don rumfeld's colloquial language

[Scott Sadowsky]

On 5/8/2002 11:28, Eric Schmitt wrote the following:

>anyone have any thoughts or observations about these and other "rummy'isms"
>or "rummy-speak," how it has influenced the way the public perceives him
>and the fight on terror, and what it says about a public official who loves
>to talk like this?

It seems that the more powerful people become in US politics, the more they
want to disguise just how powerful they actually are.

Affecting this down-home, just-one-of-the-guys-at-the-gun-show speech could
serve several purposes: (a) to avoid upstanding his apparently aphasic
boss; (b) to hide or play-down a personality that many would consider to be
arrogant, haughty, domineering, abrasive, etc.; (c) to provide cover for an
intellect that would intimidate a large proportion of the public (in a
society in which "academic" is normally taken as a synonym of "irrelevant"
and "intellectual" is more often than not disparaging, being smarter and
better-educated than the average voter is not something you advertise); (d)
to disarm people's fears that he might have fairly authoritarian leanings
(how could such a nice, run-of-the-mill guy possibly be as Machiavellian as
some people say, right?).

Plus, this plays to the venerable American myth of government by the common
man, as seen in LBJ (the foul-mouthed bastard next door), Carter (the
hayseed peanut farmer), Reagan (the plaid-shirt-wearing midwestern
storyteller), Clinton (the groovy born-on-the-bayou^H^H^H^H^Hdirt-farm sax
player), Bush Sr. (the pork-rinds-munching aristocrat) and Bush Jr. (the
twangy, straight-D student who made good).

Cheers,
Scott

_____________________________________________________________
Scott Sadowsky  --  Spanish-English / English-Spanish Translator

sadowsky at spanishtranslator.org · sadowsky at bigfoot.com
http://www.spanishtranslator.org
_____________________________________________________________
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."
   -- Andrew Jackson