Bushspeak

[Tim Frazer]

Yes, this debate is probably too politicized.   But he is apparently going
to be elected.  And that is not entirely irrelevant.  One thing:  His
running mate's wife, when head of the NEH, did her best to trash it.  NEH
used to give a lot of support to DARE.  There used to be NEH summer seminars
in dialectology -- RAven McDavid did a couple before his death.  No more.  I
do not see these people as friendly to my professional interests.  If the
gibes at W's malapropopisms are a bit harsh, maybe it is because most of us
are here because we believed you worked hard in school and valued
scholarship.  This guy does not know what scholarship is.  This guy coasted
through Yale (would he even get in today?), Harvard BS (oops), life in
general.. Has he ever had a real job that buddies didn't underwrite?  No,
life isn't fair.  But what has he done to  earn the right to launch nukes or
appoint people to the Supreme Court.  OK, that's too political for this
list.  I will stop.

----- Original Message -----
From: Joe Pickett <Joe_Pickett at HMCO.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2000 10:44 AM
Subject: Re: Bushspeak


> FWIW, here's the Hitchens article.
>
> Why Dubya Can't Read  -- Christopher Hitchens
>
> I once knew a fairly intelligent man who disconcerted me one day by
> denouncing the arbitrary domination of the then-Soviet Union by a
> sinister-sounding body named "the Politurbo." Allowance could be made in
> his
> case; not everybody understood the abbreviations of "agitprop" and the
> crude
> origins of Com-speak. Had the term been   spelled out as "Political
Bureau"
> I
> am sure he would have got there easily in the end.  But what unhorsed me
at
> the time was this: He must have seen the word "Politburo" in print many
> times, and also heard it spoken very often, without ever registering the
> connection.
>
> The term for this failure of mental word-processing is dyslexia, and it
> can occur in mild and severe forms. I used to have the job of tutoring a
> dyslexic child, and I know something about the symptoms. So I kicked
myself
> hard when I read the profile of Governor George W. Bush, by my friend and
> colleague Gail Sheehy, in this month's Vanity Fair. All those jokes and
> cartoons and websites about his gaffes, bungles and  malapropisms? We've
> been
> unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor guy is obviously dyslexic, and
> dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy. Numerous experts and friends of
> the
> dynasty give Sheehy their considered verdict to this effect.
>
> The symptoms and clues have been staring us in the face for some time.
> Early in the campaign, Bush said that he did indeed crack the odd book and
> was even at that moment absorbed by James Chace's biography of Dean
> Acheson.
> But when asked to report anything that was in the damn volume, the
governor
> pulled up an empty net.
>
> His brother Neil is an admitted dyslexic. His mother has long been a
> patron of various foundations and charities associated with dyslexia. How
> plain it all now seems.
>
> The rhetorical and linguistic train wrecks in the speeches of Reagan and
> Bush Senior  were of a different quality, arising variously from
hysterical
> lying, brutish ignorance,  senile decay and cultural deprivation. But the
> problem was chiefly syntactical. The  additional humiliations of Dubya
> derive
> from utter failures of word recognition. A
> man who has somehow got this far in politics and refers to "tacular"
> weapons
> is  unclear (or do I mean nuclear?) on the concept. In free-trade
language,
> tariffs and barriers are not necessarily conterminous, but in no
> circumstance
> are they "terriers." To use "vile" for "viable" might look like
misfortune,
> but to employ "inebriating" for "enthralling" looks like carelessness,
> especially in someone with his booze and cocaine record. Bush doesn't want
> our enemies to "hold us hostile"; I must say I agree with what I'm sure he
> didn't mean to say. Confusing "handcuffs" with "cufflinks" might be a
> yuppie
> slip; at any rate it presumably doesn't mean softness on crime. As for
> "Reading is the basics of all learning," well, there you are.
>
> Does any of this matter? Of course it does. Bush has already claimed with
> hand on heart that he personally scrutinized the death-row appeals of more
> than a hundred condemned wretches in the shocking Texas prison system; we
> now
> have to face the fact that he not only did not review the clemency
> petitions
> but could not have read them even if he wanted to. Aides now remember the
> times they presented the governor or the candidate with that crucial
> briefing
> paper, only to see him toss it on the desk and demand a crisp, verbal,
> "bottom line" summary of its contents.
>
> Decisive, right? Wrong.
>
> I know from my teaching experience that nature very often compensates the
> dyslexic with a higher IQ or some grant of intuitive intelligence. If this
> is
> true for Bush it hasn't yet become obvious; his Texas chief of staff, Clay
> Johnson, told Gail Sheehy that the attention span of his boss is, not to
> euphemize matters overmuch, somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen minutes.
> In
> other words, and as far as we know,  he has only the downside of his
> difficulty, which is attention-deficit disorder. In the high noon of the
> age
> of information, the Republican Party packages and presents a provincial
> ignoramus who can neither read nor write. Woof.
>
> But now here's another amazing thing. Nelson Rockefeller was dyslexic,
> though nobody knew it until after he'd become Vice President. Ronald
> Reagan's
> neurons and synapses were being devoured by Alzheimer's from at least...
> well, I'd say 1982 from personal observation, though experts differ. Bill
> Clinton was understood by some of the closest of his circle, including his
> awful wife, to be a pathological liar and sexual delinquent when he was
> still
> lucky enough to be governor of Arkansas. Usually, these and many other
> disqualifications, like Nixon's alcoholism, await the patient, too-late
> forensic attention of the court historians. Yet here's a man whose aides
> and
> flacks are visibly white-lipped every time he opens his mouth, and who
> should
> be seeking remedial care but is instead seeking the presidential therapy
> that
> he   doesn't need, and nobody says a word. Nobody had the poor taste to
> follow up Gail Sheehy's findings.
>
> Ah, but Bush has a disability.... Can that be it? From "compassionate
> conservatism" to compassion for the conservative? Well, I'm ready to feel
> compassion for him. I want him to get all the help he needs (which will
> probably involve him in emulating his flabbergasting running mate and
> moving
> his official residence to another and more compassionate state). But I
> think,
> in presidential terms, we should leave this child back and let him catch
up
> in his own special way at some later date.
>
> Meanwhile, the press and the Democrats should either stop citing and
> mocking the flubs or come right out and say what they mean. A danger of
> heartlessness, even of callousness, exists. Seeking to explain away his
> wastrel life and his obnoxious manner--nagging problems that persisted
> until
> his mid-40s--Bush invites us to believe that he mutated into finer
> personhood
> after having a personal encounter with God. The pious toads at the head of
> the Democratic ticket are full of unction at this and any other
> manifestation
> of hypocrisy. In a farcical recent moment, Bush contradicted his own
> mother,
> who claimed he'd always read his Bible as a youngster, by telling the
> Washington Post that he'd read no such thing. So--what if he had  meant to
> say all along that he'd found a personal "dog"? The time to clear this up
> is
> now.