[lbo-talk] Palin bubble losing air?

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 11:40 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 9:04 PM, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>> How do we perceive an orator who describes his own humbleness as
>> "great"? Particularly right after using the word "profound" to
>> describe his gratitude?
>
> um, "great" as in "large"? like a "great lake"? not as in "catherine the
> great"?
>
> anyway, since when has the rhetorical topos of humility not been, well, a
> topos. of course he does that. so did people like cicero and paul. i think
> if we simply complain about it being fake we are missing a lot of what's
> going on.

This entire thread is about the fakery of Palin reading from a
teleprompter. My contention is that her team is doing pretty well, as
far as I can see, and one comparison I made was with Obama's team.

Incidentally, there's probably two types of people posting on a thread
like this:

* People who want to talk about rhetoric in statecraft.
* People who want to announce they don't actually care.

I'll assume you're in the first type, with me. ;)

Certainly, "great" can simply mean large. And "profound" can only mean
heartfelt. But we're dealing with people who employ crack squads of
speechwriters. I doubt they're willy-nilly about the words they use.

 http://www.newsweek.com/id/84756/page/3

Have you ever heard journalists ranting madly about minor issues which
few readers pick up upon? Take even a food critic:

   "3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have

    removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have

    fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed

    syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is

    crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not

    fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have

    written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never

    ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck."

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey

And of course many of us know that article where Matt Taibbi starts
whaling on Thomas Friedman for mixing metaphors. People who write a
lot tend to notice these details.
http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

So, given that people kinda pay attention to the words they use when
vying to be a national ruler.. how should I evaluate Obama's attempt
at the Greatest Moments in Humility? Brush it aside as "rhetorical
topos"? Or simply call it inane? Which in my view it clearly is.

With profound humbleness, if I do say so myself --
Tayssir