the rest of the world. It's hard.
This is on my mind because of a post earlier today about quarantine for Canadian students in China, on the basis of nationality rather than exposure to disease, following similar handling of Mexican citizens. The post was called, "First they came for the Mexicans. Then, the Canadians...."
The "internal" audience for this post would generally recognize the title as a joke. Or at least a joking allusion. That audience -- of native speakers of English, especially native speakers of American English, especially native speakers of American English who had paid attention to politics and political sloganeering -- would know how often the "First they came for..." trope is used as the conclusion of any speech about excessive government control. If you're not already 100% familiar with it, start here. If, on the other hand, you've listened to (especially) American political speeches, you have heard this a million times, often in hyperbolic ways -- including the way I was using it, ironically, here.
But not every reader is a native speaker of English or familiar with Western political rhetoric. So I have heard from a number of people who took offense at the idea that I was describing super-seriously a systematic manhunt for various national groups. Sigh. I have dealt with enough languages over the years to be humble about the challenges of operating outside one's native language terrain (and to recognize the convenience of being able to write to an international audience in my native language). But I don't know the way out of it. This magazine, in print and on line, is deliberately aimed at high-end readers of English who will understand allusions and tricks of language. We can't water that down, or take on the lead-weight of stage direction footnotes -- "I'm being ironic here!" -- on parts that some people might misread. But the multiplicity of audiences is worth bearing in mind. And I try to.
So apologies to any who took offense. Except to those who wrote huffily about what my words "meant," when that was the very thing they didn't really understand.
May 3, 2009
More on public health, PR, and China's role in the world
From a reader with a Chinese surname, in response to my suggestion that Chinese officials stick to scientific data, rather than claims about national dignity, when discussing public health issues like the current flu situation:
"Western journalists are accustomed to the shrewd answers from their own politicians facing offensive/aggressive questions. It's well known that they, the western politicians, are afraid of negative reports for their own political skins. Therefore you may also assume that Chinese officials should behave the same way, if they ever want to be accepted by the western world.
"Unfortunately, I have to say that three years stationing in China has not made you thinking like a Chinese. For most Chinese officials, their reaction toward negative western media reports is mostly about domestic consumption. They have to be resolute and principled when it comes to rebutting the 'western defamations' driven by 'ulterior motives'. It's not only about national pride, but has more to do with not being perceived by Chinese people as weak and not being able to stand up to hostile westerners. This may help you better understand why nationalism is so useful for communist government."
This rings true, and reinforces a point I made several months ago about why the voices of official China -- the government and its spokesmen -- were often so inept in presenting their case to the outside world, even though many individual Chinese people could be quite sophisticated and skillful. As this reader suggests, the root cause is that the system here is mainly inward-looking.
The complications of addressing both internal and external audiences is hardly unique to China. American politics provides examples of this every day. Same with Japan, where bone-headed politicians often play to domestic right-wingers by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, not knowing or caring that this drives people crazy here in China.
But at the moment, the internal/external problem is particularly acute for China, because its scale and foreign interactions are so great and its officials' awareness of how things sound to foreign ears seems so limited. For instance, I don't even think they would recognize the irony of hearing that their current detention of Mexican passport holders, whether they have been to Mexico recently or not, might "hurt the feelings of the Mexican people."
UPDATE: After the jump, a further note just received from the same reader ______
Where did the swine H1N1 flu virus come from? I certainly don't know, and I gather that epidemiologists are not yet entirely sure. Maybe the US? Maybe Mexico? Maybe someplace else? But for the official health ministry in China to treat the question as a matter of national dignity.... Sigh. It is a reminder of the point raised here, and of the ways in which the government is still learning the basics of expressing itself to the outside world.
(The Chinese-language version of the story, here courtesy of Danwei, seems to have a similar tone -- as best I can make out. This is the Chinese version of the stalwart concluding quote: "对此, 我们坚决反对.")
After the handling of SARS in 2003 and of the "blue ear" pig virus two years ago, who could possibly doubt assurances coming from the Ministry of Health?
Here's free PR advice from an actual foreign media person: All nations get defensive and try to make things look good for themselves -- as the Mexican governor could well have been doing. But go easy on terms like "driven by ulterior motives" and "ruin China's image" when you're dealing with a scientific matter. Especially if you're representing the Ministry of Health! Just stick to facts and say you're eager to help fellow scientists in other countries get to the bottom of this case. (And the Chinese government is giving $5 million to Mexico to help in anti-flu efforts, which is commendable.) But, please do keep saying "resolutely opposed" ("坚决反对"). Something will go out of the world when that kind of starchiness is lost.
April 29, 2009
Two sentences on the 100 Days press conference
I agree with my colleague Andrew Sullivan that the session was somewhat "dull."
But I think it was dull in the same way Obama's inaugural address and his hour-long economic speech at Georgetown were initially thought to be: in that it was serious, meaty, sober in keeping with the topics under discussion, and therefore consistent with the Administration's long-term operational, governing, and communications strategy.
April 27, 2009
On language schools and weirdo ads
Recently I mentioned "weirdo language school ads" with an apparent bondage theme, and quoted a reader who had taught English in Japan and offered some psycho-sexual interpretation of the ads. Two updates:
First, the latest entry in this category, from a billboard in Beijing yesterday. Speaking personally, nothing could give me greater confidence in the quality of English language instruction than the slogan, "Talenty English, Talenty Education."
(Yes, "Talenty" appears to be the name of the school, but I'm not sure that helps.)
Second, a letter I received from an official of the Gaba Eikaiwa (English conversation) school in Japan. He objects to the way the school's reputation was characterized by the reader I quoted. In the spirit of fair reply, his letter follows:
Dear Mr. Fallows,
I happened to recently read your blog of April 14th 2009, entitled "More on weirdo language school ads (updated)". As the person in charge of recruiting new instructors at Gaba language school, I was somewhat disturbed by the several inaccuracies referenced as "testimony from a 'former English teacher in Japan". I would like to bring these to your attention.
Firstly let me mention that the ad pictured is not reflective of current Gaba advertising. It was a poster that last ran over 6 years ago. Current Gaba advertising is significantly different in theme. Please see the J-peg attachment of our current advertising as a sample. While the ad certainly was "unique" and I won't quibble with the fact that some might even find it 'weird', I would hope that the fact that this ad is from 2002/2003 could be mentioned somewhere in the copy.
Here is Gaba's current ad, featuring its "Man to Man" (マン ツー マン) teaching approach. Underneath that, as a reminder, the previous ad; then, after the jump, the rest of the letter:
Two bottles of water on the dresser in my favorite hotel, the Sheraton Four Points Shenzhen (elegized here and here) earlier this week. I see that the awkward-labeling problems I often complain about in China can occur when only a single language is involved. Click for larger if you don't see the joke.
Although I suppose a language issue might be involved here, in that very few of the local Chinese staff stocking the rooms would be likely to notice the labels and say, "What the hell?" Actually I hope they never notice; this is kind of charming.
April 16, 2009
More on Robert Gates's rationale
I mentioned last week Robert Gates's remarkably lucid argument for why the Air Force should stop most future purchases of the wonderful-if-we-could-afford-it-but-we-can't F-22 fighter plane.
Yesterday, he went to the Air War College, at Maxwell AFB in Alabama, to lay out the rationale for thinking about the F-22 and defense planning in general. Why "go to the war colleges to discuss this topic?" Gates asked rhetorically in the speech. Because "these recommendations are less about budget numbers than they are about how the U.S. military thinks about and prepares for the future."
If you're interested in such thinking and preparation, the speech is very much worth reading. It includes passages like the following, which to put it mildly are not what we've mainly heard from Secretaries of Defense over the decades (emphasis added):
Another important thing I looked at was whether modernization programs, in particular ground modernization programs, had incorporated the operational and combat experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem with the Army's Future Combat Systems vehicles was that a program designed nine years ago did not adequately reflect the lessons of close-quarter combat and improvised explosive devices that have taken a fearsome toll on our troops and their vehicles in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan.
Finally, I concluded we need to shift away from the 99 percent "exquisite" service-centric platforms that are so costly and complex that they take forever to build and only then in very limited quantities. With the pace of technological and geopolitical change, and the range of possible contingencies, we must look more to the 80 percent multi-service solution that can be produced on time, on budget, and in significant numbers. As Stalin once said, "Quantity has a quality all of its own."
Does this mean that everything Gates proposes is right, that the defense budget has been pared to the essentials, and that all systemic problems have been solved? Of course not. The best single starting point for the necessary ongoing critique is the venerable "Defense and the National Interest" site here, or the book America's Defense Meltdown which I have so often touted, now on sale here.
But Gates in this speech (and some previous ones) does the very things I found admirable in Barack Obama's recent long-form economic presentation. He treats the audience like adults, he fairly presents opposing viewpoints, and he explains why he nonetheless considers the path he's on the most sensible one. All in all, he sounds like a man who makes his own decisions on the basis of evidence and logic -- and who presents issues as if he expects the public to do the same. That's worth noticing.
Update: For an extensive (and very supportive) parsing of the intellectual and argumentative structure of Obama's economic speech, see this entry at XPostFactoid.
April 14, 2009
An impressive piece of explanation
An American president can't expect a large real-time audience for an
hour-long, policy-dense speech delivered in the middle of the work day.
But the timing of his speech at Georgetown University just now was fine
for me, around midnight in Beijing, and for the moment these real-time
thoughts.
What I liked about the speech:
- Obama crafted the
message with an intellectual thoroughness and emotional steadiness that
I think will impress its real audience: not the students sitting at
Georgetown or those like me watching live, but the politicians,
financiers, and members of the commentariat who will read the text and
respond after a little while. He showed he was aware of criticisms and
was willing to state them in recognizable form before offering his
rebuttal. (Think of the contrast of GW Bush or Cheney acknowledging
criticism of their strategy and world view. Or even Richard Nixon.)
Eg:
People say this plan is too jumbled. In fact, here is how the pieces
fit together. People say we're spending like crazy. In fact,
here's why we can't cut government spending just now, while consumers
and businesses are cutting too -- but why we have to cut in the longer
term. People say that we're coddling the banks. In fact, here is what
we don't like about what banks have done but why they're necessary to a
recovery. It is SO easy in political rhetoric to assume that
the audience is dumb and that you can burlesque the other side's
argument. Nixon, in fact, was great at this. ("There are those who say
we should cut and run...") I didn't see Obama doing this once.
-
He used analogies that were homely, accessible, and clarifying without
being patronizing. Eg, "Just as a cash-strapped family may cut back on
luxuries but will insist on spending money to get their children
through college, so we as a country have to make current choices with
an eye on the future. If we don't invest now in renewable energy or a
skilled workforce or a more affordable health care system, this economy
simply won't grow at the pace it needs to in two or five or ten years
down the road." These are harder to come up with than they seem.
- Pushing just hard enough with a vivid metaphor, that of building on a rock. Viz:
There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells
the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand,
and it was destroyed as soon as the storm hit. But the second is
known as the wise man, for when "...the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house...it fell not: for
it was founded upon a rock."
We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must
build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth
and prosperity - a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow
and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at
home and send more exports abroad.
What I wasn't so crazy about: personal tics (of my own) in both cases.
-
Maybe it's only veterans of the Carter Administration who remember
this, but "new foundations," a leitmotif of this speech, was also the
motto of one of Carter's State of the Union addresses 30 years ago. The
phrase didn't catch on then. Or maybe it's been three decades in
gestation.
- Obama has apparently decided to embrace, as an
affirmative policy rather than an ad-libbed nervous tic, ending his big
speeches with "God Bless the United States of America." It's there in
the prepared text, not thrown in on scene. Oh well. Every speech has
its shortcomings.
But
on the whole, a quite impressive job. No matter your view of his
policies before this speech - hostile, lukewarm, enthusiastic --
reasonable people would have to be moved an increment toward a more
positive view by the speech.*
___ * Oddly, the speech text itself seems not yet to be available on the WhiteHouse.gov site. (When they come up with it, it will be here.) Instead, again oddly, there is a blog itemabout the speech, with some excerpts. Come on guys, this is Gov 1.0-era thinking. UPDATE: The as-delivered transcription of the speech is now online here, for some reason classified under "Remarks" rather than "Speeches."
Update 2: A reader reminds me that Jimmy Carter was far from the first to talk about "new foundations." Eg:
No more tradition's chains shall bind us, Arise you slaves, no more in thrall! The earth shall rise on new foundations
From the Internationale. Daniel Patrick Moynihan made that point about Carter's speech soon after it was delivered. Update 3: Ah, how the mists of time cloud these things! The Internationale rhapsodized about new foundations, while Jimmy Carter spoke movingly about a new foundation. Thanks to my former Carter collaborator (and successor) Rick Hertzberg.
The new Nigeria
What is it with the Russians? Below, from a recent trip through the spam filter on my Atlantic email account. My Gmail spam filter doesn't show any of this -- I imagine because they have already worked out more sophisticated multi-language anti-spam tools. (Click on the image for more detailed view. And here for earlier Russian spam.):
Now, if only they'd be considerate enough to send the spam in Chinese, so I could read the subject lines. No larger point here, but it is odd.
From reader Sherry S in Paris: Posters there show ads similar to Wall Street English (with the tongue, reminder below).
From numerous readers in Japan: Ubiquitous posters there for the GABA language school very similar to the English First ads in China (bondage theme). GABA below, EF reminder under that.
From numerous professional and amateur semiologists: generally worried comments about what the imagery of these ads says about the stereotyped relationships between Asian women and Western men. I'm not going near that for the moment. But here is a reminder that the target audience for these ads is in fact young Asian people, largely women. I look forward to dissertations on this topic -- and on the subtle but clear difference in affect between the Westerners shown in the Chinese vs the Japanese tied/chained-together ads. Thanks to, among others, Landon Thorpe and Jed Schmidt, and to this "Eikawa Wonderland" site for the GABA pic.
UPDATE: below and after the jump, testimony from a former English teacher in Japan about why the lashed-together imagery of the ad was shrewd target marketing:
I worked in Japan a few years ago for the now defunct Nova Corp, and Nova had an extremely strict non-fraternization
policy, which was a key selling point. Nervous moms would sign their
daughter up, safe in the knowledge that the wouldn't have to worry
about little gaijin [foreign] babies a year down the line.
Two current Beijing subway ad campaigns for two well-known English schools, Wall Street English and English First. (Sorry for subway glare+reflection in both pics):
Both are a little strange, but to me the first one is strange/eyecatching, whereas the second is closer to strange/creepy. The theme of the second, bondage-toned ad is having a 24-hour always on-call private English teacher. On the other hand, this campaign seems to have been running for years in subway, taxis, billboards, etc, and the English First school is a big success. So I guess it must work with the target demographic, which does not include me.
April 6, 2009
Words I never thought I'd hear from a Secretary of Defense
It is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk - or, in effect, to "run up the score" in a capability where the United States is already dominant - is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take.
Emphasis mine; sentiments his. This has obvious bearing, as Gates made clear, on whether it is worth "running up the score" in an area of current U.S. dominance by buying more F-22s, among other systems. (Previously on the F-22 here and here.) More later on the details and implications of Gates's budget, and whether he'll be systematic in applying the rationale he has laid out. For the moment, the simple logic of his statement is worth noting. As is the sense of shock at hearing something so logical as part of a budget presentation. ___ * Update: I see that Fred Kaplan is already on the case.
April 5, 2009
More on Obama, exceptionalism, and impromptu speaking
The transcript of the NATO press conference I mentioned a few hours ago is now available here, via CQ Politics. For some reason, I don't see the transcript at the official WhiteHouse.Gov site, though a blog item about the conference is here. Ie, if the transcript is there, at the site run by this famously tech-hip White House staff, it is not in an immediately obvious location, like via a link from the aforementioned blog entry, nor does it come up on a "NATO press conference" search of the site.
After the jump, the text of what Obama actually said when asked about "American exceptionalism." To my relief, it more or less resembles the way I characterized it from memory! On re-reading, I'm more impressed by how terse it is -- and, as mentioned earlier, how hard it would be to improve on it in the same space, especially in real time.
Also after the jump, two other excerpts, prompted by this comment from reader Edward Goldstick:
I think two other moments were even more 'remarkable' than the one that caught your attention (though it is, too):
1) In response to the provocative Major [Garrett] of Fox News who asked about Afghan laws that supposedly endorsed spousal rape and other dubious practices, I found that Obama walked confidently between the moral imperatives that the questioner presented so blithely and the primacy of the post 9/11 mission and the complex and uncomfortable realities in which the United States and NATO are currently operating.
2) Perhaps it was a setup, but I thought the question to the audience about US journalists getting questions from the other heads of state was a sly move... though I won't hide my lack of surprise (nor my glee) when he used Sarko as a target.
On #2, the context of which will be apparent in the excerpt, what I noticed was his light use of the term "Sarkozy" -- not "President Sarkozy" -- which had the same cheeky effect as the reference to "the Brits." Details below. ___
It's after midnight in China, but I wanted to mention in real time an oratorical performance that deserves a second look. It's from Barack Obama's NATO press conference that just wrapped up, and the part worth studying is the two or three minutes that followed a question by Edward Luce of the Financial Times.
I have nothing against Luce, who wrote a very good recent book about India, but here he asked in what can only be called plummy tones whether Obama still clung to the idea of "American exceptionalism." The general phrasing of the question held that idea out at arm's length as a kind of yahoo colonial oddity.
"I believe in American exceptionalism," Obama said after one beat for thought. "Just as the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism..." I don't have a transcript here, but what was impressive was how rapidly he seemed to have figured out the full shape of his answer; how effortlessly the term "the Brits" (and the instant pairing with "the Greeks") offset the seeming Oxbridge hauteur* of the question; and how he went on to give so balanced a response that no one, Yank or otherwise, could fail to be satisfied.
Of course he was proud of his country, Obama said. But it was also objectively exceptional in several ways: it still had the world's largest economy; its military power was unmatched; and -- with emphasis here -- its Constitutional principles enshrined values and ideals that truly were exceptional. Therefore it should be proud of its role in the world, and embrace its responsibilities.
Then came the pivot, introduced as usual with the word "Now..." Of course America's strength didn't mean it could do things wholly on its own. And of course Obama's pride in his country didn't blind him to the fact that it sometimes could be wrong, nor to the idea that other people from other countries had good ideas that had to be heeded. Indeed, the very fact of American leadership made it all the more important to show respect and listen attentively. He wrapped it all up by saying he saw "no contradiction" between the idea that America was exceptionally strong and had an exceptional leadership role, and the reality that it needed to work with others as part of a team.
When a transcript or YouTube clip comes out, give it a look. The thoughts may seem banal, but I challenge anyone to come up with a clearer explanation of American exceptionalism to an international audience in the same number of words -- not to mention doing so on live TV with maybe five seconds to figure out what your answer will be. In a world where evidence mattered, these few minutes would put an end to the "can't talk without a teleprompter" madness. More important, they're a way of explaining to Americans the potential and limits of our international role.
And, yes, Obama did end the press conference by ducking a question about Kosovo. But knowing what not to answer is a part of rhetorical effectiveness too. Update: He also appeared to refer to the language of Austria as "Austrian," thus: "I don't know how you say it in Austrian, but we call it wheeling-dealing." If this had been GW Bush, it would have been taken as an obvious gaffe, as in his calling the residents of Greece "Grecians." Here you can't be sure whether it's a plain error or a knowing casualism, as in saying that Australians speak "Australian" -- eg, in the ad that says, "Foster's: Australian for 'beer.' " * UPDATE #2: The questioner has convinced me that he didn't really mean it that way. See this mea culpa.
March 26, 2009
"When you're done talking, stop"
More on the uses of silence, previously here, here, and here.
Starting with Shaun FitzPatrick, Major USMC.
In the "media training" I underwent before I went to Iraq with 8th Marines, they addressed this technique in our interview practice sessions. Basically we were told, when you're done talking, stop, and don't let that pause goad you into say something stupid.
Also, we were told to watch for this especially with print reporters. With TV crews, the reporters generally try to fill the air with noise. Silence stands out uncomfortably on TV and it's the journalist's job to fill the air. You don't have that problem.
By the way toughest interviews I ever did were on NPR, not because of harsh treatment or anything like that, but because the radio reporter asks you to describe in detail for listeners who can't see what you're talking about. It's tougher than I thought it would be.
When I asked FitzPatrick if I could use his name, he said: "I was taught in The Basic School that only cowards submit anonymous reviews. Everything I ever send or say is on the record." In that admirable spirit, three real-name accounts after the jump involving sales and journalism. ___
Obama's opening statement at this evening's press conference, delivered no doubt with the help of a teleprompter, sounded smoother and more polished than his real-time answers through the rest of the event.
The same is true for any public figure who has learned to use a teleprompter (harder than it seems) and whose teleprompter-ready material suits his or her natural speaking style. It sounds smoother than extemporized speech because it should be smoother. People don't naturally speak in parsed and polished sentences, even eloquent people. When we are listening to what we know is spontaneous rather than scripted speech, we listen in a different way -- we listen past grammatical glitches, repetitions, and other things that would be "flaws" on a printed page or in a formal oration. If you don't believe me, look back for any extemporized performance that was judged to be riveting by audiences in real time. (A campaign rally, a TV interview, a debate, the closing argument in a trial.) If you then read a word-by-word transcript, it will look like a mess.
The important point with Obama is that the content, command of fact and concept, and overall intelligence of his extemporized answers matched that of the scripted presentation. That could not have been so if he were teleprompter-dependent. For example: by the end of his term, George W. Bush had become quite effective in delivering a formal speech. His interview- and press conference performance if anything deteriorated through his time in office.
The whole "Obama can't talk on his own" concept is bizarre, given his performance through two years of stump speeches and debates during the campaign. But it seems to have gotten so much credence in the right-wing world that it is worth addressing head on.
4) Boy, if some of the questions from reporters were examined as mercilessly for their logic, factual basis, clarity, coherence, emotional tone, etc as Obama's answers were.... I know, they're not the most powerful people on earth with the might of the presidency behind them. But unlike him, the reporters are not reacting on the fly but instead have hours and hours to think of exactly the way they want to make their point. Just an observation.
Three-sentence instant reaction to Obama press conference
1) After seeing a session like this, it is hard to understand how right-wingers can keep up their "Obama can't talk without his teleprompter" theory -- although it's hard to know, given his campaign-debate performance etc, how anyone could have advanced this view in the first place.
2) All successful politicians know how to turn a question to the answer they want to give ("The real point is..."), but Obama showed several times exactly how that should be done -- eg, when asked about changing tax rules for charitable deduction, he brushed that aside and said "what does affect charitable giving is the economy, and..."
3) Explicitly, in his closing comments about being in it for the long haul "even though" he had not brought peace to the Middle East or solved the economic problem in his first 60 days, and implicitly in his manner, he conveyed the same, steady, 'let's keep plugging along and we'll make it' message that had run through his presentations through the campaign.
OK, those are very long and ungainly sentences, but there are only three of them.
March 17, 2009
Interviewing tips from a novelist
Apropos of nothing, I was struck by this passage from Lisa See's The Interior: A Red Princess Mystery, which I was reading this morning on Beijing's subway Line 1. See's novels, like the "Inspector Chen" series by Qiu Xiaolong, are meant to convey the texture of modern China via crime procedurals. From my perspective, great excuse to do "research" while enjoying noir fiction.
In this passage, See's protagonist, inspector Liu Hulan, has gone back to the rural village where she spent the Cultural Revolution years to investigate a suspicious death. In civvies and without identifying herself as a cop, she interrogates a village couple. The young man had been the fiancee of Miaoshan, the woman who has recently died; he is accompanied by his new love interest, a hot number named Siang. The investigator taunts Siang about her cozying up so quickly to the young man:
"I'm sure that Miaoshan's mother will be comforted to hear of your grief and that you have come to offer solace to her daughter's fiance."
Siang's cheeks reddened, but she said nothing.
Hulan [the cop] let the silence stretch out. She was in no hurry, and the longer she kept quiet, the sooner these two would wish to fill the void. Siang noiselessly etched a groove in the dirt with the edge of her tennis shoe, while Tsai Bing [the man] looked around nervously. Finally he said, 'I didn't see Miaoshan so much anymore...'"
The "let the silence stretch out" approach, which is not discussed as often as it should be, can be a surprisingly valuable interviewing technique. The truth is that most people who are being interviewed would like to think that they are providing you with "interesting" information, which reflects well on their knowledge, insight, sense of humor, general bonhomie, etc. People want to be liked and to feel as if they're holding up their end of the conversation. Obviously this doesn't apply in a 60 Minutes-style hostile interrogation, but in most non-adversarial interviews, the subject wants to feel that he is holding the interest of the questioner.
Thus informal body-language signs that you're getting bored or disappointed usually prompt an interviewee to try harder and say more. The strategic use of silence can send such a signal, since people become uncomfortable and think that the silence is their fault. You can't do it very often, but every now and then it works great.
In only one circumstance have I found the "I'm getting bored" approach to be ineffective. That is when interviewing Japanese corporate or political officials. If I act as if they're telling me what I've heard a million times before, generally they've seemed more satisfied than uncomfortable. If someone's goal is to stay On Message no matter how it makes him look -- think, Scott McClellan handling questions about Scooter Libby in the late Bush years -- these psycho-warfare tricks will be futile. But for you aspiring young interviewers: remember to give strategic-silence a try.
March 12, 2009
Technology as friend of tradition! (Chinese language dept.)
People inside China already know about this, and people outside may not care. But because there are points of general intellectual interest involved, a word about discussions within China about possibly changing its system for writing Chinese characters.
No, not getting rid of them altogether and instead using an alphabet -- a pipedream for reformers from time to time, and something with too many complex implications to get into right now.
Rather, undoing one of the big "reforms" rammed through under Chairman Mao: the replacement of many hundreds of characters with streamlined, "simplified" forms. Joel Martinsen of Danwei.org has an excellent primer on the whole subject here. (Other Wikipedia history here and here.) To illustrate what the difference looks like, here is the simple word "telephone" (dianhua in Mandarin) as written first in "traditional" and then in "simplified" forms. In each case it is written with the character for "electricity" followed by the one for "talk," so a telephone is "electric talk," as a computer is "electric brain" (diannao).
Here is "telephone" as written in traditional characters -- which are still used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and some other parts of the Chinese-speaking world outside of the mainland:
And here is the same word, with the "same" characters, in the simplified form used on the mainlaind:
The argument for simplified writing is analogous to various crusades to "rationalize" English spelling -- so u can rite in a kwik and e-z way The simplified versions are obviously simpler to write, with fewer strokes. But there are many objections, enumerated at astonishing length here, which boil down to:
1) The new characters violate tradition. Written English had been in very great flux until the standardization of printing about two centuries ago. (We can barely read Chaucer, and students require glosses for Shakespeare.) Written, traditional Chinese characters had been the great element of continuity for a much longer time -- at least for the people who could read them. Now they've been upturned -- although partisans of simplified characters claim that they're based on a time-honored hand-written form.
2) The new characters are graceless and ugly. The characters below mean the same thing, guangchang, or "Square," as in People's Square, Tomorrow Square, or Tiananmen Square -- a name I dare use because it's on the street maps in Beijng. Those on left are traditional. On the right, streamlined and simplified. It's like the difference between "through" and "thru." (old to the left, new to the right)
3) The new characters are easier to write but harder to understand. A nonobvious point but an important one. Consider the English word pronounced "for." When spoken, it could be ambiguous. When written, it's immediately obvious whether we mean for, four, or fore. Same with "right" -- potentially confusing when heard, immediately obvious when read as right, write, wright, or rite. And -- strangely -- characters have a counterpart to this problem, made worse by simplification. (This is not even getting into the related but different topic of words pronounced the same and distinguishable mainly by their characters-- as if the for/four/fore problem came up all the time.)
The two characters below, which mean "east" on the left and "happy" or "enjoyment" on the right, are very easy to tell apart in traditional form (ignore the little dots on the side; part of my home-made effort to illustrate the characters.) :
Here is how much more similar the two of them look when simplified -- again "east" on the left and "happy" on the right:
The "extra information" in the traditional characters is what made them more cumbersome to write, but also easier to tell apart. (Again, think right/write/rite/wright: suppose they were all spelled rite!) Now, here is the interesting part:
Increasingly, Chinese people don't actually have to write (rite? right?) out these characters by hand. More and more, they key them in with mobile phones or at computers. And when they do that, it's just as easy to "write" a traditional-style, complex, information-dense character as a streamlined new one. (Reason: you key in clues about the character, either its pronunciation or its root form, and then click to choose the one you want.) So -- according to current arguments -- the technology of computers and mobile phones could actually revive an important, quasi-antique style of writing.
Much more on the debate here and here. In practical terms, my bet is that nothing will change. But if you're interested in language or the relationship between technology and styles of thought, it has to be interesting. Or so I contend.
February 24, 2009
Interesting little tool to use during tonight's speech
Speechwars.com, which lets you see how often presidents have used any given word in State of the Union addresses over the years. For instance, here are the varying uses of "freedom" and "liberty" since the earliest days:
Lots of surprising results available. For instance, here is China-v-India:
Try it for yourself to see how much is old and how much new in tonight's speech. (I'll be traveling while it happens so can't play along myself.) Hint: no S.O.U. address has yet contained the word "nationalization."
February 22, 2009
Interesting Tom Geoghegan interview re single-payer health care
For reasons explained several times in the past six weeks (here, here, and here), I really hope my long-time friend Tom Geoghegan can win next month's special election for the Congressional seat from the Fifth District of Illinois. This is no slight on any of the other candidates in the race. I know very little about them or the politics of the district. But I know enough about Geoghegan, based on decades of friendship starting when we were teenagers, to be 100% sure that he would bring an unusual level of honesty, intelligence, humor, and again honesty to national politics. I am saying honesty twice because I mean both the personal-probity and the plain-speaking variety.
Anecdote I just remembered: the first time I heard the name "Barack Obama" was from Geoghegan. He was visiting our house in Washington in the early 2000s, after Obama had made it into the Illinois State Senate and then lost his 2000 race for Congress against Bobby Rush, and before (I think) Obama's anti-Iraq-war speech of late 2002. "Watch this guy," Tom told my wife and me. He knew Obama from labor-organizing work on the South Side, since Geoghegan had spent much of his career representing dislocated workers in that area. "He can be our Lincoln." I thought: Yeah, yeah.
Now, back to Tom Geoghegan's honesty: His recent half-hour TV interview with Jeff Berkowitz, available on Geoghegan's campaign web site here and shown below, is a good illustration. You don't want to miss the host's unintentionally campy welcome to the program, 56 seconds into the clip. "Berkowitz is my name. Politics is our game." But the part worth studying is from 2:15 through about minute 10, when Geoghegan unashamedly argues in favor of a single-payer health coverage plan. And after that, he argues with similar directness for "soak the rich" progressive income-tax rates and nationalizing the failed banks -- or "the Greenspan plan," as we now know it.
If I were on Geoghegan's policy team, I'd be suggesting that when making the case for single-payer, he spend less time talking about Europeans and more talking about the success of VA hospitals in the US. (Phillip Longman's classic article on the VA as health-care model is here, and subsequent book here. For another time, my own recent experience with an extremely top-of-the-the-line doctor who told me how much simpler his practice would be if he could handle all his patients with the minimum of paperwork, bureaucracy, and insurance-driven hassle of his practice at the VA.) Still, it's impressive to watch a politician clearly explain why it would be cheaper and better to get rid of the massive insurance-company bureaucracy.
So whether you're interested in Chicago politics, health-care policy, or the process of making "daring" points on TV, this interview has its rewards. More about this interview, plus general campaign info, from one of Geoghegan's neighbors and supporters at the GSpot blog, here.
February 10, 2009
Spam is making me smarter
From the company spam filter for my email account just now (click for larger):
Evidently spammers recognize that I am a man widely traveled and with broad linguistic skills.* I'll take respect wherever I can get it. ___ *Or maybe it shows only that spam filters are more mature for dealing with English-language influx than with this other stuff. No, I think it's a sign of respect.
Good video of Tom Geoghegan in action
Last month I mentioned, here and here, my enthusiasm about and support for Tom Geoghegan's candidacy to succeed Rahm Emanuel (and before him Rod Blagojevich and Dan Rostenkowski) as Congressman from the Fifth District of Illinois.
The campaign actually has a professional-looking web site now. Its latest entry is a 22-minute video of Tom on a local interview show, called "The Interview Show." It is worth watching both to get a sense of Tom's personality, wryness and all, and to be reminded how it can sound when a public figure talks clearly and non-patronizingly about public problems. We're getting used to it from Obama, for example with the press conference last night. This is another illustration. Donation page is here.
January 31, 2009
See you in a week
There are so many things I'd find interesting to talk about at the moment, from the latest inside dope on security theater as reported by the people who have to carry it out, to the Most Valuable Player awards for software and hardware in the last year (and updates on Offline Gmail and Windows 7), to the best replacement for the boiled frog cliche, to, yes, The Economy. Plus, the view in China at the dawn of what is both the Year of the Ox (牛) and the year of the Obama (奥巴马, the last character meaning "horse" but there just for phonetic reasons since it is pronounced ma). And so on. Including, yes, a further comment on the Inaugural Address, which will be yellowing in the National Archives by the time I type out my promised wrapup.
But because of a long-anticipated series of family and personal obligations that lie immediately ahead, some pleasant and others merely unavoidable, I will be off line for most of the next week or so. Details as relevant later on.
If this were back in my Japan days, I would sign off with じゃまた, ja mata, my favorite Japanese "see you" phrase that is the functional equivalent of Ciao! Instead I'll use my current favorite Chinese counterpart, 慢走 -- man zou, literally "walk slow" but conceptually like "take it easy" in all senses of the term. It's often said by shopkeepers or restaurant staff as patrons leave the building. To the extent the Atlantic is a hybrid of friendly specialty store and lively cafe, it therefore applies here.
慢走 to all for now.
January 24, 2009
Un-$%&%ing-believable! (China's censoring of Obama's speech, cont.)
I mentioned yesterday that even though the censors at China's CCTV apparently panicked in real time, and cut off coverage of Barack Obama's inaugural address when he started talking about "dissent" and "communism," the editors of People's Daily, with more time and calm to reflect, had provided a full, translated version of the speech -- including this touchy passage:
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not
just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and
enduring convictions.
(Reminder: China is still officially ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, even though much of its economy runs on wide-open market principles.)
I just got a note from Donald Clarke, a law professor at George Washington University in DC, acting on a tip from David Kelly, of the China Research Center at University of Technology Sydney, asking whether I was certain about the link I had provided, here. Because he had checked the People's Daily version -- and he didn't see any mention of the struggle against communism.
So I went back and checked -- and he's right! The same link to the same page with the same official translation of Obama's speech is virtually the same as the original, except that someone carefully removed the word "communism." ("Dissent" is still in there.) Here's the play by play:
1) Sentence in Obama's speech:
"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not
just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and
enduring convictions."
2) Version in People's Daily yesterday, which (as best I can judge) is a pretty faithful rendering of Obama's statement. I should note that I directly cut-and-pasted this from the PD site, as an indication that it actually was there at some point:
回想起先辈们从容地面对法西斯主义和共产主义的时候，并不仅靠导弹和坦克，还靠强健的联盟和持久的信念
3) Same sentence from the same translation at the same site today, with no notice of any change:
回想起先辈们从容地面对法西斯主义的时候，并不仅靠导弹和坦克，还靠强健的联盟和持久的信念。
And what's the difference? The disappearance of these five characters, 和共产主义, meaning "and communism." So now Obama talks only about the victory over fascism and about no other foe.
Which in turn means: in calm deliberation, after initially deciding the Chinese readership could stand to hear an American president talk about struggles over fascism and communism, the editors went back a day later, altered the translation, and gave no indication that they were doing so. (Update. Alternative hypothesis suggested to me: someone at PD "accidentally did the right thing" by translating the whole speech; then this "error" was corrected as soon as people in charge realized what had happened.)
If I had the time right now to call up the internet way-back machine and get the version of People's Daily from yesterday, I could prove that 24 hours ago it included the now-missing five characters. But, again, the indirect proof is that the part I quoted yesterday was cut-and-pasted directly from what the People's Daily was showing at the time.
To repeat: un-$#$#()&$-believable -- in the insecurity, the hamhandedness, and the immaturity this reveals.
Take my wife - please!
Anyone who knows anything whatsoever about China can stop reading here. _____
OK, now that the rest of us are alone, here's a hint about a lame but popular Henny Youngman-style joke you may be exposed to and perhaps puzzled by in coming days.
The new Chinese year begins on January 26. My own wife, still in Beijing (and to whom this item's headline very definitely does not apply -- I miss you!), reports that the deafening and insanity-inducing joyous and celebratory firecracker explosions are already underway.
The current year is the Year of the Rat, and the coming one is the Year of the Ox (or cow or bull or what have you.) No matter what it's called in English, in Chinese the bovine animal in question is written 牛 and pronounced niu.
Thus if you get cards or emails from your Chinese friends saying "Happy Niu Year!" you can join in the hearty laughter at a good bilingual pun. This is a little tip in the interests of cross-national harmony and fellow feeling. 新年快乐 to one and all.
January 21, 2009
Very late night inauguration points
Still early for the First Family, who have several more inaugural balls to go, but late for a mere citizen after his quota of evening events -- capped by the pleasure of seeing a Metro car jammed at 1:00am with people in every station of life and mode of dress, from tuxedos and evening gowns to greasy night-shift overalls.
1) More on the speech itself tomorrow, but here is a point to bear in mind. Several of Barack Obama's big rhetorical performances have been recognized as hits from the minute he stepped off the stage. His 2004 Democratic convention speech is one example. His Philadelphia speech on race, which quelled the Rev. Wright controversy last spring, is another.
In many other cases, especially late in the campaign, the red-hots among his supporters thought he had "underperformed" or been "just so-so" immediately after an event, only to see the days-later and weeks-later reaction to the performance turn much more positive. The clearest example was his first debate with John McCain, where supporters thought he had missed chances to go in for the kill -- but over time it was clear that he had established his steady, gravitas-worthy persona.
I think his inaugural speech will be in this second category. Now that I have a chance to look at some blog-world commentary, I see that some is underwhelmed, as after the first debate. I think that the speech was in fact very well-pitched to this moment in history and the messages Obama wants and needs to send. That is, both artful and useful. More detail tomorrow.
2) As I may have mentioned from time to time, I view the Reagan-onward tic of closing all presidential speeches with "God bless America" as just a tic. That is, a substitute for doing what FDR, TR, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and all pre-Reagan American presidents had done: namely, find a "real" way to end a speech. Here is interesting proof that it is a tic. The prepared version of Obama's inaugural address - here, among other sources -- does not include those words at the end. But the transcription of what he actually said -- here -- confirms what we all heard, that he tacked them on at the end.
When he had time to think about the shape of the speech, Obama, as a writer and thinker, realized that he had a strong close without those cliched words. In real time, he threw them in, as any of us (including me) might throw in "you know" or "I mean" when answering a question. Let me say that again: when he had time to think about it, Obama the literary craftsman thought better of it.
3) In keeping with earlier testimony to the basic good will of the crowd -- as I witnessed it as one of the 2 million or so (my crowd here) -- the "boos" when George Bush or Dick Cheney appeared on the screen seemed almost perfunctory. People felt they had to do it, but their hearts weren't in it. To me, the most spontaneous-sounding and surprising cheers were for (a) Colin Powell, and (b) Jimmy Carter, and the most spontaneous surplus-hostility boos were for ... Joe Lieberman. Just reporting on my part of the crowd.
4) I gather that my experience with inauguration security -- easy to get in, tough to get out -- was not the same for people who, unlike me, had real tickets to the inauguration and weren't just standing among the hordes on the mall. (Eg here and here.) More on this later too.
January 20, 2009
Reading assignment before Obama's speech
Full text of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech from 1963 (here and many other places). Everyone knows how that speech ends. Not that many have ever read, or now remember, the first two thirds of the speech that built up to the famous close. Here's a guess that it might be an important complement to hearing Barack Obama's inaugural address three hours from now. And even if not, it's too impressive a piece of thought and rhetoric not to revisit every so often.
More after the event, plus compare-and-contrast reports on this past 24 hours in DC (after the PEK-IAD longhaul) versus other inaugural ceremonies I've seen here over the years -- just about all of them, by the way, in colder weather than today's.
January 17, 2009
Keep hope alive
Good news travels fast around the world. A few minutes ago a woman watching US TV called my sister-in-law in Rome, who quickly emailed the information to me here on the wee-hours watch in Beijing:
My friend Helen just called to tell me that "God Bless America" has been
substituted out! She was watching Obama starting on his train ride to DC,
and he gave a nice inspired speech. And at the end, using the same
[august] intonation, he said instead, " I love you guys" !!
Conceivably over time we would grow tired of this phrase, too -- though you can imagine Obama delivering it with a twinkle in his eye, rather than with the super-earnestness that typically encases the cliched "God Bless America" rhetorical close. But any presidential speech that ends with any words other than GBA is a step toward mental and linguistic freedom. Perhaps Obama really is aiming for greatness.
In conclusion I have only this to say: I love you guys too.
January 15, 2009
Last words on pitying Bush
(At least before his really-final farewell speech in a few hours, which I won't see because I'll be at a factory in the boondocks of Beijing.)
About GW Bush's last press conference as president (previously here, here, and here), a reader says:
President Bush's goodbye conference ... made me think of how I identify his waning days. The official White House website has a video of President Bush giving a tour of the Oval Office. Throughout the video, President Bush makes mistakes and starts over, expecting the mistakes to be edited out of the video. But they weren't. The video makes me feel pity for him, much the same way people have felt pity for him after his press conference: not for what he did say, but for what he was trying to say. At the end of the day, he's still just a man as much as you and I are, and for the first time in the eight years of his presidency, I saw him as human.
The 8-minute video is here, shot in 2006. More background here. Judge for yourself.
January 14, 2009
Will $6 billion solve the Chinese PR problem?
I've written several times, in this article and and this book and various posts like this and this, about the strange difficulty Chinese institutions face when dealing with the outside world. Individual Chinese people get along very well overseas, at least in my experience. But companies and public institutions often act as if they have no clue about how foreigners think, reason, or react. The twin symbols of this difficulty are signs and brochures rendered into an "English" no foreigner can make sense of, and the official agitprop statements, from "jackal in a Buddhist monk's robes" to "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" that undermine rather than advance their intended cause.
My job is not to help Chinese organizations advance their intended causes. But it doesn't help anybody, as I argue in the book and article, if China's clumsy public diplomacy makes the country seem more menacing, opaque, hyper-controlled, and overall bad than it really is. For another time: how different the experience of living and traveling here is from what you'd expect by just reading about the place, and generally how much better.
Thus my fascination with the much examined news this week that the Chinese authorities plan to spend 45 billion RMB, or well over $6 billion, on a new effort to explain China to the world. The original stories were in the (non-government-controlled) South China Morning Post, of Hong Kong. They're for subscribers only, so I won't link to them. (By the way, for about $1 per week, a SCMP subscription is a bargain for people interested in China.) An account in the ZhongnanhaiBlog site has many details. It also has a bracing critique of the whole idea that money is the main cause of the government's difficulties in explaining itself. Cam MacMurchy of the ZhongnanhaiBlog says:
The problem isn't lack of TV channels or media outlets that present
China's case to foreigners, it's the lack of any media outlets that
present China's case well. If Xinhua's new TV endeavor is
run in the same manner CCTV is, with the same group of life-long
communist party members in bad suits calling the shots, it will be
doomed to failure. In fact, I'd go one step further: any mainland Chinese run media outlet will be taken less seriously as long as general media controls are in place.
The post also contains (rare) good news for English-speaking journalists: these Chinese media outlets are going on a hiring spree! At least someone is sure to benefit from this plan.
January 12, 2009
Refining the point about GW Bush's final press conference
I mentioned a few minutes ago, while GW Bush's final press conference was underway, that the president seemed unusually "self-aware."
That's not quite right. On matters of policy, he revealed himself to be as isolated and out of touch as his critics (including me) would have assumed all along. Two illustrations: he hotly challenged the premise of one question that his policies had made America less prestigious and respected around the world, saying that was just the view of some "elites" and other pantywaists in part of Europe. Go to China! he said. They still respect us there. Yes, sort of. As I've written many times in the Atlantic, China does not seem in any deep way "anti-American," and they generally think US-China relations are good. But no thinking person has the slightest doubt that the Iraq, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib policies, in particular, have hurt America's image badly here as they have in most other places. To say what the President did indicates how carefully he has been protected from any unfiltered feedback from the real world.
So too with his wistful, regretful-sounding comments about the "harsh tone" in Washington DC. He was completely believable in saying that he hoped things would go better for Barack Obama. But does he recall the name Karl Rove? Does he remember which Vice President told a U.S. Senator from the other party to fuck off, on the Senate floor? There is no point refighting these wars. I'm simply saying: the very sincerity of the President's comments indicated how isolated he has been, or what he has chosen to forget.
Nonetheless: I think even people who oppose the Bush Administrations policies would find it somewhat harder to dislike him viscerally after this performance -- rather than getting angrier the more they see him, as with most of his appearances over these last eight years. The self-awareness I mentioned was purely on a personal level. Even though he defended his tax cuts and his other policies and even the execution of the Katrina response, everything in his posture, expression, and body language -- even his emphasis on the word defeat in talking about the 2008 results -- indicated that he has taken in the fact that things have not gone well.
It is true, he can hardly express himself in anything resembling sentences. But he displayed none of the little moue of pride when he got out a tricky name or a big word, a tic very familiar from his past speeches. To me, he helped rather than hurt himself with this last performance. And to recognize what an achievement this is: think how it would be to hear a valedictory hour's worth of Dick Cheney.
January 11, 2009
Presidential rhetoric evolves toward its perfect form
From today's NYT, an account of a dry run of next week's swearing-in ceremonies. An African-American soldier built roughly like Barack Obama, Army Staff Sgt. Derrick Brooks, stood in as the "Faux-Bama" as the participants walked through the planned movements on the stage. These included his inaugural address:
Mr. Faux-Bama's entire inaugural speech consisted of six words: "My fellow Americans," he said. "God bless America."
By chance, I was standing in the crowd (teleported from Beijing) watching the run through, as a C-SPAN crowd shot reveals:
Thanks to many readers who wrote in to make sure I knew about the ceremony. Later, a compare-and-contrast exercise between those two modern imperatives of Presidential comportment: the "God Bless America" sign-off and the American-flag pin in the lapel. The similarities are obvious, but there are some interesting differences.
January 8, 2009
Sorry to hear Obama talking this way
This may be a small thing, but:
I hate, hate, hate the lazy modern presidential habit of ending all major addresses with the phrase "And God bless the United States of America" or simply "God bless America."
I love the Irving Berlin song. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. But a little chunk is hacked away from the national brain each time a president gets out of a speech not with a thought or original phrase but with this mindless pablum. This has become the political equivalent of "Have a nice day!"
Isn't this how presidents have always talked? God, no. You didn't get it from George Washington. You didn't get it from Abraham Lincoln, either in the hands-down winner as Greatest Inaugural Address Ever, his second or in that work of political haiku, Gettysburg Address. You didn't hear it from FDR.
Many of these titans spoke of God -- but when they did so, it was with some actual thought-content. For instance, from the close of Lincoln's Second Inaugural:
Fondly do
we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,
as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in...
As I know first-hand, you didn't hear this from probably the most sincerely religious president of recent times, Jimmy Carter. To choose an example of a speech I was not involved in, his "crisis of confidence" speech in the summer of 1979 -- often called the "malaise" speech, though he did not use that word -- touched on spiritual issues but ended this way:
I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard.
Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With
God's help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to join
hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the
American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.
But then Ronald Reagan began using the phrase to mean "The speech is over now," and ever since then politicians have seemed afraid not to tack it on, perhaps out of fear that we'll have the aural equivalent of phantom-limb pain if we don't hear the familiar words.
Apparently Obama began sliding down this slope early last year, but in most of the speeches I heard he ended with a composed thought, not a cliche. (I must not have listened all the way to the end of his otherwise-perfect election night speech in Grant Park.) But just now, groan, he ended his economic-stimulus speech, at George Mason University, in this same lame way. Can there be hope for the inaugural?
You are better than this, Mr. President-Elect. Your speechwriter, though more wizened than some who have held the job, presumably still has the vim to come up with a good closing line -- even one involving God. For example, this from John Kennedy's inaugural, six months before Obama was born:
With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final
judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking
His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work
must truly be our own.
All I have left to say is... nah, to hell with further thought. God Bless America
December 18, 2008
One more, then giving this topic a rest
New-looking part of the Shenzhen International Airport, over a door that would lead people into a staff-only zone. Yesterday.
Literally, the Chinese could be rendered as: "Traveler, halt!" Or, to sound less Teutonic, "Travelers, stop!" But if you'd asked a native speaker you'd probably just end up with the simple "No entry."
My reaction to this and innumerable similar signs in China has become sympathy rather than anything else (frustration, mirth, etc). All the fiddling with computerized translation programs, all the paging through English textbooks, all of whatever other effort came up with "The traveler halts," for a result whose oddities could so easily have been avoided. Oh well. The airport itself is nice. Other topics shortly.
December 16, 2008
Amazing slop (updated)
I'm on record as thinking it Colonel Blimpish for native speakers of English to make fun of other people's mistakes in our language -- above all when we're doing it on their soil, and when our command of their language is less than total. Odds are any college-educated Chinese person I meet will be much better in English than I am in Chinese. After all, English was one of their mandatory subjects through school and in their college-entrance exams. Not quite the same for me with Chinese. (But let's try some French! Or Latin! Or Esperanto! Or Japanese!) So not once in talking with such a person have I been other than grateful for such English as they know.
On the other hand, I repeatedly marvel at the blitheness with which Chinese organizations put things in English designed for foreign readers without having even a minimally-literate native speaker give it a quick look. (Background again here and more broadly here.)
Today's case study: promotional map, conveniently in English for foreign investors and tourists, which I just received from a fancy Chinese resort I won't otherwise identify:
Sigh. My kingdom for an "e."
Update: George Bradt of Shanghai reports that the city's hockey rink has ramp marked "Sloppy Passage," for the convenience of wheelchair-bound patrons. Update #2: Via Micah Sittig, photo of the ramp, with its full name "Disabled Sloppy Passage," here.
December 11, 2008
Subversive pandas are back
When last seen, two months ago, the ambiguously subversive pandas of Sichuan Province's tourism-promotion campaign were talking about.... something, as a way of encouraging Chinese travelers to come see them in their western homeland.
Discussion of what "More Freedom, More Happiness" might and might not mean here and here.
In the last two or three days, the Tourist Promotion Pandas of Sichuan have come back -- I've seen four or five different posters in subway stations. All similar in look and typeface, different in slogan. Only this evening did I have a camera on hand to record one of them. The message this time (Jianguomen station) is more straightforward -- and, according to me, is just about the same in English and Chinese. But the panda on the bottom right still has that strange, unreadable, possibly-menacing expression as in the original poster.
It's been a very long and very cold day. More in the future on other poster pandas -- and probably tomorrow on the startling development of China showing a surge in its trade surplus just as all of its customer-economies are collapsing.
Last word anyone ever need speak on 'hurt feelings'
This hilarious analysis and map, courtesy of Danwei.org, of the times and places when the "feelings of the Chinese people" have been hurt. (Background here and here.)
Danwei's map of the offending countries, marked in black. For explanation, see the post.
December 10, 2008
More on "hurt feelings"
I mentioned recently that I'd had developed a perverse alertness to the phrase "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people." For me, hearing it is like letting scalding hot water run over a poison ivy rash. It is painful and yet somehow.... satisfying.
The Shanghai-based author and consultant Paul French, who has been here much longer and heard the phrase much more often than I have, sends a note putting it in practical and historical context:
For me that has always acted as a full stop in a conversation or negotiation. When the other side says that to do something (concede invariably) would hurt the feelings of the Chinese people (i.e. building that supermarket and refusing to pay as much as I want you to for the land would hurt the feelings of the Chinese people) it's a way of saying - thus far and no further.... That phrase really is the point at which no more negotiation is possible. I can't think of an equivalent phrase in English or American/European business-political etiquette.
But you got me wondering if the hurting of feelings predated 1949. Seems not - can't find it anywhere in KMT pronouncements nor did Sun Yat Sen use the phrase in 1911 or the students during May 4th 1919. Indeed this week is the anniversary of China declaring war on Japan, Germany and Italy in 1941 and their formal declaration of war on the Axis was quite well written actually - http://chinarhyming.blogspot.com/ -- and no talk of hurt feelings.
Offered gratis, to PhD candidates in search of a worthy topic: the linguistic, historical, ideological, and cultural aspects of the emergence of "hurting the feelings" as a major theme in international relations. Just give French, and me, a line in the Acknowledgments.
December 8, 2008
Annals of agitprop
Today's category: phrases that have outlived their time. Today's winner: "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people."
The front page of the Dec 8 edition of the (state-run, English-language, indispensable) China Daily had this item on Chinese-EU tensions, especially Chinese-French, because of Nicolas Sarkozy's recent decision to meet with the Dalai Lama:
Fair enough: it's an area of genuine contention. But then we have the quote from China's deputy foreign minister laying out the specifics of France's offense:
Ah, it "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people." This is the phrase I wait for in every Chinese government statement on matters of international disagreement.
Yes, there is a real concept buried beneath this boilerplate slogan. The concept might be expressed other places as "an insult to the dignity of our nation," or "disrespect for our people and their principles" or something. But it is generally used quite sparingly in other nations' pronunciamentos, because in the end listeners don't find it that persuasive.
Yes, one nation should not gratuitously offend any others -- a point my recent interviewee, the Chinese mega-banker Gao Xiqing, makes very effectively.* And, yes, in many personal dealings, saying "you hurt my feelings!" may be an important part of reaching a resolution. But you don't find Talleyrand, Metternich, George C. Marshall, and even Sun Tzu recommending this complaint as a big part of international strategy. And remember, this is not some sand-bagging trick of mistranslation. These are the English words the Chinese government itself selects.
As I argued last month in the Atlantic, China's official spokesmen make the country seem far less appealing than it really is, because their sloganized responses display so little grasp of how outsiders act, think, and respond. Important evidence that my contention is out of date will be the disappearance of "hurt our feelings" from future official statements. _____ * The way Gao put it, talking about what he learned from hardships working on a railroad gang during the Cultural Revolution:
I learned that, from a social point of view, no matter how lowly
statured a person you are talking to, as a person, they are the same
human being as you are. You have to respect them. You have to apologize
if you inadvertently hurt them. And often you have to go out of your
way to be nice to them, because they will not like you simply because
of the difference in social structure.
Zut alors! C'est une blague!
Many people in the blog-o-world, including several of my Atlantic colleagues, have noted the, umm, similarity between Barack Obama's most famous poster and the recent "SarkObama" campaign by Nicolas Sarkozy in France.
Loyal Atlantic reader Edward Goldstick sent me a note suggesting that I read what the posters actually say. As soon as you do so, it becomes evident that they're not pro-Sarkozy posters at all! They're an elegant little bit of jiujitsu to both mock and pressure Sarkozy by appearing to commit him to positions more progressive/leftist than he in fact holds.
"Produce clean and sustainable energy for Europe," the one on the upper left says. "Yes we can!" "Make polluters pay," says the next one down. "Yes we can!"
Others are in the same vein. And, as it turns out from a story in Le Monde (in French, here) published five days ago, this is part of a guerrilla campaign by Greenpeace to push its climate-change programs during EU talks on the summit in Poznan, Poland, this month.
Ah, the subtle French. But at least we know that Sarkozy is not as derivative as he seemed -- and that it takes much longer for material to make its way from the mainstream French press into English than the other way around.
November 23, 2008
Hero of Journalism Award
I will present this coveted prize to the next reporter / pundit / columnist who gets through a discussion of the pros and cons of Hillary Clinton as Sec of State withoutusing the now-unbearably hackneyed term "team of rivals."
Nothing against Doris Kearns Goodwin, who in prehistoric times was my professor in a college course on the American presidency. And nothing against her application of the concept to the composition of Lincoln's wartime cabinet and the political challenge of holding Union factions together before and during war. (For somebody who does challenge that application, go here.)
But this is not the Civil War, Obama is not Lincoln -- and even if he were and all circumstances were identical in every way, out of simple self-respect you'd think people would get embarrassed about using the catch phrase they'd heard a million times for the million-and-first. To me, listening to this unvaried refrain is like hearing "bitchin' !" among my fellow teenagers in the late 1960s or "groovy! " after that. And I'm in China!
We do already have words for the underlying concept, and many other examples in history than Lincoln's bringing Seward et al into his administration. You could call it an "inclusive" approach. Or "big tent" politics. Or "bipartisanship," if the rivals in question are from the other party. Or "coalition-building." Or "compromise." Or a "unity cabinet." If you really want a hoary adage, you have two familiar ones to chose from: something about bygones being bygones, or about keeping your friends close, and your enemies... America needs a lot of things, but not additional cliches to stunt political thought before it has a chance of taking place. (This reminds me of the tech cliche "mashup," to describe what really is an "overlay" or a "combination" or "fusion.")
As I write, the Sunday talk shows have not yet begun in America. My guess is that no one who appears on them will still be eligible for my award at the end of the day. But I am an optimist and hope to be proven wrong!
November 19, 2008
How it should be done: Terry Gross with Bill Ayers
It's conventional chattering-class wisdom to say that Terry Gross of Fresh Air is a "great interviewer." In the early days I think that wisdom originated to some significant extent in male-listener fascination with the sound of her voice. But a broadcast I just heard was not only a reminder that she is, in fact, truly a great interviewer but also a demonstration of what that means in practice.
The broadcast in question was her 43-minute session yesterday with Ayers, the person presented by GOP campaigners as Barack Obama's closest and most influential friend. Ayers himself came across, inevitably, as a more complex character than the campaign caricature: more sympathetic in some ways, not necessarily in others. But much of what Ayers "reveals" comes out precisely because of the way Gross posed and sequenced the questions. If he had just been parked in front of the microphone by someone who said, "Well, how can you hold your head up?" or "So, tell us about Barack Obama," the results would have been much duller.
At the most obvious level, Terry Gross succeeds in this interview simply by avoiding the two most common, and laziest, styles of today's broadcast interviewers: surplus aggressiveness, long ago made familiar by Mike Wallace and now lampooned by Stephen Colbert; and lapdogism, most recently on display in Greta Van Susteren's sessions with Sarah Palin and the default mode of Larry King Live. Both of these extremes reflect the confusion of toughness of manner -- do you interrupt, are you scowling, are you borderline impolite -- with toughness of inquiry, which is something altogether different and can happen under the most polite and civil auspices.
She also avoids the common pitfall of highbrow public broadcasting-style interviewers: giving in to the temptation to show off how much she knows and how smart she is in the set-up to the questions.
What she does instead, and what she shows brilliantly in this interview, is: she listens, and she thinks. In my experience, 99% of the difference between a good interviewer (or a good panel moderator) and a bad one lies in what that person is doing while the interviewee talks. If the interviewer is mainly using that time to move down to the next item on the question list, the result will be terrible. But if the interviewer is listening, then he or she is in position to pick up leads ("Now, that's an intriguing idea, tell us more about..."), to look for interesting tensions ("You used to say X, but now it sounds like..."), to sum up and give shape to what the subject has said ("It sounds as if you're suggesting..."). And, having paid the interviewee the respect of actually listening to the comments, the interviewer is also positioned to ask truly tough questions without having to bluster or insult.
If you have this standard in mind -- is the interviewer really listening? and thinking? -- you will be shocked to see how rarely broadcast and on-stage figures do very much of either. But listen to this session by Gross to see how the thing should be done.
November 17, 2008
Back to business, and back to China: Why we love the English-language Chinese press (cont.)
A mere 22 hours after we started driving toward LAX at 4:15am through what seemed to be snowfall but in fact was ashfall from Yorba Linda version of the recent SoCal fires*, my wife and I are back in our apartment in Beijing. And reassuringly, we have the joys of the English-language Chinese press to welcome us home. Front page of today's (state controlled) China Daily:
Apart from the picture of the baby-holding Premier Wen Jiabao in his now-iconic role as Beloved Grandpa of the Nation, I invite attention to the headline in the top right corner of the front page:
On line and in print, I have oftenmarveled at why Chinese organizations make so many careless and unintended errors when rendering material into English for foreigners to read. (Locus classicus, discussed here: the huge signs outside an art museum in Shanghai last year. They announced a big exhibit of photos from the Three Gorges dam area and read: THE THREE GEORGES.)
With the China Daily and sister publications, it's a different matter. Judging from the result, it's obvious that native English speakers have a final pass at the stories, headlines, and captions there. They have very few unintended, "Three Georges"-type errors. But it also seems obvious that the British, Canadian, American, Australian, Indian, South African, Singaporean, etc subeditors hired for this role can have a slyly subversive bent. Often little touches show up in the publication that will seem Onion-like to any native speaker but that even very capable English-speaking Chinese supervisors would likely miss. At least that's what I hope is going on here -- intentional wry precision rather than unaware imprecision. I'm applying an Intelligent Design model in my newspaper reading. ______ * For those who know the LA Freeway system: this was along Highway 91 west of I-605, which we were detoured onto because signs said that I-105 was closed, apparently for fire reasons. The fires were of course aggravated by the hot, dry Santa Ana winds. On the weather report we heard while passing through the ashfall, the reported atmospheric humidity was six percent.
October 26, 2008
Subversive Panda II: More freedom, more confusion (updated)
Recently I mentioned the winsome advertising-panda of the Dongsishitiao subway stop in Beijing. (Cameo reminder photo below; previous post here, with link to larger picture.)
I asserted that the English version of the slogan -- "More Freedom, More Happiness" -- was ambiguous in a subtly provocative way. Was the beloved symbol of the Chinese nation really saying, "the freer you are, the happier you will be"? Or saying that only to visitors who could read the English translation? Or saying it inadvertently via mistranslation?
As for the Chinese version of his slogan, 更多自由, 更多欢乐 -- that is, the version that 99.9% of the passersby would pay attention to -- I (wisely!) declared myself agnostic on how that should be read. And I had no explanation for the oddity of a panda talking about freedom in the first place.
The wisdom of the readers:
1) Many people, Chinese and otherwise, said that the ad was really a way of stressing that the pandas of Chengdu and greater Sichuan province now enjoyed bigger, freer enclosures than before and therefore are happier. Sounds like a stretch to me, but: OK. More on the pandas of Sichuan and the now-destroyed Wolong Panda Reserve in this article and this slideshow and these posts.
1A) One man suggested that it was an ad for tea. The cup in the panda's hand paw in fact says "tea."
UPDATE 1B): John Zhu and some other native-speakers of Chinese have said that the "freedom" implied by the term 自由 really implies the ease, leisure, and kicking-back approach to life with which Chengdu is associated. By this reasoning, the ad is speaking neither about bigger enclosures for pandas, nor wider political liberties for people, but simply a nice-and-easy vacation in Sichuan.
2) I have had a delightful and instructive introduction to the mysteries of language via emails like the two I list after the jump. Basically the pattern has been this: an expert on the Chinese language who is not a native speaker (linguistics professor, long-time resident, etc) writes to say: "Obviously the Chinese phrase means X..." The meaning of X varies from one expert to another. Then a native Chinese speaker will write in to say, "I dunno... could mean one thing, could mean the other."
3) And, with gratitude to all who wrote, my favorite reply was from reader KS who said that Subversive Panda "will be the name I suggest for my son's rock band, when he's old enough to have a rock band."
As mentioned yesterday, what struck me most, in reviewing Barack Obama's oratorical and debate performance since the first cattle-call, Gravel-equipped televised primary debate early last year, was his unchanging nature. He got better as he went along, but as an improving version of the same thing. I said I couldn't be sure whether Obama's consistency arose from deliberate strategic choice, flawlessly executed over a very long time, or whether it simply reflects the way he is. Odds favor the latter.
Reader D.M. writes about the way this trait has worked in the general election campaign:
I'm hoping it is a
deliberate calculation on Obama's part, or else it is genuine and not a
calculation at all, because it is brilliant. By being a rock- steady,
unflappable, boring (according to some commentators) - Obama accomplishes two
things. It's a lot harder to find any personality hooks for passionate
dislike. See, e.g. Hillary's dynamism, Bush's feigned Texas dialect,
McCain's temper.
Second, by being bland, consistent and totally straight, any tactical changes
by opponents makes them look erratic, scheming and without integrity. Had
Obama joined in the personal mudslinging, he would have slipped his tether, and
would have looked just like McCain. He's a mirror against which we view
the opponent. He's a survey marker against which all territorial changes
of opponents can be measured. It really is a new kind of politics.
And in a related post here, Michael Batz argues that through the course of the debates, Obama has won the argument for "argument" -- that is, for a calm and reasoned approach to issues, not by going with emotion, anger, and the gut. He wrote to me:
In short, McCain is going for emotion and
Obama for reason. Ordinarily, I'd go with emotion, but crazy times flip
everything on its ear. I also am amazed, honestly, that Obama has used these
debates to UTTERLY reverse his public persona from the great lofty orator with
few specifics to the down-in-the-numbers reassuring policy wonk at the same
time he practically destroyed McCain's leadership mantle by baiting him into
anger and carefully pushing the message of McCain as erratic and unpredictable.
It's pretty remarkable.
As always, I give the time-battered caution that we can't know how and whether these traits will work in office until we get a chance to see. But in making it likely that we will get that chance, the campaign approach has indeed been remarkable.
And, as a subject for a later day, I remember how often, how vehemently, and with what certainty Obama's detractors during the Democratic primaries said that he could not, possibly, in any way, in any real world, withstand the onslaught of GOP negative campaigning once it geared up against him. That he's been seriously underestimated twice -- by the Hillary Clinton camp, and now by McCain -- doesn't prove his potential in office but is interesting.
I take these in the spirit of "psst, you have some spinach in your teeth"-style friendly warnings. It dilutes my gratitude not at all to say, I am aware of this, and it was the point! The drollness and incongruity of applying the familiar Brockman theme is what I thought was funny. And, no, no, no, I'm not implying any similarity among the different kinds of overlords! It just made me laugh.
Serious point: when writing for the mixed audience that comes to web sites -- much more thoroughly mixed by nationality, language skill, age range, and cultural reference points than is the case for most print publications -- it can be a challenge to figure out exactly how much to explain. Some parts of an audience will instantly get any quote or reference -- "Luke, I am your father" / Dave's "Top Ten" List / "Harmonious Society" / "I, for one, welcome.." Others won't. Explain too little, and you're being obscure; explain too much, and you risk sounding over-obvious or killing a joke -- with instant feedback either way.
Anyone who has ever written or spoken via any medium in any age has faced the challenge of knowing the audience. But with newspapers, magazines, and books the problem it's not as tricky because like-minded audiences tend to self-select. That's true to a degree of web sites. But the worldwide reach, the scale, the speed, the unpredictable patterns of searching and linking, etc all make for a larger probability that a given posting may be seen by people outside its "natural" audience.
The solution is probably one that good written publications apply in any case, and that is also generally useful in life: finding unobtrusive ways to explain allusions when there's even a slight chance they may be missed. In conversation, I absolutely hate it when people say "Have you heard of Mr. X?" or "Does the name Y mean anything to you?" I prefer to say, "Mr X, who of course was Czar of all the Russias, ..." or "Mr. Y, the renowned pimp from Baltimore,..." If you say "of course" or "the famous" you can convey the information while implying that of course the other party already knows it. On the same principle, I always say my name as the first thing out of my mouth when meeting someone I haven't seen for a while, to avoid any potential "What the hell is this guy's name?" awkwardness on the other end. Correspondingly, I think people are behaving badly when they fail to extend the same courtesy, and I outright hate it when someone asks, "Do you remember me?" I generally do, but this gets things off on the wrong foot.
In any case, thanks to readers for the reminders. And shortly, the much less lighthearted topic of economic collapse. Jeesh.
October 9, 2008
I will always find this topic interesting (language dept.)
Air China night flight, Beijing to Seoul. Air crew is Chinese; passengers, mostly Korean. And the language I hear around me, as the flight attendants yell "You must sit down! Our airplane is taking off!" or ask "Do you want rice, or noodles?" ?
Often those very words, in English. Chinese and Korean are both "hard" languages, with limited overlap in writing systems and virtually none in grammar. Though the cultures have interacted for centuries, these days speakers of one language are apparently less likely to speak the other than to know some English. The point is unsurprising but its manifestations are often interesting.
This is not to imply that English will get you far in either place.
And speaking of universal languages, it may not be hard to guess where I dined in Seoul this evening:
September 29, 2008
Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
I am late on the follow-up to this story, already addressed by my colleagues Sullivan and Coates, plus, notably, Todd Gitlin. On the other hand, I was early in identifying the original problem!
The original problem was McCain's flat, obvious, no-two-ways about it, witnessed- by-tens-of-millions-of-people refusal to look at Obama at any point during the debate last week. The problem now is the contrast between that indisputable reality and McCain's flat refusal to admit that this was so, in his interview yesterday with George Stephanopoulos. (Excerpt from interview at end of this post; representative photo, via Andrew Sullivan, right here.)
There are three ways to account for McCain's current claim:
1. He did not remember on Sunday morning the way he had behaved on stage 36 hours earlier; 2. The reasons for his behavior were so powerful, instinctive, and atavistic that he was not aware of what he was doing at the time; 3. He was aware of his behavior at the time, and remembers it, but has decided that this is not a plus and so is telling a lie.
Logically I see no alternative to these three options. All in all, the least damaging to McCain is probably the last, the flat-out lie.
UPDATE. At the suggestion of several readers, I'll agree that logically there is a possibility #4, or maybe #3.5: That McCain has mis-remembered his behavior in a convenient and more positive way, so that he is "sincere" in saying that the worst aspects of it didn't happen. This is less a "flat-out lie" than a common sort of self-delusion. Whatever the genesis, his body-language on stage was unbelievably insulting and classless.
________
STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, during the debate, it seemed that you were reluctant to look at Senator Obama.
MCCAIN: I wasn't.
STEPHANOPOULOS: No?
MCCAIN: Of course not.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, we went back through the tape, and some people
were saying that that was showing disdain for him. Is that fair?
MCCAIN: I was looking at the moderator a great deal of time. I was
writing a lot of the time. I in no way know how that in any way would
be disdainful.
The Bush taint becoming the McCain taint? (Updated x3 ! )
A year ago, I polled (reader) opinion on the question of which public figures had risen in public esteem and likely historical assessment thanks to their service in the GW Bush administration. (More here and here.)
Some of the losers were obvious, with Colin Powell at the head of the damaged-reputation list. My proposed winner at that time was Christopher Hill, the diplomat in the middle of negotiations with North Korea. If Gen. David Petraeus had been slightly more careful about allowing himself to be placed in the middle of party-political battles, he would be the clear winner now.
I think it will soon be time to ask the same question about the reputational effect of the McCain 2008 presidential campaign. Let's set aside shifting views of McCain himself, and talk about those around him.
Obviously -- at least to me -- the biggest loser will be Sarah Palin. Two months ago she was the next-generation's hope as a fresh new face for future Republican leadership. Now she is a laughingstock. (Notwithstanding the likelihood that she will do "better than expected" in her upcoming debate.) Some conservatives are warning that her long-term prospects are "in question" because of her performance so far. No, they're not.
But closing fast on her is the once-estimable Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office (ie, Voice of Responsibility) and member of the Council of Economic Advisors. Just now, he appeared on MSNBC to discuss the market crash and failure of the bailout bill, and in the subtlety and fairness of his remarks he was indistinguishable from Tom DeLay in his prime.
"Once again we see the failure of Barack Obama's Democrats to address the nation's true needs," was (approximately) the first thing out of his mouth, when discussing a bill that two-thirds of the members of his own (and the president's) party voted against. He led not with what this means for the real economy; not what the possible solutions were; not the need to work something out fast; but pure spin-room flackery.
This kind of bluster is what flacks are for, on both sides. Their reputations go up when they can say such things with a straight face! Even better, with a face contorted in partisan outrage. It is not the right role for the main economic advisor to a campaign. Somebody from the campaign may need to say this, DH-E. Not you.
UPDATE: The statement just out from the Obama campaign's flacks is more statesmanlike than the interview from the McCain campaign's "substance" guy:
This is a moment of national crisis, and today's
inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released
by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with
Washington. Now is the time for Democrats and Republicans to join
together and act in a way that prevents an economic catastrophe. Every
American should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall
Street and Washington has led us to this point, but now that we are here, the stability
of our entire economy depends on us taking immediate action to ease this crisis," said
Obama-Biden campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
UPDATE #2: John McCain's brief statement just now (5:15 pm EDT) was also much more statesmanlike.
UPDATE #3: Here is Douglas Holtz-Eakin himself. As you listen to his comments, starting 30 seconds in, remember that this is someone who pre-McCain had been seen as a reputable economist. And his actual first sentence is, "Today Barack Obama's Democratic party failed the American people." After that party got 60%+ of its representatives to vote for the plan, and the Republicans had ~67% against.
September 28, 2008
The looming problem for Biden in the Palin debate
I'm not joking about this: in the wake of her catastrophic performance in the Katie Couric interview, Sarah Palin has set expectations so low that she is very likely to do "surprisingly" well against Joe Biden on October 2.
That is, to seem more flustered and incoherent than she did against Couric, Palin would have to move herself into "Eagleton zone," where her presence on the ticket would no longer be sustainable.
Any informed-seeming answer she gives will be her first such answer under press questioning -- which in practice means the Gibson and Couric interviews. This is especially true if it's to a "but what about....?" or "are you saying...?" follow-up question. Those follow-ups, from Couric, were the truly lethal ones. Odds are that Palin will manage to handle at least one exchange of this sort, maybe more, and therefore show "improvement" and beat the expectations game.
Either that, or she and the ticket are mortally wounded.
A military perspective on strategy and tactics
Yesterday I mentioned the irony of John McCain's complaining that Barack Obama "didn't understand" the difference between strategy and tactics, given that the Obama campaign seemed guided by a long-term strategy leading to November 4 while McCain was fighting day by day tactical battles.
After the jump, an email just in from Gerald A. Lechliter, a career U.S. Army officer, with some interesting elaborations on this point. I'll use this opportunity to restate a procedural note:
If you send me a message via the "email JF" button on this site, I will assume that I can use some or all of the contents of your message in subsequent posts unless you say otherwise, but that I should not use your name or other identifying details unless you explicitly say that is OK. [Original version of this post did not include G. Lechliter's name, but I got a subsequent message from him OK'ing its use.]
For instance, I'd remove parts of a message that said "I am a 67-year old man from Wyoming currently living at the U.S. Naval Observatory but contemplating a relocation next January" but might use the parts that said, "I have had several heart-bypass operations, and I've begun to reflect on how they might change someone's personality..."
That is a fake email. After the jump, a real one about strategy and tactics. ________
The least self-aware moment for John McCain in last night's debate came at the half-way point, when he said, "I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy."
In a sense McCain was sticking to his battle plan in saying this -- the plan being on-message hammering-home of the "Obama doesn't understand" theme. In another sense, he lost his way, since he immediately segued not into a discussion of strategic matters in Iraq and Afghanistan but into an anecdote. But that kind of literal parsing of his answer -- tactical analysis, you might call it -- really misses the point.
There has been no greater contrast between the Obama and McCain campaigns than the tactical-vs-strategic difference, with McCain demonstrating the primacy of short-term tactics and Obama sticking to a more coherent long-term strategy. And McCain's dismissive comment suggests that he still does not realize this.
Some examples are so familiar as to need no explanation: McCain choosing the ten-day tactical "bounce" from the surprise choice of Sarah Palin, in exchange for the enormous strategic risk in choosing an un-vetted and now obviously unqualified running mate. Or McCain rolling the dice with his threat to boycott the debate -- and then, once on stage, appearing to be only mildly interested in the financial-bailout deal that 72 hours earlier was the stated reason for overturning all agreements about the debates .
But the personas that the two men chose to present in the debate indicated the difference in a profound way. The truths of debates are these:
Emotional messages, which are variants on "how do I feel about this person?", are all that matter in presidential debates. Issues discussions are significant mainly to the extent they shape these impressions. For instance: a candidate's view on the economy feeds the impression of whether he sympathizes with "people like me." Or views on foreign policy feed the impression of whether he would be "a leader we can trust."
Barring a truly disastrous performance, each side's partisans will think their candidate did well, and will be reinforced in the reasons for supporting the person they already like. Thus John McCain supporters will think he sounded confident and masterful; Obama supporters will think he kept presenting the big-picture perspective on national security and the economy. Which means therefore:
The audience that matters is people who start out undecided or uncertain -- and finally are looking for emotional reassurance about who they can imagine as president for the next four years. In general, such viewers are only now starting to pay serious attention to the campaign -- in contrast to people already committed to helping (or stopping) one of the candidates. That is why the first debate is a unique "re-launch" opportunity for the candidates to present themselves to people who realize it's time to make up their minds.
Everything John McCain did on stage last night was consistent with trying to score tactical points in those 90 minutes. He belittled Obama with the repeated "he doesn't understand"s; he was explicitly insulting to him in saying at the end "I honestly don't believe that Senator Obama has the knowledge or experience" for the job (a line Joe Biden dare not use so bluntly on Sarah Palin); and implicitly he was shockingly rude and dismissive in refusing ever to look Obama in the eye. Points scored -- in the short term, to the cheers of those already on his side.
Obama would have pleased his base better if he had fought back more harshly in those 90 minutes -- cutting McCain off, delivering a similarly harsh closing judgment, using comparably hostile body language, and in general acting more like a combative House of Commons debater. Those would have been effective tactics minute by minute.
But Obama either figured out, or instinctively understood, that the real battle was to make himself seem comfortable, reasonable, responsible, well-versed, and in all ways "safe" and non-outsiderish to the audience just making up its mind about him. (And yes, of course, his being a young black man challenging an older white man complicated everything he did and said, which is why his most wittily aggressive debate performance was against another black man, Alan Keyes, in his 2004 Senate race.) The evidence of the polls suggests that he achieved exactly this strategic goal. He was the more "likeable," the more knowledgeable, the more temperate, etc. (Update: though from here on out he doesn't have to say "John is right..." anywhere near as often as he did last night.) .
For years and years, Democrats have wondered how their candidates could "win" the debates on logical points -- that is, tactics -- but lose the larger struggle because these seemed too aggressive, supercilious, cold-blooded, or whatever. To put it in tactical/strategic terms, Democrats have gotten used to winning battles and losing wars. Last night, the Democratic candidate showed a far keener grasp of this distinction than did the Republican who accused him of not understanding it.
I took a million notes during the debate....
... but let me boil it down to this:
When the details of this encounter fade, as they soon will, I think the debate as a whole will be seen as of a piece with Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Reagan-Carter in 1980, and Clinton-Bush in 1992.
In each of those cases, a fresh, new candidate (although chronologically older in Reagan's case) had been gathering momentum at a time of general dissatisfaction with the "four more years" option of sticking with the incumbent party. The question was whether the challenger could stand as an equal with the more experienced, tested, and familiar figure. In each of those cases, the challenger passed the test -- not necessarily by "winning" the debate, either on logical points or in immediate audience or polling reactions, but by subtly reassuring doubters on the basic issue of whether he was a plausible occupant of the White House and commander in chief.
I think that's how this debate will be seen. Neither Obama nor McCain made any serious mistakes (except, perhaps, for McCain's churlish on-stage personal bearing); neither had any moments of surprising brilliance or rhetorical flash. McCain performed closer to the top of his debating range than Obama did.
But something similar could be said of the three previous encounters I mentioned. The challengers didn't necessarily "win," but they achieved something significant simply by debating as equals -- especially on national security issues. I think in the long run people will say that this is what happened tonight.
September 26, 2008
The only thing I will say about the debate in real time
Unless it happened when I glanced away, up until this moment, 77 minutes into the 90-minute debate, John McCain has not once looked at Obama -- while listening to him, while addressing him, while disagreeing with him, while finding moments of accord.
This is distinctly strange -- if anyone else notices. Obama is acting as if this is a conversation; McCain, as if he cannot acknowledge the other party in the discussion.
More on non-body-language points tomorrow a.m.
To be serious about Palin and Couric
Gov. Palin's comments about Russia seem to have drawn more attention than any other part of her interview with Katie Couric. I think this is mainly because .. well, they just sound funny. "As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space" and so on.
But, no joke, it is worth spending a little time on what, specifically, we have learned about Palin and her limitations via her attempted answers to Katie Couric. After the jump, three specimens -- one about Israel, one about financial markets, one about domestic spending -- that, as I mentioned after the Charlie Gibson interview, indicate that Palin is disqualifyingly ignorant of the fundamentals of public policy.
After thirty years of meeting and interviewing politicians, I can think of exactly three people who sounded as uninformed and vacant as this. All are now out of office. One was a chronic drunk.
George W. Bush is in a completely different and superior league to what we've seen from Palin. When people made fun of his inexpressiveness in the 2000 campaign (and onwards), it was because he mispronounced words or used cliches. It was nothing like the total inability to express any coherent thought on any issue outside "values politics" that Palin has revealed. (And to be fair: she can talk clearly and with nuance about those values issues, from abortion to prayer, and about some Alaskan questions.)
Details after the jump. The crucial point, of course, is that Palin did not put herself in this position. Her running mate did. ___________
I've now seen much of the Katie Couric / Sarah Palin interview...
... and I genuinely feel sorry for Palin. This really is pathetic. Again it's not a mass/elite matter. Anyone who has been to high school immediately recognizes the terror of facing a pop quiz or an oral exam when you just have no idea what you're talking about.
One hour after her pick was announced, I wrote here:
Let's assume that Sarah Palin is exactly as smart and disciplined as
Barack Obama. But instead of the year and a half of nonstop campaigning
he has behind him, and Joe Biden's even longer toughening-up process,
she comes into the most intense period of the highest stakes campaign
with absolutely zero warmup or preparation. If she has ever addressed
an international issue, there's no evidence of it in internet-land.
The
smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know
the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues
she will be forced to address...
So
the prediction is: unavoidable gaffes. The challenge for the
McCain-Palin campaign is to find some way to defuse them ahead of time,
since Socrates, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz reincarnated would
themselves make errors in her situation. And the challenge for
Democrats is to lead people to think, What if she were in charge?,
without being bullies about it.
My for-the-sake-of-argument assumption was unwarranted. She is not as smart or disciplined as Barack Obama. If she were, she would sound better than she does at this point. And the McCain team has done absolutely nothing to defuse these problems -- nor, to be honest, has Palin herself apparently learned the first thing about successfully finessing questions she is not ready to handle. (Hint: the approach is not the one she has tried to apply with Katie Couric, that of repeating verbatim the answer that did not do the job the first time around.)
Couric deserves better ratings for the CBS news based on the steely relentlessness of her questions. Unlike Charlie Gibson, and unlike Joe Biden in a (possible!) future debate, she has no background complications of the older white man bullying the younger, attractive woman. She was a professional woman who has clearly earned her position grilling someone whose bona fides she clearly doubted.
And Couric displayed one brilliant technique I recommend to all future questioners. When Palin ducked a question about financial-bailout provisions, saying that "John McCain and I" had not yet reached a decision, Couric asked the deadly question: "So what are the pros and cons?" There is no way to fake your way around that. As Palin showed.
September 22, 2008
More about "My First Kill"
I mentioned yesterday my general sympathy for whatever hapless underling in the McCain camp had cranked out the now-notorious article for Contingencies: The Official Journal of the American Academy of Actuaries.
But in expressing comradely support for a beleaguered staff member, I did not mean to suggest that the article was a mis-representation of McCain's views, or that it was unfair for the Democrats to pounce on it as part of their economic argument against putting McCain in charge or extending Republican rule:
On the contrary! The episode was a "gaffe" only in the sense classically defined by my friend Mike Kinsley: the ill-timed utterance of what you really think. This was the political equivalent of saying, "You know, what I really hate about Fred is..." even as your friends frantically try to signal that Fred has just walked up behind you.
It's completely fair for McCain to be judged on the article -- which reflects his views, just not views he would have chosen to emphasize in the middle of a banking panic -- and for reporters and Democrats to force him to explain where, exactly, he thinks regulation is still needed for the health-care industry or in finance. (It would be fun, but in some sporting sense unfair, to get Gov. Palin to answer the same question.) Still, I sympathize with the staffer who "wrote" the article assuming it would vanish into neverland and now is inevitably taking the heat.
September 13, 2008
If campaigns are driving you crazy
1) If you feel as if you'll drink the hemlock if you have to hear another discussion about the short-knives tactics of the campaign -- which negative McCain themes are working, whether Obama needs to get more negative fast -- I highly recommend instead listening to this 40-minute Fresh Air interview, originally aired two days ago. In it, Terry Gross draws out Andrew Bacevich, of Boston UniversityCollege [brain-freeze typo, sorry] on his views about America's strategic situation. Bacevich, whom I have praised many times here before, is no pinko or softie. West Point grad; career Army guy; self-proclaimed conservative; and, a delicate point, the father of a son who was killed in combat in Iraq.
Listen to the interview, reflect, and moan about the way these issues generally get discussed when we choose our next crop of leaders. I will also mention, because it's relevant to Bacevich's outlook, this cover story, by me, in the Atlantic two years ago. Update: This interview with Bacevich, on Bill Moyers Journal last month, is also worth watching.
2) On the same strategic level I recommend a dispatch, after the jump, by Chuck Spinney. Spinney, who is now on an extended stay outside the country, was for decades a leading "defense reform" advocate inside the Pentagon and close collaborator with the legendary John Boyd. One of Boyd's great insights was that the moral element of conflict -- between nations, companies, or even political candidates -- had tremendous importance in the end. Spinney applies that logic to the McCain-Obama race. ______
I have absorbed enough Protestant sermons, homilies, and parables over the years to think that I can usually pick up Christian "dog whistles" in political speeches. Those are the words and phrasings that signal to some listeners that you are part of their "faith community," but that other members of the audience don't hear at all. Simplest example: when George W. Bush talks about "Providence" in his speeches, he doesn't mean a city in Rhode Island.
But I guess I must have really lost some of my high-frequency hearing. Because I entirely missed the cue in what I previously described as the "weird" and illogical homily in Mike Huckabee's convention speech.
As a reminder: Huckabee told a shaggy-dog story about a teacher who wouldn't let students have their school desks until they explained how to "earn" a desk. The punchline was that they didn't have to earn desks at all! US military veterans had earned them for the students, through their sacrifice.
At face value, this simply makes no sense. If the U.S. had no brave veterans and had lost every single war, it would still have schools and desks, since even conquered countries do. (It would be different if the story concerned voting booths, the free press, protest marches, or other signs of liberty that American veterans had defended things that on the battlefield.) But, as explained in this post at the Taking Steps site, the story makes perfect sense once you assume that its real subject is eternal salvation through the grace and sacrifice of Jesus:
This is the doctrine of "Grace, Not Works" or "Grace Alone," a theological position expounded during the Reformation, cuddled by Calvin*, and popular among evangelical Christians. It's not a desk, it's a place in Heaven. And it's not soldiers we're talking about, it's Jesus Christ.
The post goes on to interpret the whole allegory. Of course that's the explanation, as anyone who has listened to religious radio shows should know. I feel silly to have missed it. (Why else would Huckabee, an ordained minister and very smart person, keep using the story in his stump speeches, despite its surface-level pointlessness?) Thanks to Karen Seriguchi for the lead.
At one level, I feel better to see that Huckabee was getting at something with this tale. At other levels..... _____ * One could argue that Luther works better here than Calvin, but that's not the main point for now.
The wages of cockiness
I mentioned just after Sarah Palin's speech that her tone of outright mockery toward Obama compounded the gamble represented by her selection as McCain's VP candidate. Her Limbaugh-style sass was likely to make the conservative base all the more enthusiastic, which has indeed happened. But it held the potential of mobilizing an opposite, larger base of people who had been tepid about Obama but didn't like the tone, beliefs, or qualifications of Palin - or, more important, who were concerned about what this last-minute selection revealed about McCain's deliberative process and weighing of risks.
Also, I said it opened the way for a No More Mr. Nice Guy approach by her VP counterpart Joe Biden. I had in mind something like what Biden said a few hours ago in Pennsylvania. This clip may have been widely distributed by now, but it was new to me and was an interesting specimen of how Biden can fight back -- without being drawn into the trap of arguing about Palin's qualifications or taking the focus away from McCain himself and the issues involved in the election.
To me, the phrasing comes across as Biden's natural human reaction --"you remember that kid in school...?" -- rather than the product of teamwide strategy sessions to find the right image. In any case, students of rhetoric will find it interesting to compare this clip with Palin's speech.
September 4, 2008
Some other effective convention speeches
I mentioned earlier that "twice in modern history" convention speeches had elevated the speaker into the ranks of future presidential contenders. The two I had in mind were Ronald Reagan's at the 1964 GOP convention in San Francisco and Barack Obama's at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston.
Readers Frank Gallagher and Scott Rifkin point out that, depending on how you define "modern history," two more speeches might go on the list. They would be Hubert Humphrey's brave pro-civil rights address at the 1948 Democratic convention in Philadelphia, and William Jennings Bryan's renowned "Cross of Gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic convention in Chicago. Bryan technically doesn't qualify, since he was the presidential nominee that same year. Still, it was an important convention speech.
Some video clips of Humphrey delivering that speech here. Amazingly, the Encyclopedia Brittanica has a 35-second audio clip of Bryan giving his speech 112 years ago, including a few seconds' worth of video of him speaking, here.
For what it's worth, three of these four Big Speeches were followed by
the defeat of the candidate chosen at that convention. Bryan lost to William McKinley in 1896;
Goldwater to LBJ in 1964; and of course Kerry to GW Bush four years ago. Only Harry Truman
held on for victory, over Thomas Dewey, after Humphrey's speech in
1948. Which we'll take as an omen if McCain loses this year, and an anomaly if he wins.
Sarah Palin
Twice in modern history very strong convention speeches have elevated politicians to an entirely different level of future potential and prominence. One, of course, was Barack Obama's keynote at the convention in Boston four years ago. The other, which I remember watching as a schoolboy Goldwaterite, was Ronald Reagan's speech supporting Goldwater at the San Francisco convention in 1964.
I don't think Sarah Palin's speech will be in that category.
She passed the "expectations" test -- despite coming after the very effective Rudy Giuliani --and brought the house down with cheers. She had a number of strong, biting lines -- including the one about John McCain being the only person on the ticket who had literally fought for the country, Here are the potential longer-term problems:
- No more Mr. Nice Guy. The speech was surprisingly negative and mocking. You can see why Rush Limbaugh has been such a fan of hers: if these words were delivered by someone older, less attractive, and male, they could have come straight from a Limbaugh radio monologue. The upside here is making "the base" much more enthusiastic than it was before. Potential drawback: having taken this tone, she's exposed herself to more direct, aggressive attack by the Dems than she has received so far. (So far, the Dems have been able to stand back and let the press do the anti-Palin work.) No more Mr. Nice Guy from Joe Biden or anyone else.
- The Hillary factor. The day-one theorizing about her selection was that she might draw some disaffected female Hillary supporters. I can see how the speech would motivate some previously-tepid conservatives. It is hard for me to imagine a lot of HRC Democrats -- either long-time feminists or people mainly worried about economic trends -- being attracted by the content or the tone of the speech.
- Fact checking. The speech took the "press is the enemy" theme to an extreme in dropping in a bunch of claims and factlets that the McCain team knows will be immediately picked apart by the press. For instance, her claimed opposition to earmarks and "bridge to nowhere." I guess they figure, they'll stick with their side of the story and say "there you go again!" when the press points out errors and holes.
- Abqaiq. The foreign policy grace notes in the speech, including pronouncing the phrase "Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia," struck me like George W. Bush's dropping in the names of foreign leaders during his 2000 campaign -- as a way of showing that he knew them. This doesn't remove the peril of what the first actual press conference on international issues, or the first debate with Joe Biden, might hold.
- Nothing off limits. Barack Obama has used his family as a prop from time to time -- most recently, bringing the charming girls onto the stage at the end of his convention speech. That's life in politics; everybody does it to some degree.Very few politicians do it as all-out as Sarah Palin just did, from citing the disabilities of her youngest child as part of her resume to including the shotgun groom of her elder daughter. I can't recall any spectacle comparable to Baby Trig being passed from Cindy McCain, to Trig's 7-year-old sister, to Palin herself when she ended the speech. Her husband looks charming, I have to say. From this point on it will be hard for her to declare anything about her personal or family life out-of-bounds.
- Throw the bums out. The policy/content heart of the speech was the idea that the old ways and old gang in DC need to be shaken up. This is another doubling-down bet on the base rather than an appeal to independents, because it depends on people not stopping to say: Wait a minute, what party has been in charge in DC for most of the last eight years? Where exactly are McCain's policies really different from Bush's?
To return to the main theme: both Reagan in 1964 and Obama in 2004 were effective because, apart from their personal skills, they added something to their party's constituency that had not been there before. Reagan began recruiting the "Reagan Democrats," starting with white Southerners. Obama tried to recruit people tired of divisive partisanship.
Sarah Palin, at least tonight, did not seem interested in bringing anyone new into the fold. A speech that was great in the convention hall. We'll see how it affects the electoral lineup.
September 3, 2008
Back to politics: Huckabee's weird rhetorical flourish
I like Mike Huckabee, but the emotional big-finish aspect of his speech just now was one of the weirdest such homilies I have ever heard.
If you didn't hear it, it was a long, folksy story whose moral was important and completely true: every generation of Americans owes its liberties, its institutions, its prosperity, and many of its other bounties to previous generations who have fought for, built, and preserved the elements that make America free, rich, and strong.
(Story in a nutshell: on the first day of school, students are puzzled to see no desks in one classroom. The teacher won't let them have desks until they explain how students "earn" a desk. Punchline, delivered as a row of decorated veterans bring the desks in: You don't have to earn them! These people already earned them for you.)
Why the story is weird, apart from the fact that the teacher was putting the question in a deliberately obscure way: Every country has desks in the classrooms! This has absolutely zero to do with what makes America great and what Americans have died to protect and defend. Burma has no freedoms, but I have seen its students sitting there at desks. I have seen the same in Kenya and Vietnam. There are school desks in Cuba and North Korea. The old Soviet Union was full of 'em.
You want to make this story work, you tie it to something that actually is unique to a free society: Eg, a voter registrar tells people "You can't vote, until you tell me how you earn the right to vote" -- and then ushers in veterans to say, We earned it for you. Or a jury trial. Or a church service Or the right to complain about a government policy. Or a seat in a university that has been allowed to flourish despite official government doctrine. Or people being sworn in as naturalized citizens. Or a thousand other touches of real American freedom.
A minor point, so why mention it: somehow a little portion of each of our brains and souls is zapped away each time a prominent figure says something that is obvious nonsense -- remember, the Nazis had school desks too! -- and knows he can count on a cheer by a closing reference to country and flag.
Now on to watching Rudy Giuliani, who I am sure will employ no such b.s. tricks .
UPDATE: This post a year and a half ago from World Wide Webers explained the full background of the strange desk story. I thought the story was just nonsensical. It turns out to be both nonsensical and cliched.
August 29, 2008
Convention speeches
Here is what's unusual about the lineup of Democratic convention speeches. Usually each convention features one very strong speech, sometimes two. Barbara Jordan with the keynote at the Democratic convention in 1976. Teddy Kennedy with his memorable (though damaging to Jimmy Carter) "the dream will never die" speech in 1980, bidding farewell to his presidential aspirations. Ronald Reagan speaking to Barry Goldwater's supporters at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964, beginning his own presidential aspirations. Barack Obama serving a similar function in 2004.
I don't know of any parallel to what just happened for the Democrats in Denver, where a series of speakers all performed at the top of their form, notably:
- Hillary Clinton, doing as much for "party unity" as she plausibly could, with her best delivered speech of the whole campaign cycle;
- Bill Clinton, reminding everyone in the party (and much of the country) of why he had won two terms; giving Barack Obama an implicit lesson on how to cast the choice in this election; and erasing in 30 minutes 98% of the problems he had created for himself in his party over the previous year;
- John Kerry, speaking with an intense, tough, terse contempt for Bush administration policies that would have gotten him elected four years ago;
- Al Gore, like Kerry liberated from any previous starchiness by contempt for Bush-Cheney and by knowing he has nothing more to prove;
- Michelle Obama, who in terms of presenting herself and her husband for the election could not have been more cannily effective -- and appealing;
- And of course Barack Obama himself, who showed his own canniness in using his familiar oratorical virtuosity in an unfamiliar way, with a specific, by-name, respectful contempt for the ideas of John McCain. Respect for the serivce of John McCain; contempt for his record.
Joe Biden is an honorary member of the list. His speech was the one slightly-short-of-expectations moment among the big speakers, but its very artlessness probably added to its political effectiveness in the long run.
This has never happened before. Usually there are a number of obvious turkeys among the big-kahuna speakers. This time, the biggest names came in facing very tough tests (how will Bill and Hillary behave? How can Obama re-position himself?) and very high expectations. They aced the tests and beat the expectations in every case.
John McCain's speechwriters have one thing going for them at the moment: a week to look over what the Dems have said and work out a response.
August 23, 2008
About Biden as speaker (updated x2)
Because of my recent forced immersion into the entirety of the primary debate season, I have this reaction about Joe Biden's presence on the ticket:
As a questioner at Senate hearings, Biden has often been disappointing. He typically uses up too much of the time listening to himself talk, and at the end he's left with barely time enough to pose an easily escapable question like "Isn't that right?" or "I'd like to hear your reaction to that."
But as a debater within his own party and as a rhetorician against the other side, the Biden of the primary campaign was very good. He stuck to the time limits because he had to, and with that discipline he almost always made the points he wanted to, and forcefully.
He also showed a certain bearing in the debates that could come in handy as a running mate for Obama. This was his "let's cut the crap" impatience with what he considered fatuous questions and what he also considered the plain foolishness of Bush Administration policy.
Politicians have to be egomaniacal to be in the business. Anyone who enters the US Senate with a limited appreciation of self soon has it expanded. But while Biden's ineffective hearing "questions" often sounded as if they came from "normal" Senatorial egotism -- I'm on stage now, listen to me -- his debate comments and his partisan anti-Bush arguments reflected a more attractive egotism of knowledge and policy. Let's call it simple confidence, of the sort that Bill Clinton in his prime displayed when dismissing Republican economic arguments. The subliminal message in this pose is: I know what I'm talking about here, I've dealt with this for years, and I have no time for the other side's ignorance.
It may seem a small difference, but it can make Biden more effective as an authoritative and unhesitating mean-cop counterpart to Obama during a campaign.
After the jump, one example, based on one of Biden's answers at a debate last year.
UPDATE: Here is a YouTube clip of Biden giving the answer quoted below, and some more. Fortunately it looks as strong as I remembered! Thanks to Christopher Adams.
Extra update: This clip is really great until about the last 20 seconds, when Biden gives an answer about dealing with China that is as glib as his other answers are well-informed. Unfortunately, all the Democrats took that line in the debates. Topic for another time.
_______
1) Nationalistic coverage.Background: previous comments about the quite impressive Sino-centrism of what China Central TV chooses to broadcast.
Right now as I type, some of the marquee events of track and field, on the last night of competition, are underway at the Bird's Nest Stadium a few miles from here. And CCTV is showing instead: a ping-pong match between a Chinese player and a Swede, a diving contest involving two Chinese stars, interviews with a foreign coach of a Chinese team, and replays of week-old swimming events in which Chinese athletes did well. These are at the very instant that the men's 5000m is underway. Same thing during men's 800m. Will this apply to the men's and women's 4x400 relays?? Arggh! One world! One dream!
Update: Indeed, nothing from the final night of track & field was carried on the normal Chinese stations available on our normal Beijing TV set -- except, who knows why, the women's 1500. No problem, no one from China was in any of the races, but still I don't see even the "nationalistic" NBC doing it just this way. Similarly, we're getting the bronze-medal women's basketball game, China-v-Russia, but not the gold medal women's volleyball game, US-v-Brazil. (And now we're getting a replay of a taekwando match rather than the volleyball championship. This makes me realize that I haven't ever seen on CCTV the live-action cutaways taken for granted in US sports coverage: "Let's go now to the Water Cube, where the final round..." ...) But whenever I feel down, I realize: we've got wall-to-wall ping pong.
2) Translation vs Transliteration. Background: some people have written in to hint -- gently! -- that I might be exaggerating in saying that crucial maps and guides for international visitors to the Olympics were written in Chinese characters plus transliterated "English" versions of those Chinese words. After the jump, proof that I wasn't!
I didn't see Barack Obama's session with Rick Warren. Hey, I'm in China. Just now I saw that John McCain's session with Warren is being shown.
McCain looks comfortable and is doing well. How do I square saying this with my argument in this recent article that he is a poor public speaker who does not show up well in debates? Easy.
1) Although Obama and McCain appeared back to back, this was in no sense a debate. This was the Larry King show, minus the usual incisive follow-up. In 45 minutes or so I saw, Pastor Rick Warren did not once ask "what do you mean by?" or "but what about?" He served up topics and sat aside as the candidate gave his standard answers, which were subject to no examination. OK: that's one approach.
It is an approach basically similar to the "Town Hall" meeting format, where average citizens present questions -- often more barbed than Warren's -- and then the politician says what he wants, usually without rebuttal or followup. As I pointed out in my article, this is the one form of spoken discourse that McCain enjoys and often does well at:
In these circumstances, McCain's tactics against Obama are obvious.
He will ask for as many debates as he can, starting with informal town
halls before either he or Obama is officially nominated. The informal
setting shows him off to his best advantage, with the affable bantering
that has long made him a favorite with the press.
2) The candidates did not have to perform underpressure, which is what makes face-to-face debates different from every other form of political discourse.
I mean, of course there is pressure in any campaign appearance. In this one, Obama faced the pressure of entering presumably hostile territory; McCain, of figuring out the right way to shore up his conservative support. But they did not have to deal directly with each other -- with challenges to their arguments, with taunts and repartee, even with the effects of body language and the knowledge that viewers were sizing them up side-by-side. Again as the article said:
We don't watch debates to learn what someone thinks about Social
Security. We watch to see how the contenders look next to their
opponents, how they react when challenged, how well or poorly they come
up with the words we later see in print.
These are the things we didn't really see --at least about McCain, in the part I watched. Not even how well or poorly he comes up with words, since most of what he said was part of his standard repertoire.
3) If I were in the Obama campaign, I would ban all mention of points #1 and #2 and would instead stress as often as I could: Boy, now that we seem him in action, we have a sense of how good a debater this John McCain really is! Frankly, the best we can hope from the debate match-ups is to get out alive. Everybody knows that our guy is not at his best in debates. And with that charm and wit, there's no way McCain won't win over the crowd. Expectations for him have to be sky-high.....
August 12, 2008
Tuesday Olympic Notes - I
1. 北京加油! 空气加油!
It's a nice day in Beijing today! Blue visible in the sky, for the first time in one week. It's warm but not sweltering. It actually feels, dare I say it, good outside. View at 4pm August 12:
The traffic- and factory- shutdown orders, and the weather rockets, and the cold front, and the thunderstorms, and the weather gods, and whoever else helped out, are all now doing the job. Congratulations and thanks to one and all.
2. Good translation! Most visitors have already learned the two-syllable foundation of Basic Olympic Chinese: the cheer jia you! It's written 加油!, and for Americans it would be pronounced more or less "jah yo!" -- yo as Sylvester Stallone would say it in Rocky.
This follows the earlier "Chinglish" discussion here and here.
1) The previous posts explored the puzzle of why Chinese organizations so cavalierly put English words on banners, menus, placards, annual reports, etc, without the slightest effort to find out whether the translations make sense.
Many people have written in to point out that it's not just a one-way process. The main counter-illustration comes from the Westerners, often athletes, who adorn themselves with Chinese-character tattoos that are often meaningless, garbled, backwards and upside down, or unintentionally hilarious. The site Hanzi Smatter is devoted exclusively to such cases.
Possible mitigating factor: the Chinese-character tattoos are generally used the way English is often used on Japanese T-shirts or backpacks. That is, as pure art and decoration, with no intention whatsoever of conveying meaning to native speakers. That's different from the Chinese case, where the worst errors come in translations made explicitly for foreigners to read. For example....
2) On the bus yesterday to the Olympic Rowing Site at Shunyi, far outside Beijing. Neither the driver nor the conductor on the bus spoke any English -- fair enough, this is China. The scrolling sign at the front of the bus showed the destination in Chinese characters, which was fine for my purposes, and then in this English "translation":
That's just part of a scrolling transliteration about twice as long as could fit on the screen at one time. It's a phonetic (pinyin) rendering of the original Chinese characters, linked end to end into one Germanic-style foot-long word. (The parts we're seeing are equivalent to "..lympic on-water pa...") An actual translation, meant to be read by foreigners, would simply have said "Shunyi Olympic Rowing Center." Or, "Rowing and Canoeing Center," etc.
Again, no complaint about signs within China being rendered in Chinese. That's part of the fun and satisfaction of living here. But I could tell that a number of the Brit, New Zealand, Aussie, Italian, German, and other Olympic visitors on the bus with us had no idea where it was going, and no one to ask... except us, which is really scraping the barrel. (Plus an English-speaking Chinese woman who was also aboard.)
August 6, 2008
Uncle! Or let's make that, 叔叔!
In response to widespread popular demand, I will admit: screwed-up translations of Chinese into English can be very funny! The G-rated classic version is this one:
(That picture has been widely circulated; I found it here.) The R- and X- rated versions can be found in considerable detail here -- scroll all the way down and you'll see what I mean.
So what did I mean, in recently cutting some slack to the geniuses who produced the "Wet Turban Needless Wash" that I received on a recent Air China flight? Or the zillion other instances of laughable mis-translations into English I come across all the time in China. ("Please shit here" over a toilet -- not sure if it's a typo, or an instruction.) Only this:
When you're a native speaker of what has become the dominant international language, there's something undeniably Colonel Blimp-ish in making fun of the locals for their flawed command of your own mother tongue. Especially when this is happening in their own country, and all the more so when the people doing the chuckling can't do as well in Chinese as the Chinese are trying to do in English. In my observation, the less effort an outsider has put into coping with Chinese language, the more likely he or she is to chortle at the embarrassing "Chinglish" signs.
So just as a personal matter, laughing at someone else's mistakes in your (outside, Western, superpower) native language is not that charming a thing to do.
On the other hand, it truly is bizarre that so many organizations in China are willing to chisel English translations into stone, paint them on signs, print them on business cards, and expose them permanently to the world without making any effort to check whether they are right. I can't resist this example: when we lived in Shanghai, a local museum had a very evocative and politically daring exhibit about villages that were being drowned by the Three Gorges Dam. And on huge banners outside, in letters six feet high, it said: "Three Georges Exhibit." If they had shown the banners to anyone who actually spoke English....
Why does this happen? I wish I knew. In micro terms, it must come from rote reliance on dictionaries or translation software. For instance, the title of this post: the dictionary will tell us that 叔叔, shu shu, means an uncle. But of course it does not mean what "Uncle!" means in U.S. slang -- as any Chinese speaker would point out if you asked him to check out the title. (For those who don't know, "Uncle!" means, "I give up! You win!") In the larger sense, why so many people would so carelessly waste money and -- the real mystery, considering Chinese sensitivities -- so brazenly expose themselves to ridicule is a puzzle. Learning a language means being willing to make mistakes. That's different from presenting formal, error-filled material for outsiders to read.
After the jump, a sample (long) bit of testimony from someone who thinks it's time for a harder line on mistranslations -- and more laughing too. To which I can only say, 叔叔! ___________________
I don't think "funny" translations are all that funny...
... my theory being, I am allowed to make fun of someone's translation of Chinese into English only when I'm ready to have a Chinese person make fun of my translation of English into Chinese. And I will never be ready to do that.
On the other hand: If I were going to translate something into Chinese, for a wide audience of Chinese people to read, I might possibly consider having a native Chinese speaker take a look at it before I gave the final OK.
Which is why I continue to marvel at specimens like this: the always-welcome "moist towelette" from yesterday's Air China flight from Chengdu to Beijing (click for larger view if the point is not clear): This was not the strangest aspect of the flight, however. As part of a general tightening up of security in China, the screening line in the Chengdu airport required me to do two things I haven't done on any of my 40 or 50 previous domestic flights in the country: remove my belt, and take off my shoes.
It was boiling hot in Chengdu, and I was wearing shorts and moccasin-type shoes with no socks. So when I took the shoes off, I was just there in bare feet. Nonetheless, like the other passengers who had socks on when they removed their shoes, I had to hold my feet up while a young security officer waved a metal-detecting rod around the top, bottom, and sides of them. "Those are my feet," I helpfully pointed out to her. "For the Olympics!" ("为奥运会!") she said, with what looked like a smile.
June 28, 2008
This will teach me to be wry... ("Friend of China" dept)
Just before going offline, which I more or less still am, I talked about the many and mysterious ways in which Chinese officialdom is doing its best to screw up the Beijing Olympics. There is a minor risk to the Games as an athletic contest, since officials waited until the very last minute to deal with hyper-polluted air (ie, air still getting worse as of the time I left Beijing six days ago). There is a major possibility that the event will be a general embarrassment to China, because of the crude and increasing efforts to "control" every aspect of their presentation -- which in practice means scrutinizing reporters more carefully, making it harder for foreigners of any sort to get into the country, etc. Detail in original post.
In introducing the point I said something sincere -- really, it will be better for everyone if the Chinese public feels good about the games -- and something a little less direct. Namely that I was a "Friend of the Chinese People." In light of many alarmed and huffy emails that have piled up, mainly from people unfamiliar with China, I apparently need to spell out the intended wryness:
- For any foreigner who has operated here, "Friend of China" is a very familiar and loaded agitprop term. John Pomfret of the Washington Post elaborates on its connotations here. When Chinese government officials apply it, they really mean something like "stooge" -- an outsider who will go along with whatever they say or do. This is why Kevin Rudd, the Mandarin-speaking new Prime Minister of Australia, was careful in a major speech in Beijing to call himself a "true friend" of China, using the Chinese term zhengyou, versus pengyou for friend in the ordinary sense. The implication of "true friend" is someone who cares enough to tell unpleasant truths and point out possible errors. Ie, the kind of friend that China, America, and every other entity and person needs.
- In saying I was a "Friend of the Chinese People," I meant to pay mocking respect to the official parlance but say something different. In specific, this was a reference (and link) to a preceding post about dealing with ordinary people in China. Despite my many aggravations with Chinese policies and practices, despite my wonderment at the self-defeating idiocy of the government's approach to the Olympics, my experience with the varied and teeming humanity of China has been surprisingly positive. When it comes to their own country, Americans have no trouble with the concept that someone could dislike its governmental policies but still like the culture and folkways and individual people. Lots of times, that's how I feel about America myself! The same distinction is, if anything, more important to remember about China, precisely because its individual people are less familiar to most members of the outside world.
So, if you're warming up for an email or blog post about the self-censorship involved in someone professing to be a "Friend of China," save it for someone who actually uses that term! I am happy to be counted as a pengyou of many individuals within China, but as a zhengyou of many institutions here. We criticize because we care! (Note to the wry-impaired: preceding sentence should not be taken 100% at face value.)
June 16, 2008
Gore endorses Obama
Three quick points:
1) The sizzle and pomp that build around a presidential candidate, which Gore was plunged back into for this one night, remind us yet again of what Gore lost, or had taken from him, eight years ago. It must be about the billionth reminder for Gore. That he has gone on at all in these circumstances, let alone achieved what he has, surpasses my understanding. Of course he let out a little sign of it with his not-fully-joking "take it from me" line about the importance of elections.
2) A very powerful and heartfelt speech on behalf of Obama. But the contrast between his "hot" approach and Obama's cool was a dramatic demonstration of how much political time has passed in eight years.
3) Gore's well-crafted rhetorical sequence of reasons why "elections matter," after the jump, had one off-key element. Supreme Court appointments -- fine. War and peace? Of course. Wounded veterans, yes -- and Katrina, and impending recession, and the mortgage crisis. The environment? We were waiting for Gore to say it. But lead-tainted toys from China, and pet food?? Those items built toward the nice line about even dogs and cats knowing that elections matter. But they're out of scale with the rest of the list. And willing as I am to blame George Bush for just about anything, it's much more of a stretch to connect a mis-managed Mattel factory in Guangdong Province with White House policies than is the case with the other, graver problems Gore mentioned. So, the dog-and-cat line is nice, but the logic behind it can use some work. Peace, prosperity, accountable government, saving the planet -- those should be enough.
A month ago I made a crazed out-and-back trip from Beijing to the U.S. East Coast, stopping in LA, to fulfill an obligation many years in the making. This was to give a commencement speech at Ursinus College, outside Philadelphia. I mention it, on this Father's Day, because it directly concerned my father, and because some of the homilies involved were rounded up in today's NYT selection of "the future lies ahead"-ish thoughts from Commencement speeches. Pensees of mine are nestled in there between those of Clarence Thomas and Jessica Lange.
Here is a transcript of the whole thing, in its 11-minute entirety. Happy Father's Day!
June 8, 2008
Coming a day late to Hillary Clinton's speech...
... I have to say, I agree with the conventional wisdom that it was magnificent. Having complained about some of her recent performances, I felt it fair to register in this modest way a "public" thumbs-up vote.
For her campaign it was a distinct weakness that she could present such different faces day by day. But it certainly is a strength for Barack Obama and for the Democrats that this is the face she now wears. (After the jump, my favorite passages.) There is no point wondering where this eloquence and delivery were before. That she mustered them yesterday is to her great credit
___
I suppose outlawing the word "Homeland" wouldn't count?
Via Lewis Shepherd, news of a $25,000 competition to come up with the best idea to improve "Homeland Security." The competition is run by the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation and apparently funded by AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of the Italian-based defense contractor Finmeccanica. Deadline for entries is this Friday afternoon.
Anyone can have, free, my entry in the contest: dumping the hideous, un-American, Orwellian, Teutonic-in-the-bad-sense term "Homeland" and renaming both the department and the entire concept "domestic" security.
May 27, 2008
Obama at Wesleyan: a subtle elegance I missed the first time
To review: Obama was there in place of the ailing Teddy Kennedy. Kennedy had given Obama a huge boost in the legitimacy-and-legacy category by endorsing him, even if it didn't help much in the MA. primary. And Kennedy's most famous speech was his "concession" speech at the 1980 Democratic convention in New York, when he brought the house down (I was there) with his defiant reassertion of the liberal values that he thought the doomed incumbent, Jimmy Carter, had abandoned. His speech ended with these words:
For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.
For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.
The structure of Obama's speech, these 28 years later, built toward praise of Kennedy's legacy and record, and ended with these words:
That is all I ask of you on this joyous day of new beginnings; that is what Senator Kennedy asks of you as well, and that is how we will keep so much needed work going, and the cause of justice everlasting, and the dream alive for generations to come.
As Rachel points out, this ending was
an allusion so subtle that Kennedy himself might be the only person who caught it. Obama took the speech of Ted's lifetime... and put the three key words - work, cause, dream - into the last line of the text. Poetry into prose, a private tribute to the man whose endorsement took Obama from runner up to winner.
What is so elegant about this touch? Precisely that Obama did not feel obliged to spell out all the links. ("And what I ask of you, in Senator Kennedy's own unforgettable words...") Politicians shouldn't be obscure. But a willingness to assume good things about the public -- its knowledge, its understanding, its ability to rise above the most immediate appeal to pocketbook or prejudice -- is part of what makes a politician into a leader. Even if the intended audience for this close was strictly the Kennedy family, it is an impressive bit of craftsmanship.
May 26, 2008
More on speechwriting and Obama's Wesleyan address (updated)
(Major update after the jump)
Yesterday (China time) I mentioned that, based on comparisons of a commencement address he delivered two years ago and one he gave this weekend, Barack Obama "has gotten better at the necessary poetry of ceremonial speaking."
Several people have written back to say: Well, maybe he just has better speechwriters! And: Since you (me) used to work as a speechwriter (for Jimmy Carter), shouldn't you be particularly sensitive to this point?
Answer, to the second question: No. And it's precisely because I have worked is this field that my answer to the first question is: I don't care who originally came up with these phrases or drafted the speech.
If a public figure's basic quality of mind or ability to express himself is in question, as frankly is the case with President George W. Bush, then it might be worth investigating whether the words he is uttering actually reflect his underlying outlook and comprehension.
I have written (for myself and others), delivered, and heard a large number of Commencement speeches over the years. It is a surprisingly difficult form to pull off without embarrassment. The tricky part is to make the homily-type "seize the challenge of the future!" points that really are required on such occasions, without sounding sappy, pompous, cliched, or --worst --long-winded. The test is: could someone read the transcript, at a safe remove from the emotions of the day, without giggling or yawning?
Barack Obama passed that test yesterday, when subbing for Sen. Kennedy at the Wesleyan commencement ceremony. Or so I judge by reading the transcript of the speech just now.
For instance, this is a subtler version of a familiar point, more deftly made, than commencement speakers -- especially politicians -- are usually able to get across.
Each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say “chance” because you won’t have to take it. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.
But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt.
It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story
By wild chance, I actually sat a few feet from Obama when he gave another commencement speech, at Northwestern, two years ago.* That speech was good, but based on this latest transcript he has gotten better at the necessary poetry of ceremonial speaking since then. These speeches are poems in that they don't allow the space to spell points out prosaically, and in their goal of evoking familiar, universal feelings in an unusual way. Such progress, from a high starting point, is worth noticing.
________
* Obama was the university's commencement speaker, and recipient of an honorary degree, that day in 2006. Just before leaving for China, I also got a Northwestern honorary degree at the same ceremony. In addition to the obvious humbling honor of that fact, the wild chance was that I walked just behind Obama in the long, slow procession and sat next to him on the stage. The tens of thousands of people in Ryan Field erupted in cheers as soon as they saw Obama in the procession -- he had not announced for president at that point, but he was already a star, and after all he was the state's new senator. It is quite a strange phenomenon to be two feet away from the object of a gigantic crowd's attention. Strange, but fun.
Update: I see that M. Yglesias also picked out this very passage in a post from Sunday night.
March 20, 2008
God Bless Mike Huckabee
Two people have now elevated themselves thanks to Rev. Wright and his tirades.
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.
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.)
March 9, 2008
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.
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.)
February 19, 2008
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.
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.
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!)
January 8, 2008
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.
January 7, 2008
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.
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."
November 3, 2007
More on foreigners and their exotic tongues
Two reader reactions to my bemusement about Germans taking me for one of their own:
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.
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 inAn 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.
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.
September 26, 2007
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.
* 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
August 15, 2007
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.
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.
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...
June 14, 2007
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
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.
June 8, 2007
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?
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.
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?
Literally, the Chinese could be rendered as: "Traveler, halt!" Or, to sound less Teutonic, "Travelers, stop!" But if you'd asked a native speaker you'd probably just end up with the simple "No entry." 
