... Some inaugural speeches ... are hard to hear because they are so meaningless that the mind drifts off elsewhere. Most turn into a real political assertion at some point, usually suggesting that the banalities of the first half of the speech will be realized in policies proposed in the second half. This is usually the moment when vapidity turns into outright flimflammery. In today’s Inaugural, this moment came quite early, about four minutes into it ...
... If we ignore the rhetorical falsities and dig for the real meaning underneath them, the speech becomes almost fascinating.
"One should doubtless keep an open mind...though open at both ends, like the food pipe, and have a capacity for excretion as well as intake." -- Northrop Frye, 'The Great Code'
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Parsing Obama's inaugural speech
John O’Sullivan:
The main theme I detected,because I was expecting it,was the ongoing war against climate change,and the declaration that America will lead the world in tilting at windmills,or should that be "to" windmills?
ReplyDeleteHarper certainly has done the right thing by reaching out to Asia for trade,as Obama doesn't seem to have much use for us and our oil.
We're about to find out if America IS "too big to fail".
Yes, and not only did his words on climate change contain patent falsehoods and acusations of "denial" of science but invoked responsibility to God.
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't bode well for Keystone XL.