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"let's talk about THAT!"
That.
by citisven
By now, anyone with half a brain who is paying attention to the latest news cycles knows that the whole manufactured brouhaha over President Obama's "You didn't build that" comment is nothing more than Mitt Romney's latest desperate attempt to harness the "Obama is a Socialist" angst among certain parts of the less informed American electorate.
While creative editing of your opponent's statements for political advantage is probably as old as homo sapiens, the brazen omission — sliced up by right wing shysters and picked up by the Romney campaign — of the context in which the word "that" was used in President Obama's speech, has backfired, as it should. It's almost hard to believe that the Romney campaign would serve the President such a doozy of a slam dunk, seeing how in this day and age of instant fact check and rebuttal the desired effect of using such a disingenuously butchered sound bite to paint your opponent as someone who supposedly doesn't believe business owners don't work hard is so easily exposed as the boldfaced lie it is.
It was as if Romney, in his clumsy zeal for cheap applause from the most reality-challenged segment of society, was begging the Obama campaign to immediately and unequivocally shove that steaming pile of malice back into his smirking face.
However, while it's almost a guilty-pleasure for every thinking observer and their pundit-mother to go for the low-hanging fruit of exposing and ridiculing Mitt for this all-too-obvious cheap shot and expose him (once again) for the conniving yet empty suit that he is, I think there's a bigger opportunity here to take Mitt's gift of the fumbled "that" and run with it to a higher ground for one of those fabled teaching moments that gets much more mileage than just one victorious news cycle.
As I see it, Mitt's blunder has given us an opportunity to actually have a dialog about what the President was really talking about in his speech.
So... let's talk about [font color="black" size="3" face="arial"]THAT![/font]
[font color="black" size="1" face="arial"]stimulus, photo by Olivier Le Queinec/Dreamstime[/font][font color="white" size="1" face="face"]. . . . . . . . . . .[/font] [font color="black" size="1" face="arial"]public school children, photo by citisven[/font]
In his actual unedited speech, the President already listed some of the "thats," the things we collectively invest in, benefit from, and don't build on our own, like teachers, roads, bridges, the internet, and fire fighters. He's been talking about this social contract ever since I first heard him speak, so there wasn't really anything new about what he said, other than the somewhat awkward placement of "that" in reference to the roads and bridges in the previous sentence . Elizabeth Warren's famous explanation of why nobody in this country gets rich on their own was a big hit because it brought some real emotion and excitement to the "thats" we often take for granted.
However, these "thats" can get lost in translation or make themselves susceptible to verbal abuses and distortions — from those who are either too ignorant, manipulative, or greedy to understand and accept the idea of the commons — when they're presented in too general terms.
For example, "government jobs" sounds very dry and detached, but when I talk to my mail carrier about her day, her route, and her family, it immediately connects the dots for me between the mutually beneficial mechanisms at work: We collectively pay for Ms. Mailwoman to perform the crucial service of keeping citizens connected and businesses operating at an affordable rate, and Ms. Mailwoman in turn invests our investment in her in her family and her community, getting her kids through school, making home improvements, and shopping at the local grocery store. Along the way, we chat on my front stoop and connect as human beings. I'm proud that part of my taxes go to support this woman, and I'm grateful that I can get a letter hand-delivered, within 3 days, coast to coast, for less than a buck, smiles included.
[font color="black" size="1" face="arial"]mail carrier at work, photo by citisven[/font]
That, to me, is [font color="black" size="3" face="arial"]THAT![/font] It's personal, it's concrete, and it affects my life every day.
- more -
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/04/1116444/-That
by citisven
By now, anyone with half a brain who is paying attention to the latest news cycles knows that the whole manufactured brouhaha over President Obama's "You didn't build that" comment is nothing more than Mitt Romney's latest desperate attempt to harness the "Obama is a Socialist" angst among certain parts of the less informed American electorate.
While creative editing of your opponent's statements for political advantage is probably as old as homo sapiens, the brazen omission — sliced up by right wing shysters and picked up by the Romney campaign — of the context in which the word "that" was used in President Obama's speech, has backfired, as it should. It's almost hard to believe that the Romney campaign would serve the President such a doozy of a slam dunk, seeing how in this day and age of instant fact check and rebuttal the desired effect of using such a disingenuously butchered sound bite to paint your opponent as someone who supposedly doesn't believe business owners don't work hard is so easily exposed as the boldfaced lie it is.
It was as if Romney, in his clumsy zeal for cheap applause from the most reality-challenged segment of society, was begging the Obama campaign to immediately and unequivocally shove that steaming pile of malice back into his smirking face.
However, while it's almost a guilty-pleasure for every thinking observer and their pundit-mother to go for the low-hanging fruit of exposing and ridiculing Mitt for this all-too-obvious cheap shot and expose him (once again) for the conniving yet empty suit that he is, I think there's a bigger opportunity here to take Mitt's gift of the fumbled "that" and run with it to a higher ground for one of those fabled teaching moments that gets much more mileage than just one victorious news cycle.
As I see it, Mitt's blunder has given us an opportunity to actually have a dialog about what the President was really talking about in his speech.
So... let's talk about [font color="black" size="3" face="arial"]THAT![/font]
[font color="black" size="1" face="arial"]stimulus, photo by Olivier Le Queinec/Dreamstime[/font][font color="white" size="1" face="face"]. . . . . . . . . . .[/font] [font color="black" size="1" face="arial"]public school children, photo by citisven[/font]
In his actual unedited speech, the President already listed some of the "thats," the things we collectively invest in, benefit from, and don't build on our own, like teachers, roads, bridges, the internet, and fire fighters. He's been talking about this social contract ever since I first heard him speak, so there wasn't really anything new about what he said, other than the somewhat awkward placement of "that" in reference to the roads and bridges in the previous sentence . Elizabeth Warren's famous explanation of why nobody in this country gets rich on their own was a big hit because it brought some real emotion and excitement to the "thats" we often take for granted.
However, these "thats" can get lost in translation or make themselves susceptible to verbal abuses and distortions — from those who are either too ignorant, manipulative, or greedy to understand and accept the idea of the commons — when they're presented in too general terms.
For example, "government jobs" sounds very dry and detached, but when I talk to my mail carrier about her day, her route, and her family, it immediately connects the dots for me between the mutually beneficial mechanisms at work: We collectively pay for Ms. Mailwoman to perform the crucial service of keeping citizens connected and businesses operating at an affordable rate, and Ms. Mailwoman in turn invests our investment in her in her family and her community, getting her kids through school, making home improvements, and shopping at the local grocery store. Along the way, we chat on my front stoop and connect as human beings. I'm proud that part of my taxes go to support this woman, and I'm grateful that I can get a letter hand-delivered, within 3 days, coast to coast, for less than a buck, smiles included.
[font color="black" size="1" face="arial"]mail carrier at work, photo by citisven[/font]
That, to me, is [font color="black" size="3" face="arial"]THAT![/font] It's personal, it's concrete, and it affects my life every day.
- more -
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/04/1116444/-That
