I agree! I have quite enjoyed the SNL skit of the vice presidential debate. The skit was so well done that Italian news showed a piece of it! Italians are quite gung-ho about McCain, except here in Bologna the Red. This place has been governed by communists for a loooong time. Anyway, Mary, I hope you've seen that skit. It's worth two chuckles and a guffaw.
"they're also forced, from time to time, to answer questions, and their answers often resemble the rambling nonsense, obfuscation, and grammatical insanity that many of us would produce when put on the spot.
Yet surely, more than most of us, politicians need to be able to think on their feet, to have a brain that works quickly and rationally under pressure."
And yet, sometimes (key word: sometimes) I think that smart and qualified people aren't always great talkers. Politics demands fancy speech, which a lot of times allows them to make something look good or okay when it isn't. So I guess once in a while I'm okay with an awkward sentence - especially if it was made before having time to think completely through the issue. For me, sincerity and honesty trump grammar.
But yes, I think if you're going into politics, making sense when you speak is a huge plus. And you being a rhetoric person and all, I can see why this caught your attention. :)
And SNL has been amazing lately. My favorite is still the Palin/Clinton one.
I'm experiencing a deep failure to understand how the title relates, unless it's a brutal sarcastic dig. I'm gonna say it's 'cause I'm autistic. . .? Wait, unless it's all you could have hoped for in stuff to diagram? For your diagramming hobby?
If it is a brutal sarcastic dig, I weigh in that I am much in favor.
Between this (we knew him, but didn't like him, even before) and this (made what should have been happy, tragic), a bunch of my friends keep thinking, "man, humanity is sad, sad, sad." I want to restore faith in humanity for them, but how? Does it require big acts of kindness to counter-act big acts of violence and hate? Or is the quiet, well-lived life that keeps plodding along trying to to its best, enough? Today on the radio, the old-timey radio station was commercial- and pledge-free because of "a friend in North Austin" and a bunch of my friends are pitching in to buy diapers for low-income mothers.I want to do grand acts of kindness, but I don't know if I can, right now. Does that count in the balance? Is faith in humanity a series of bank transactions, deposits and withdrawals, so that acts of cruelty and callousness must be counter-acted by well-meaning patsies who have to try to buoy up humanity well enough to keep Q (or almost any alien) fr...
1. 28 Dresses Later a high-adrenaline zombie-bridesmaid thriller. When one dress too many turns the minds of the perpetual bridesmaid, they roam post-apocalyptic London, tearing to shreds everyone with well-manicured nails and biting them with their recently-whitened teeth. 2. I wake up, groggy, bed-headed, pajamaed. Lying next to me, fully dressed on top of the bed is Gregory Mankiw, the economist. "You're Greg Mankiw," I intelligently remark. He springs out of bed and stands up. "Would you like to discuss consumer surplus and tariffs?" "Why are you here?" I ask. "Don't you remember the Make-a-Wish Foundation?" 3. I was going to throw my tiara, but it turns out to be made of popcorn. "What a cheap groom I have," I think. He's already changed into jeans by the time his extensive family starts playing a traditional game of "here kitty, kitty," around the equally extensive reception grounds. I have no idea why we...
I finally got a book back that I had lent out. I'm thrilled to have it back, in part because it's signed by the author, in part because, frankly, it's an interesting book. It's called White Man's Burden and its author, William Easterly, probably is getting used to receiving death threats from Peace Corp types. His premise is this: our good intentions to save the poor are often the exact same colonial impulses that messed up these countries in the first place. In fact, instead of doing good, throwing gobs of money at countries probably hurts them far more than it helps them. He divides his book into two sub-topics: Aid and Military Intervention. Both methods do equally miserably. The top-down approach of what he calls "Planners" create these utopian ideals of changing poor, oppressed countries into beacons of democracy and prosperity. In reality, these sudden, major overhauls, be they military or humanitarian, seldom work and often create corruption, famine...
Comments
"they're also forced, from time to time, to answer questions, and their answers often resemble the rambling nonsense, obfuscation, and grammatical insanity that many of us would produce when put on the spot.
Yet surely, more than most of us, politicians need to be able to think on their feet, to have a brain that works quickly and rationally under pressure."
And yet, sometimes (key word: sometimes) I think that smart and qualified people aren't always great talkers. Politics demands fancy speech, which a lot of times allows them to make something look good or okay when it isn't. So I guess once in a while I'm okay with an awkward sentence - especially if it was made before having time to think completely through the issue. For me, sincerity and honesty trump grammar.
But yes, I think if you're going into politics, making sense when you speak is a huge plus. And you being a rhetoric person and all, I can see why this caught your attention. :)
And SNL has been amazing lately. My favorite is still the Palin/Clinton one.
If it is a brutal sarcastic dig, I weigh in that I am much in favor.
Sarah Palin honestly frightens me.
Interesting article, though. :)