Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News are taking a lot of heat for spending so much time asking about Jeremiah Wright and the “bitter” comments. But the fact is that voters want a president who basically shares their values and life experiences. Fairly or not, they look at symbols like Michael Dukakis in a tank, John Kerry’s windsurfing or John Edwards’s haircut as clues about shared values.Do they? We all know that the media presumes that these events are meaningful to voters. I mean, after all, if Dukakis loses the election after appearing silly in a tank, then it follows that Dukakis lost the election because he appeared silly in a tank. I mean, there's no logical fallacy with a fancy Latin name lurking anywhere in that reasoning, right?
Clearly, when any candidate loses an election, the loss can be attributed to whatever gaffe that candidate committed that the media played up the most. Based on this, Brooks' assertion that voters care about shared-values-and-life-experiences clues cannot be denied. Oh, and also: knowing how to bowl is sufficient for two people sharing the same "life experience".
I see nothing wrong with any of this.
2 comments:
I think another example is how everyone made such a huge deal over Howard Dean's yell/scream/whathaveyou directly leading to his loss 4 years ago. I mean, if you want to argue that saying "yeahh!" indicates whether or not he shares some given value essential to voter support.
Yeah, that's a pretty ridiculous argument.
You give Dean far too much credit by approximating that vocalization by the common "yeah!" I'm pretty sure there is no phonetic alphabet on Earth which could accurately transcribe that sound.
Which isn't to say that it's meaningful in any way. Just saying.
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