THE PERILS OF PARALLEL STRUCTURE
in which barack obama channels martin luther
king jr., sort of admits a mistake, and orders lunch at
mcdonald's.
Yesterday's big news on the
Barack Obama campaign trail was that, during a stump speech in Richmond,
Virginia, the Senator misspoke and so slightly overstated -- by about 9,988
lives -- the death toll from those tornadoes in Kansas: In case you missed
it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died.
The New York Post had some mean-spirited fun with it this
morning, a video clip of the
slip has been posted to YouTube, and at least 375
bloggers have already weighed in on this (non-)issue.
You'll forgive me, I hope, for becoming #376. If only because the slip of the tongue doesn't bother me at all.
If such slips become a pattern, if they start to happen with increasing frequency and carelessness, and especially if they seem to betray an underlying, cynical insincerity in the rhetoric of a guy who's supposed to be all about straight talk and uplift, then they'll bother me. (If the last two presidential elections are any indication, they probably won't bother too many other people. And they may, in fact, even improve his chances of getting elected. But I digress.) So for now this is just one more case -- speaking of underlying, cynical insincerity -- of the media, old and new, playing a fun little game of politician gotcha!
So Obama misspoke. Big deal. He (or one of his handlers) caught it, he corrected himself, he explained himself, and he moved on. (Anyone out there speak most of the day for a living and not ever misspeak? If so, let me know. You can come teach my OralComm courses. But I digress again.) In the course of that speech, and indeed in the course of all of his speeches this week or last, Senator Obama surely must have said something of substance, something of real depth and import that would have been worth covering or discussing or debating, something that he said and actually meant to say that should alarm us. Or could inspire us. Or would make us want to know more about him and his still painfully blank slate of policy positions. But why cover -- or respond to -- any of those possibilities when it's so much easier, and so much more fun, to point and laugh at the gaffe?
This is, I suppose, to what twenty-first century politics has now come. John Edwards crisscrosses the country giving deep and detailed and uncommonly thoughtful policy speeches, but he only gets good press coverage when he pays $400 for a haircut. Or when his wife's cancer comes back. Or when a couple of his campaign bloggers are outed as intemperate atheists.
Perhaps, given my long-standing, long-suffering thoughts on all the rainbow-hearts-and-candy-cane-kisses media coverage that Senator Obama has long enjoyed, I should be happy that this mistake was not ignored for the far more pressing details of his sophomore year course schedule, or maybe his wife's best friend's favorite color. Perhaps I should just rejoice in the fact that the first full and fawning blush of the Obamedia Honeymoon has ended, and that every little inconsequential misstep or misstatement he makes will now, like those of all the rest of the candidates, be amplified beyond all sense and reason and reality, if only because something light and simple and sound-bite-able has to fill all that bandwidth and all those endless hours of programming.
But I'm not. If only because something else about Obama's speech yesterday -- something that, I'll be the first to admit, was also not particularly substantive, but that illustrates a major misgiving I've always felt for him and his candidacy; namely its manufactured sincerity -- bothered me much more than the simple conflation of a couple of (let's face it) inconsequential numbers.
Though I give him credit for recognizing and acknowledging his mistake -- you paying attention, George? -- I'm a little freaked out, and more than a little disappointed, by the way he did so:
There are going to be times when I get tired. There are going to be times when I get weary. There are going to be times when I make mistakes.
Even if we ignore the passive voice and the passive-aggressive construction -- was this one of those times? if so, which one(s)? -- and accept that politicians these days, if they apologize at all -- that's right, George, I'm talkin' to you -- do so by talking about apologies, or about mistakes, or about apologies that are made when mistakes are made by politicians, and about all the reasons therefore hereunto, but not about an actual mistake that one of them actually made, I'm still troubled by the way Senator Obama defaults to the parallel structure, building and elevating and amplifying his point as if it were some great, heartfelt revelation, instead of a half-baked, over-clocked mea culpa. He wasn't standing on a battlefield at Gettysburg and sounding a call to work and fight and save a broken nation. He wasn't standing on the mall in Washington and lifting up his voice to speak for a nation of silently suffering millions. He wasn't standing on a stage in Denver, accepting his party's nomination and rallying a country to his cause. He was standing in a hot, sweaty art studio in Richmond, spinning a few excuses, however lame, and trying to do some damage control.
The diction has to suit the situation. The form has to follow the function. And the lilting, soaring rhythms of that sort of parallel structure must serve the evangelical call of a big idea, or at least a big rhetorical effect, not the small and intimate moment when you're admitting mistakes and trying to make amends. Or else you just sound like someone too full of himself, or perhaps too empty of himself, to notice.
When I saw that quotation yesterday, I imagined Senator Obama, Bill Clinton-like, making a power-to-the-people campaign stop at a McDonald's somewhere in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina, stepping up to the counter and surveying the menu and then, when all eyes were sufficiently upon him, finally opening his mouth to order:
There are going to be times when I want a Big Mac. There are going to be times when I want a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. There are going to be times when I really want a Happy Meal but realize that, no matter how much I may want the Transformers toy, I am too old to order one. There are going to be times when I want a Filet O' Fish, a large fry, and a Diet Coke. There are going to be times when I want a Fruit 'n Yogurt Parfait and some of those yummy McDonaldland Cookies. And there are going to be times like today, when I want a 10-Piece Chicken McNugget with extra Bar-B-Q sauce, and when I have a dream that my two little children will one day eat in a nation where fast-food restaurants will not be judged by the calories of their meals but by the content of their nutrition facts.
Fast-food fever dreams aside, I haven't decided yet whether I think this was a conscious choice -- to go for the big effect, to elevate the reasons and the explanations as a way to overpower the admission of the mistake -- and thus a kind of calculated, cynical bit of speechifying from a guy whose persona is built upon honest, natural emotion, or whether I think it was just an unconscious response -- grasping, in times of trouble, for the nearest and most reliable rhetorical strategy he could find -- and thus a kind of lazy, insincere bit or oratory from a guy whose persona is at least partially built upon a much better speaker than he showed. But not matter what I think, I know I don't like either explanation.
Because either way, those three sentences provide a far more telling -- and far more troubling -- glimpse into the good Senator's psyche than some simple, numerical slip of the tongue.
You'll forgive me, I hope, for becoming #376. If only because the slip of the tongue doesn't bother me at all.
If such slips become a pattern, if they start to happen with increasing frequency and carelessness, and especially if they seem to betray an underlying, cynical insincerity in the rhetoric of a guy who's supposed to be all about straight talk and uplift, then they'll bother me. (If the last two presidential elections are any indication, they probably won't bother too many other people. And they may, in fact, even improve his chances of getting elected. But I digress.) So for now this is just one more case -- speaking of underlying, cynical insincerity -- of the media, old and new, playing a fun little game of politician gotcha!
So Obama misspoke. Big deal. He (or one of his handlers) caught it, he corrected himself, he explained himself, and he moved on. (Anyone out there speak most of the day for a living and not ever misspeak? If so, let me know. You can come teach my OralComm courses. But I digress again.) In the course of that speech, and indeed in the course of all of his speeches this week or last, Senator Obama surely must have said something of substance, something of real depth and import that would have been worth covering or discussing or debating, something that he said and actually meant to say that should alarm us. Or could inspire us. Or would make us want to know more about him and his still painfully blank slate of policy positions. But why cover -- or respond to -- any of those possibilities when it's so much easier, and so much more fun, to point and laugh at the gaffe?
This is, I suppose, to what twenty-first century politics has now come. John Edwards crisscrosses the country giving deep and detailed and uncommonly thoughtful policy speeches, but he only gets good press coverage when he pays $400 for a haircut. Or when his wife's cancer comes back. Or when a couple of his campaign bloggers are outed as intemperate atheists.
Perhaps, given my long-standing, long-suffering thoughts on all the rainbow-hearts-and-candy-cane-kisses media coverage that Senator Obama has long enjoyed, I should be happy that this mistake was not ignored for the far more pressing details of his sophomore year course schedule, or maybe his wife's best friend's favorite color. Perhaps I should just rejoice in the fact that the first full and fawning blush of the Obamedia Honeymoon has ended, and that every little inconsequential misstep or misstatement he makes will now, like those of all the rest of the candidates, be amplified beyond all sense and reason and reality, if only because something light and simple and sound-bite-able has to fill all that bandwidth and all those endless hours of programming.
But I'm not. If only because something else about Obama's speech yesterday -- something that, I'll be the first to admit, was also not particularly substantive, but that illustrates a major misgiving I've always felt for him and his candidacy; namely its manufactured sincerity -- bothered me much more than the simple conflation of a couple of (let's face it) inconsequential numbers.
Though I give him credit for recognizing and acknowledging his mistake -- you paying attention, George? -- I'm a little freaked out, and more than a little disappointed, by the way he did so:
There are going to be times when I get tired. There are going to be times when I get weary. There are going to be times when I make mistakes.
Even if we ignore the passive voice and the passive-aggressive construction -- was this one of those times? if so, which one(s)? -- and accept that politicians these days, if they apologize at all -- that's right, George, I'm talkin' to you -- do so by talking about apologies, or about mistakes, or about apologies that are made when mistakes are made by politicians, and about all the reasons therefore hereunto, but not about an actual mistake that one of them actually made, I'm still troubled by the way Senator Obama defaults to the parallel structure, building and elevating and amplifying his point as if it were some great, heartfelt revelation, instead of a half-baked, over-clocked mea culpa. He wasn't standing on a battlefield at Gettysburg and sounding a call to work and fight and save a broken nation. He wasn't standing on the mall in Washington and lifting up his voice to speak for a nation of silently suffering millions. He wasn't standing on a stage in Denver, accepting his party's nomination and rallying a country to his cause. He was standing in a hot, sweaty art studio in Richmond, spinning a few excuses, however lame, and trying to do some damage control.
The diction has to suit the situation. The form has to follow the function. And the lilting, soaring rhythms of that sort of parallel structure must serve the evangelical call of a big idea, or at least a big rhetorical effect, not the small and intimate moment when you're admitting mistakes and trying to make amends. Or else you just sound like someone too full of himself, or perhaps too empty of himself, to notice.
When I saw that quotation yesterday, I imagined Senator Obama, Bill Clinton-like, making a power-to-the-people campaign stop at a McDonald's somewhere in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina, stepping up to the counter and surveying the menu and then, when all eyes were sufficiently upon him, finally opening his mouth to order:
There are going to be times when I want a Big Mac. There are going to be times when I want a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. There are going to be times when I really want a Happy Meal but realize that, no matter how much I may want the Transformers toy, I am too old to order one. There are going to be times when I want a Filet O' Fish, a large fry, and a Diet Coke. There are going to be times when I want a Fruit 'n Yogurt Parfait and some of those yummy McDonaldland Cookies. And there are going to be times like today, when I want a 10-Piece Chicken McNugget with extra Bar-B-Q sauce, and when I have a dream that my two little children will one day eat in a nation where fast-food restaurants will not be judged by the calories of their meals but by the content of their nutrition facts.
Fast-food fever dreams aside, I haven't decided yet whether I think this was a conscious choice -- to go for the big effect, to elevate the reasons and the explanations as a way to overpower the admission of the mistake -- and thus a kind of calculated, cynical bit of speechifying from a guy whose persona is built upon honest, natural emotion, or whether I think it was just an unconscious response -- grasping, in times of trouble, for the nearest and most reliable rhetorical strategy he could find -- and thus a kind of lazy, insincere bit or oratory from a guy whose persona is at least partially built upon a much better speaker than he showed. But not matter what I think, I know I don't like either explanation.
Because either way, those three sentences provide a far more telling -- and far more troubling -- glimpse into the good Senator's psyche than some simple, numerical slip of the tongue.
Posted: Thu - May 10, 2007 at 02:01 PM
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