À la the wonder that is Facebook, I came across this article concerning President Obama's "rhetorical tics".
First of all, the title is awful. I understand that it's cheekily referring to itself, but it doesn't make much sense at first read. But I digress.
My point is, this isn't news. This isn't even all that interesting.
"President Obama doesn't hold a candle, oratorically speaking, to Candidate Obama— that what you heard before the election is not what you are getting after the election."
Are you kidding me? After eight years of listening to George W. mangle the English language to the point where there are entire websites devoted to his inanity, we have this to talk about?
Not to mention, Obama probably doesn't sound like he did when he was campaigning because he's not campaigning anymore. Just a thought. When you're campaigning, you're essentially trying to woo the nation. You present the best of yourself and hope the people are impressed enough to vote for you. Well, we were successfully wooed, and now he's the President, and he doesn't have to use that soaring rhetoric EVERY SINGLE TIME anymore.
Obama starts a lot of sentences with "but" and "so" and "now". That's apparently what a "rhetorical tic" is. It's apparently not just called "speaking English". And the author of the article seems to be concerned that these "tics" make him appear to be talking down to the nation. Let me just point out that I'm fairly certain he IS talking down to us. To put it another way, I've seen quite a few teabaggers lately and not a one of them could pass for president of the Harvard Law Review. I'm sure most of them can't even properly use an apostrophe.
And another thing, even if Obama did address the nation like we were all Harvard graduates (instead of as a professor to his students, as the article bemoans), you KNOW there would be all kinds of op-ed pieces about how elitist and out-of-touch he was.
Ugh. I know this isn't much of a diary, but I just get so annoyed with NPR when they run this kind of nonsense. Just because the other side is vapid and uninteresting doesn't mean we have to be, too.