CNN: Barry's speech too professorial. Me: screw you, CNN

[The Mikado]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/16/obama.speech.analysis/index.html?hpt=C1

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First question: what the hell is a "language guru?"

Second question: Rather than expecting the President to go down to their level, why can't the country be challenged by the President to rise up to his oh-so-difficult 10th grade reading level?

Seriously, is anyone else tired of the whole "you have to communicate with them at their level, feel their pain, etc." bulls&&t?  Maybe a dispassionate president that looks at matters analytically is a good thing.  Maybe some of us like the idea that the President is smarter than we are.  Maybe some of us are sick of a culture where using a 10th grade vocabulary makes the President a f%%$ing elitist!

[Free Trade is managed by the invisible hand.]

people who consider obama elitist probably also consider him to be a uppity negro. So I guess elitist is the new uppity?

In any event todays media sucks, and they are not hardcore enough.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The thing is, it wasn't. If that was Obama's lecturing style I feel bad for his former students.

[memphis]

You're confusing a pragmatic call with a moral one. He's not saying Obama would be a better president if he would dumb down his speeches. He's saying he would get more support.

[The Mikado]

You're confusing a pragmatic call with a moral one. He's not saying Obama would be a better president if he would dumb down his speeches. He's saying he would get more support.

No, my argument is just that if a voter is too stupid to understand a very basic, uncomplicated speech, f&&& that voter.

[Ban my account ffs!]

It was written at a 10th grade level.. and that was too high for most people?

Really?

Last time I checked, high school went through 12th grade.  Most people graduate.

Man, we're f**ked... because they're too dumb for basic 10th grade english.. but they seem to have no problem filling out a ballot!

What I really mean to say is:  Real Muricans can't understand all them fancy words that the uppity socialist muslim darkie in the whitehouse uses.  Dubya spoke like a true patriotic real Murican.

[Free Trade is managed by the invisible hand.]

It was written at a 10th grade level.. and that was too high for most people?

Really?

Last time I checked, high school went through 12th grade.  Most people graduate.

Man, we're f**ked... because they're too dumb for basic 10th grade english.. but they seem to have no problem filling out a ballot!

What I really mean to say is:  Real Muricans can't understand all them fancy words that the uppity socialist muslim darkie in the whitehouse uses.  Dubya spoke like a true patriotic real Murican.

dude you are the champ!

[Magic 8-Ball]

For what it's worth, Americans have read at shockingly low grade levels for as long as we've been keeping statistics, and I'd imagine that neither newspapers lowering their standards in 1950s nor authors writing at a seventh-grade level have really helped things.

Calm down, guys; this problem isn't exactly new.


Oh, and why hasn't anyone made a J.J. joke yet?

And CNN sucks.  I can't believe I forgot that.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

the point is, concise sentences better communicate action:  "I am a Berliner"...."Tear down this wall"...."I did not have sexual relations with that woman"

[Torie]

Thinking about the state of American literacy is a sure fire way to get depressed.

[??????????]

Torie, I would be willing to bet that American literacy is far better then 100 years ago.

[Citizen (The) Doctor]

Torie, I would be willing to bet that American literacy is far better then 100 years ago.

8th Grade tests a hundred years ago are far harder than they are now.

[??????????]

Probably. My grandfather became a millionaire with an 8th grade education.

[Torie]

My dad graduated from a high school in Brooklyn in 1923, and that was the end of his formal education. He was about as literate as I am, and probably a better writer, and certainly better read. In fact, he wrote a book. Enough said on that.

[J. J.]

For what it's worth, Americans have read at shockingly low grade levels for as long as we've been keeping statistics, and I'd imagine that neither newspapers lowering their standards in 1950s nor authors writing at a seventh-grade level have really helped things.

Calm down, guys; this problem isn't exactly new.


Oh, and why hasn't anyone made a J.J. joke yet?

And CNN sucks.  I can't believe I forgot that.

Well, considering MSNBC was saying the same thing, generally about the tone, I think CNN probably was right.

BTW:  It varies from newspaper to newspaper.  Even in Phila, the Inquirer is considered a "more intellectual" "establishment" newspaper while the Daily News is the "people's paper."  The first says "obituaries" while the second says "deaths."

Ironically, the Daily News has better political reporting, but uses smaller words to express the better reporting.

[Torie]

I wonder what grade level the WSJ is written at?  How about The Economist?  And then of course there is the New York Review of Books, where even I have to look up a word from time to time.

[King]

I agree with CNN.  Glenn Beck has been enormously successful getting his message across with his fourth grader curriculum.

[LBJ Revivalist]

My dad graduated from a high school in Brooklyn in 1923, and that was the end of his formal education. He was about as literate as I am, and probably a better writer, and certainly better read. In fact, he wrote a book. Enough said on that.

What book if I may ask?

[Torie]

My dad graduated from a high school in Brooklyn in 1923, and that was the end of his formal education. He was about as literate as I am, and probably a better writer, and certainly better read. In fact, he wrote a book. Enough said on that.

What book if I may ask?

This one. Alas, it no longer shows up on Amazon. It was published 35 years ago. Maybe I will take a pic of the cover and put it up, if anyone is interested. It was about his adventures at Capitol Records primarily, and he had many, with lots of stories about various celebrities, travels around the world when the world was a far more heterogeneous place, etc. He had a very interesting job.

He also chats a bit about when his band (which he formed on the fly in order to take on this adventure) was on a cruise ship in the late 1920's (well part cruise ship, part freighter, since pure cruise ships going to the Orient did not exist back then)  that went to the Orient, including Hawaii, Korea, Japan and China. One story was when he was in Shanghai, and saw this crowd up against the fence of a park, and he approached, and some Gurkha  took out a whip (which he used) to induce the Chinese peering through to move to make room for him. When he peered in, he saw some British royal was being entertained or something in a park. In Korea, lepers would move in on you in packs, and you threw small coins at them so that they would scatter to pick them up, while you decamped. And so on.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Wasn't his speech void of specifics, as usual? Obama's problem was that he speaks at too low of a level. Sure, he's not Bush, but come on.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I would probably sh**t a brick laughing if Obama just came out and said "I live in a country with nearly universal literacy and an advanced education system.  Schooling is compulsory through 16 years of age and has been long enough to mean that without serious negligence or being truant, very few people should have a hard time understanding the rather basic speech I use in my speeches.  I will gladly employ every available option to ensure those that cannot understand me for reasons outside of their control, can understand me.  It is not my problem if some Americans have chosen not to follow their education through the level that is compulsory.  I would suggest they contact their local community education program if they want to further their basic understanding of English.

But he would never say that because it would be political suicide.  Muricans are proud of their ignorance and anybody who doesn't sink to their level to "connect" with them is just a communist socialist fascist totalitarian liberal leftist democRAT party elitist.