Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Political Disdain of Words

This has been the strangest political campaign. The candidates who have excelled in communication, including both writing and speaking, are being criticized for it. Indeed, a command of the English language has been laughed at. Being able to put together an intelligent, rational sentence and to support your views with facts and figures, and other evidence, is considered elitist. Instead, we're told, you must use "down-home" words and phrases like "Joe Six-Pack" or string together a bunch of words that make no sense at all. The New Yorker says it best with this article.

Just think, in less than a month this campaign will all be over. YES!

1 comment:

A Cuban In London said...

I knew I had to come back to you blog to read that link. Thank you very much for that. That's one of the angles I will be focusing upon in a feature I am working now as I speak and which will appear on my blog after the US presidential election. No, I am not a fortune-teller, and although I am backing Obama, politics does throw up nasty surprises every now and then. That's why I will concentrate on what I have perceived to be a deep-seated bias against all things American in Europe in my almost eleven years of living in GB. And language will feature prominently as it's one of the traits US denizens are most criticised for. Just look at the recent kerfuffle over the Nobel Literature prize.

Thanks for the link and the post.

Greetings from London.