Obama as Macavity: lies vs. “misleading generalizations”
Commenter Martin Bebow writes, appropos of yesterday’s post in which I cite an example of Obama lying about Karl Rove:
I think the use of the word ”˜lied’ is excessive in this case. He did say “people like Rove’ after all. I generally agree with most of what you write neo (except the Juno review) but I think it is important that we be restrained in dealing with the opposition. Obama’s real mistake here is making a misleading generalization. We need leaders who can look beyond generalizations and think clearly about what needs to be done now. We need to hold both Republicans and Democrats to a stern standard of honesty about the problems we now face.
I think Bebow’s point is a good one. And I must say that, in that instance, I did miss Obama’s sophisticated verbal circumlocution.
Which actually makes Obama’s statement more pernicious, not less. It’s an example of his arrogant subtlety, of which I did write:
Bill Clinton was reviled for his lawyerly use of language in the service of weaseling, of parsing his words so carefully””especially when in the service of self-defense””that although they seemed to say one thing they really said another. Listeners learned not to take his words at face value, but to scrutinize them the way a lawyer would the language of a contract about to be signed.
Now comes Barack Obama, another lawyer, not an unusual profession for politicians. Not all lawyer-politicians are up there with Bill in the word-parsing competition, but Obama is revealing himself””far more than Hillary””to be Bill’s true heir in that department.
Obama’s actual words, then, were the following (emphasis added):
…people like Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Ralph Reed, and Karl Rove say we are a Christian nation.
This construction is actually far worse than a simple statement such as “Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Ralph Reed, and Karl Rove have said we are a Christian nation.” This is because—as Bebow so rightly points out—built into the statement, like an internal escape hatch, is its own deniability (as well as meaninglessness).
After all, what does it mean to say “people like…” and then follow it with a list of specific names? It is both guilt by association, and unprovable.
Unless engaged in a word-by-word deconstruction of the text, almost any reader would come to the conclusion that what Obama is saying is that these people have said this thing. That “fact” could be proven or disproven: did they say it, or did they not?
But the “people like…” construction cannot be proven. It is by its very nature neither false nor true, because these nameless “people” remain unspecified. And whether they are actually “like” the listed Gang of Four can never be known, either.
In this way, Obama’s statement serves its function, which is to mislead (at least about Karl Rove; I have no idea whether the other three have actually made such statements) and to cover his butt if challenged.
That said, I’m not so sure whether this is a highly conscious and purposeful plan of Obama’s. I have come to the conclusion that sometimes he is aware of it and sometimes it is more of an ingrained habit—perhaps of longstanding duration—of evasive and cloudy speech.
Something about Obama’s life and his personality has made him a careful escape artist of words. This behavior has been strongly reinforced because it’s a technique that works.
There are many such people in the world, who have learned to speak with such care that their words, if closely examined, evaporate in the mist. What you think you see (and hear) is not what you get.
And some of them find a home in politics. They remind me of T.S. Eliot’s mystery cat, “Macavity:”
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime–Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air–
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!
McCain 100 years in Iraq comment, is the slippery statement that you accuse Obama of. Because Iraq is not Korea or Japan. In those wars we fought stable governments (evil, but stable) and true cease fires could be agreed upon.
Iraq is like Vietnam, we were trying to prop up a government the people don’t want, which is unstable.
Comparing this war to WWII, which neocons love to do, is the worst kind of lie.
Neo—
Something about Obama’s life and his personality has made him a careful escape artist of words. This behavior has been strongly reinforced because it’s a technique that works.
Maybe he was a blogger in a past life. Oh, wait…
It is a part of what I have referred to as a “Throw dog a bone syndrome” – that is give people who *want* to believe something to latch on too. They can fill in the blanks to make it work in their head.
It can be done through many different ways but usually is through vague and misleading language. Such as the whole “All we want is the world to be at peace” when in reality they mean withdraw all our troops from Iraq, submit to the world court, and a myriad other things that would *not* go over big even in their own group.
All politicians do it to some degree but leftist and most liberals generally take it to an art form. It is rare to hear them actually state what they believe in specifics and is always some vague hand wavy type statement that of course everyone agrees with. Either that or is a “might maybe possibly could” type thing.
And, lastly, this still a lie – using the word “like” doesn’t give it any special significance. Lets say I state the following “People like Obama say that Pol Pot had the right idea by killing that many” – is Obama like that? Nope, no more than his list of people are “like” the people who “say we are a Christian nation”. They are both lies if they were said in in a way that was meant as truthful, obviously I meant mine as an example of falsehood and Obama meant you take his seriously.
Jackie Says:
“McCain 100 years in Iraq comment, is the slippery statement that you accuse Obama of.”
Stop… just stop digging.
McCain just did not say he’d keep us in combat in Iraq for 100 years. Period.
Now your right, Iraq is not Japan… so if the fighting does not end and our people keep getting hurt, then McCain has not said anything about staying.
Macavity must’ve spent his life trying to authentically fit in as one particular breed of cat.
He can no more disown the Tomcat he runs around with than he can disown the entire breed and population of California Spangled Cats. Macavity can no more disown that Tomcat than he can disown his own Grandmother, who once confessed … oops … doesn’t matter anymore: Grandma just got flattened by a city bus. The problem is not Uncle Tomcat’s persistent destructive actions inside the neighborhood(which btw, I, Macavity, was not there during the commission of) – but, rather, the problem is everyone else(!): as everyone else has failed to care about, to comprehend, and to feel Uncle Tomcat’s pain. People of his generation are naturally going to overturn some trash cans in anger(again: Macavity was not there). Everyone else(not Macavity) just need to quit treating that generation of Tomcats as “the other”, and start trying to understand them better, so we can all come together(even though I am an authentic California Spangled Cat, and the rest of you are not, and that can NEVER change – but it’s still your fault we have not come together – and, if you only see the light, I will bring us all together as one in loathing of your shallow selfishness).
No Jackie, the worse kind of lie is you people attempting to pretend that the current Iraqi government wasnt voted in by the Iraqi people or that mass genocide would not occur if we abandoned Iraq in its current state.
I guess the most grievous liberal lie is your people’s shallow claim of empathy for the Iraqi people.
Shame jackie, shame.
I agree with neo-neocon, that Obama is actually an even more dangerous kind of liar. There is a huge difference between being a leader who implements clear policy, defending the nation and providing leadership globally, on the one hand, and being a sly dissimulating saying nothing definite as a lawyer does, on the other hand.
Obama has zero leadership quality. He has no moral stature, and anyone who trusts this snake, American or foreigner, is set up for a big let down.
I’ve said it before, and say again: Obama has a personality disorder with several so-called antisocial features: deceitfulness, superficial charm, and a strong sense of self-entitlement. He is patently amoral. We are all agreed he is more than a typical politician. I am not a shrink or a therapist, though, and welcome comments on this line from those who are.
Well, it’s clear that some people in Iraq don’t want it, but given the number of other people who are willing to finger those people when their neighborhood can be kept safe from them, those people seem to be strongly in the minority. So the generalization seems appropriately Obamaesque.
Further, in Vietnam there was a superpower feeding an external enemy with war materiel, a fact which became undeniable when the North, with no industrial base to speak of, twice reconstituted its army, overwhelming the South when we refused to give the South the means with which to defend themselves. (They did quite will until they ran out of things to do it with.) Now, there is a way of avoiding an undeniable fact, and that is simply to refuse to look at it and to keep talking about something else every time someone mentions it.
It’s time to wake up. Read On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War by Harry Summers. My first paperback copy had quotes on the back from just about everyone on the left and the right saying just about the same thing: every American should read this book. I seem to recall that Dan Rather’s name was among them, so even the MSM endorsed it. Of course, if you want to judge it for yourself, you’ll have to read it.
Meanwhile, unless you can find a real lesson of Viet Nam that’s relevant here (the MSM can poison the nations heart with dishonest and slanted reporting, for instance) let’s stick to the fellow who must have watched Bill Clinton fire platitudes at his accusers and thought “I can do that!”
This construction is actually far worse than a simple statement such as “Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Ralph Reed, and Karl Rove have said we are a Christian nation.” This is because–as Bebow so rightly points out–built into the statement, like an internal escape hatch, is its own deniability (as well as meaninglessness).
It is the same as killing South Vietnamese villagers and then saying “it wasn’t our fault they died, they killed themselves by losing in a civil war”, Neo.
Complete deniability. Except for the sound of the drip drop of blood coming from behind their backs where they have tucked their hands.
Jackie wants to convince Jackie that the sacrifices of previous Americans in creating the DMZ in Korea and securing it with American troop presence is just a freebie for Jackie and c[o]mpany. Iraq costs lives though, even though it is the lives of people Jackie neither comprehends nor sympathizes with. Iraq is like Vietnam because both are costing lives that Jackie has decided shouldn’t be paid, cause it might somehow creep into Jackie’s own pockets somehow.
Korea’s peace agreement was made and secured by American blood and troop presences. The Reconstruction after the Civil War was supported and made possible by federal troop presences cracking down on a resurgent Democrat organized KKK and the black codes designed to topple Republican state govs in the south, until federal troops left and there was nothing to stop blacks from being terrorized into not voting. All of this is true. But what also is true that such things were paid in blood and treasure by some other generation.
Jackie only cares about the generations still alive more or less. Jackie can’t accept that Iraq is Japan or Korea, because people paid the price for Korea and Japan so Jackie can enjoy having Korea and Japan as they are: capitalistic, and as a b[o]nus, you can see lights in them at night.
Vietnam had to be abandoned because the price being asked wasn’t worth it. Korea and Japan were free to Jackie. Vietnam just cost too much, so now Jackie has to go with the flow and tarnish the reputation of good men and women who died defending Vietnam against Jackie’s friends.
And so the same must be done to Iraq. It’s just too inconvenient and costly otherwise.
The word b[o]nus was being spam blocked, thus resulting in the necessary segmented comment posting, of which would normally would have been two posts. The first and the second.
The man isn’t fit to lead a sub-committee, let a lone a nation.
Perhaps Obama has to say “people like Rove, et al.” because he’s not the only one who can phrase a statement carefully so that everyone understands what it means but the meaning can be denied through careful parsing.
“Something about Obama’s life and his personality has made him a careful escape artist of words”.
You are very close with this formuation. Actually, I think you’d be even closer with “Something about Obama’s life and his personality has made him a con artist.”