Remember how stupid Dan Quayle was because he couldn’t spell potato? It was an iconic episode in American politics. The media was relentless in demonstrating how the inability to spell a simple word was proof enough that Quayle lacked the gravitas to hold the office of Vice President. The truth behind the story was that Quayle was handed a list of spelling words prepared by the teacher with the word potato misspelled with an e at the end. As candidates are wont to do on the campaign trail, he didn’t pay to much attention to what was being said. However, the “gotcha” moment was to good to filter with the truth.
Remember how George W. Bush said “nucular” instead of nuclear? It was the clarion call for the attack media and entertainment leftists. “See!”, they shouted. “He can’t even pronounce the word correctly.” Careers were launched and saved by using the “mock Bush strategery”. (Will Ferrell is the funniest.)
Remember when Obama was making a speech before a bunch of people from the military and kept referring to a Navy Corpsman as a “corpse-man”? You don’t? Heck, it just happend a few days ago. Haven’t you seen it all over the media? Oh, that’s right. It wasn’t all over the media. In fact, I’ve only seen it reported in once place. Here at National Review Online. You would think that with Obama’s very election to the presidency dependent, in part, upon his silver-tounged oratory, that a misstatement of this magnitude would be big news. But of course, this is Obama and the media is not going to turn on Obama. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Brian Williams start referring to the “corpse-man shipping out overseas to fight the war.” After all, if Obama said it, it must be so. Maybe he should issue an executive order changing the official pronunciation of the word.
In Texas, they have a saying. “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” When it comes to Obama the media is pissing bias and claiming that it’s raining objectivity.
If you ask me, if someone who votes for/against someone and forms broad, swiping opinions of that person based on the pronunciation of a single word, they’re dumber than the candidate they ridicule for it.
This goes for everybody.
Bush isn’t the only American president to lose the “nucular” war. In his “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine in May 2001, William Safire lamented that, besides Bush, at least three other presidents—Eisenhower, Carter, and Clinton—have mangled the word.
In fact, Bush’s usage is so common that it appears in at least one dictionary. Merriam-Webster’s, by far the most liberal dictionary, includes the pronunciation, though with a note identifying it as “a pronunciation variant that occurs in educated speech but that is considered by some to be questionable or unacceptable.” A 1961 Merriam-Webster’s edition was the first to include “nucular”; the editors received so many indignant letters that they added a usage note in the 1983 version, pointing out its “widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least one U.S. president and one vice president.” They even noted its prominence among “British and Canadian speakers.”
Taken from a Slate.com post by Kate Taylor
giving specific examples to support a flawed thesis is meaningless. to compare obama and bush’s intelligence is disingenuous. that’s my point. obama can speak to a room full of house republicans and thoroughly refute their claims, with facts. did bush ever do that? no, he only had town hall meetings with pre-selected people.
to the larger issue, there is no liberal media anymore. liberal blogs (some say the extreme of the left) are frequently dismissed as crazy while the tea parties (some say the extreme of the right) are given platforms to speak. rudy guiliani is allowed to say that they was no major attack on american soil during the bush administration without being called out. why is sarah palin given so much air time? what other quitter former politician has this much positive press? why are newt gingrich and tom delay brought onto the sunday talk shows after their political careers ended in scandals? why can conservatives attack the president now when they were calling liberals “treasonous” just a few years ago, and not get called out for that hypocrisy? even now with the underwear bomber, conservatives are calling obama soft on terror while bush did the same thing with the shoe bomber. why are people in the media calling for obama to move towards the middle, shouldn’t the liberal media call for obama to be progressive? why aren’t republicans being shown as obstructionists?
all these examples aren’t on fox news. if you add fox news to the regular media’s laziness you get a decreasingly liberal media. you see conservatives allowed to go on the major television networks and lie without being called out or even asked follow up questions. how can anyone still call the media liberal anymore?
To “The Other Side:”
The author gave specific examples (these are known as “facts”) to support his thesis. You have given us propaganda.
big difference in education between obama and bush. there is no question that obama is highly educated but there were questions about bush’s intelligence.
its amazing that this is an example about how the media is biased towards obama. that could be further from the truth. how many of the lies about health care have been propagated as news by the media? how often are republicans brought on television and allowed to lie?
there is no longer a liberal bias in media. in the media’s eyes, no republican can do wrong and liberals are crazy.