House of Eratosthenes

Just one thing to add on to my analysis of the President’s press conference yesterday, in the post immediately previous. It’s probably much more appropriate to make into a post of its own, and so that is what I shall do.

Over the course of the many years since He has become a national celebrity, I have very gradually become cumulatively irritated with the President’s habit of making noises like “uh” and “um.” And I’m picking up the vibe that, although I am likely to be heading down a road all by myself in saying it out loud, I’m very far from alone in thinking it. Oh yes, I know this puts one in the bulls-eye zone of the target area for accusations of R-R-R-Racism. Well, here’s my response to that.

Regardless of skin color of the person speaking, it just doesn’t fit. We use “uh” as a habit of nervousness, when we need some time to grope for the right word, are not yet ready to relinquish the floor to someone else who might be a bit too enthused about taking it, who may not even realize they’re interrupting if our thoughts are a bit too sluggish. It’s a bad fit because President Obama, in spite of all His flaws and his lack of practical experience, is a sharp guy in His own field. And there can be no doubt about it at this point, His field is speaking. He is polished, He is rehearsed, He is sharp. We have had some presidents who are, on occasion, walking advertisements for Holiday Inn, or whatever is the hotel brand using the advertising gimmick of pondering the disasters in store for whoever doesn’t get an adequate night’s rest on a business trip. Obama’s predecessor is a good example of that. Obama is not one of those. His rep is that He really, really knows what He wants to get out there into the microphone, and in that respect if none other, He can live up to His billing.

It is a bad fit, even further, because for all the smarts Obama seeks to bring, the ideas He’s putting out there when He speaks are not formidable thoughts. They are very simple. It doesn’t take a lot of mental horsepower to channel them into words. Furthermore, along this particular point, there hasn’t been a lot of variance to them throughout the years. They’ve mostly been a round-robin. Obama speeches, on any subject, remind me of the rotary drums mounted in those pianos that can play themselves. Very, very small rotary drums…they complete one cycle and they play the same thing again.

And it is a bad fit, even further than that, because the verbiage is modest. Here, try this. Pick an Obama speech on YouTube. Any one, I don’t care which. Wait until the next time He says “uh” or “um” and then…this is key…watch for what comes right after it, and seriously ask yourself: Okay, did He really need more time to choose just the perfect word? Is that plausible?

This is the part where, if you don’t understand where I’m going up until now, you come into my fold and agree. It isn’t plausible. Yes, even President Obama’s use of “uh” is insincere, like everything else He says.

He’s using it as a gimmick. I will give him this much, I think at this point it certainly is a subconscious thing. He’s probably been building the habit since early adulthood, some thirty years or so. And it’s easy to see what the gimmick is: We have in our midst a brilliant and deep thinker, approaching the level of godliness, sort of, wading into a subject of deep complexity, and moving about with skill and nimbleness, determined not to make even the slightest misstep.

It’s just a complete crock. In that particular example, President Obama’s point was a simple one, an old refrain, one that should be familiar by now, even tiresome: Republicans are screwing you guys over and it isn’t My fault. There is nothing tricky about this, not even close. Yet how many utterances of “uh” and “um” do you have within any randomly selected minute of it.

Now I’m sure it sounds petty. I’m sure many will question whether I’d be similarly peeved if a white guy was doing the same thing. It’s a tough question to answer because Barack Obama’s gimmicky use of the word “uh” is a device He’s been using to exploit a low bar of expectations placed on Him. Geraldine Ferraro was right, and the real racism here is the racism within his supporters, who would not be supporting Him if he were white. This is proven easily: Many among them keep their enthusiasm rejuvenated because of, not in spite of, the “uh”; white guys go “uh” fairly often, and there’s really nothing impressive about it. So how come the black guy gets extra credit for it. What, you think because rap music is rhythmic and rhymes, that people of color aren’t capable of going “uh”?

As it happens, though, I do have an example that comes to mind about a white guy really, really getting under my skin with this stuff. It’s not the “uh” gimmick, it’s a different one. We were staying in a hotel and we had the boob tube on in the morning…an infomercial comes on about the device you use to figure out if your check engine light is coming on. So I tell the wife…wife, why are we watching this dreck? And the wife says, because I want to know what the thing costs. And I’m thinking, why does he keep jibber-jabbering and he won’t tell us? And jibber-jabber he does, and he gets to the price of the appliance noting what a steal it would be at three hundred, but it’s NOT three hundred. It’s not two eighty, it’s not two seventy, it’s not two-fifty. It isn’t even two twenty-five! What would you say if it was ONE NINETY NINE!! And then he talks about it being one ninety nine for a little while…then he goes, but it’s NOT! it’s not one sixty, it’s not one fifty, it’s not one forty! Think about having this wonderful thing for just ONE TEN!! Then he talks about that…But it’s EVEN LOWER! It’s not ninety, it’s not eighty…

So. Don’t any you sunzabitches go calling me a racist for this one. That would be yet another example of racists-calling-non-racists-racists, and we’ve had plenty enough of that already. I don’t give a fig about the President’s skin color, I just don’t like being talked to like I’m an idiot.

The device, by the way, turned out to be free. With some conditions attached, the details of which surpassed my curiosity at that point.

I gave the wife the feedback that, now that I’ve switched the idiot box off, I want to drop-kick the goddamn thing not out of the third-floor window, or the fifth-floor window, or even the seventh-floor window. Or even the tenth. How about…

Why is so much human creativity, in recent years, being plowed into the objective of deceiving each other? And with such a low level of regard for the intellect of the “mark,” the person who is supposed to be deceived. Dumb lies put together for dumb people. So, week in and week out, the President has another bushel of wonderful speeches to bring all peppered and pockmarked heavily with that word “uh.” It’s annoying because He’s just doing the same thing liberals of all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes do all the time: Make something more abundant that was never scarce in the first place, that by its greater abundance doesn’t make anything any better.

I think the movie “Idiocracy” (unexpectedly, NOT nominated for an Oscar) sums it all up pretty well.
OR you could start with The Emporor’s New Clothes.
- CaptDMO | 03/02/2013 @ 13:43
I’d add: compare Chicken Little, maybe Animal Farm, to ANYTHING the POTUS has said since reelection, but that might be contrued as rasssis code-speak.
- CaptDMO | 03/02/2013 @ 13:45
His horrendous speech is why I rarely watch Obama on TV, because then I start doing it, and it sounds bad out in the Adult World.
- William Teach | 03/03/2013 @ 07:14
[…] House of Eratosthenes has a, uh, a bone to, uh, pick with, uh, Obama […]
- Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove | 03/03/2013 @ 07:48
[…] inserted before every other syllable, being the thoughtful scholarly guy He isn’t. It’s annoying, at this point, since we know He could save about thirty or forty percent of the time […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/30/2013 @ 10:04
[…] “Pakistan,” “ISIL,” the fifty-seven-states, all the “uhs.” And if we could indulge me in cutting through let another layer of fossilized fecal […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/24/2017 @ 20:15

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Saturday, March 2nd, 2013