Losing your bearings; am I the only one who thinks that means

[babylonsister]

losing your way, direction? That has always been my understanding of that expression. They're talking molehill politics again. Picking apart every last thing and assigning dubious definitions to what's said.

[madeline_con]

1. That IS what is means.

It's an old navigation term.

[BattyDem]

2. That's exactly the way I interpreted it when he said it.

Losing your way or losing sight of what's important ... it never occurred to me that he was talking about age.

I'm sure there are other people who didn't think anything of it. It wasn't an issue until McCain's campaign made it an issue, which is pretty funny ... and stupid. :P

[babylonsister]

19. McCain...and Tweety. nt

[DJ13]

3. I took it as a (very) subtle way of saying senility is setting in

:shrug:

[az chela]

4. I absolutely agree with you .

What a crock that they use that against Barack but saying it referred to his age.That is NOT what it meant

[livetohike]

5. That's what I always thought it meant

The McCain campaign is going to be sorry they brought up the age issue.

The other thing I thought off is Obama brought up that the wheels on the straight talk express were coming off. Next to go would be the bearings.....

I can't wait for the G.E. :-)

[eleny]

6. That's my understanding

And in the context of McCain, he's changed his position so much that it's an apt description.

Anyone who has a couple of positions on a single issue and then does that with many other issues has lost something important - bearings, moorings, rudderless. He's a man who is adrift.

[rocktivity]

7. The McCain camp thought it was a sneaky way of saying "he's lost his marbles"

because of ball bearings, I guess.



:headbang:
rocknation

[babylonsister]

20. Well, I'm younger than McCain, and that never occurred to me. nt

[flor de jasmim]

8. I also took it to mean finding the way... but I also think

McCain's connecting it to AGE was the "safest" option for him. He can't hide his age (although behind his Ray-Bans he doesn't look quite as old). On the other hand, to defend going in the WRONG DIRECTION would be harder.

[flor de jasmim]

9. hmm, and what about Lieberman's affirmation that he "checked" McCains bearings? STRANGE...

[babylonsister]

21. 'That' sounded perverted.

:hide:

[murray hill farm]

10. Absolutely!

It has nothing at all to do with age....and then consider what it was in response to, as well. one can actually be losing ones bearings at any age. It is the media that twists it in a way that suggests that "older" persons "might" experience "losing ones bearings" more frequently, etc. Which may be true..probably is true, but has nothing at all to do with the statement or the context of the response.

[Aloha Spirit]

11. When mentioned in the context of John McCain, that conjurs up "The Old Man and The Sea,"

[Warren Stupidity]

12. That is what it means. It does not mean 'lose your marbles'.

However somebody who has lost his bearings may indeed have lost his marbles.

[izzie]

13. I thought it was just what he said and had no 'age' thing.

it is silly for McCain to add the age thing into it. It just points to the fact they must be feeling it very much in his group. The ship went off the path is how I took it. It was not like McCain I thought Obama said.

[housewolf]

14. That's what it means to me, too... BUT... this is POLITICS

and any way a word can be turned around and used against an opponent, it wil be.

So, if you take the word "bearings" and find a meaning for the word to be "small metal balls" then you can drop the "metal" adjetive and you have "small balls" (a politician could do something with that) or you could go another step and look for synonums of "small balls" and come up with "marbles". Then you can make it up in your mind that Obama said that "John McCain has lost his marbles" and extrapolate that as an inference that John McCain has either a mental/emotional disorder or a brain/learning disorder and further infer offense from that statement.

But the thing is, it takes an intentional mental exercise of parsing and inference to get there...

And the other thing is, campaigns pay people big bucks to do just that...

[Smarmie Doofus]

15. Virtually *every* criticism that Obama can make of McCain...

... at this point can and will be interpreted as a masked allusion to McCain's age.

I think the more McCain's people react this way the sillier and more defensive they sound.

[Schema Thing]

16. I have the utmost respect for Obama's intellect and wit,

but even so, I don't think he is quick enough (or pedantically scheming enough) to have used that to mean anything but "deviate from a charted, wise course", especially in the context of the conversation he was having.

[Smarmie Doofus]

17. You're right. I saw the clip.

It was ad libbed and spontaneous.

[Jane Austin]

18. Yep. It has to do with direction - either physical or moral.

We're being bludgeoned to death by the kids who didn't pay attention in school.

The same ones who apparently, even after four years at Wellesley, couldn't understand the accurate analysis Obama made about why people vote against their interests.