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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Trump’s instantly infamous remarks* at the NABJ conference have been universally decried and only sporadically defended.

I just watched that video, and wow! Trump did a fantastic job with the first 5 minutes of that interview. Whatever you think about his candidacy, there's a lot to learn about rhetoric here. He instantly disarms a very hostile question and builds great rapport with the crowd. I wish I had 1% of his skill as a speaker.

I was annoyed by (one of) the interviewer's immediate leaping on the term "black jobs" (which was, previously , gleefully repeated by the press in the vein of "binders of women"--a pointless, meme-level, no-issue-whatsoever jibe) when he was talking about black employment. If he has said "jobs for African-Americans" I wonder if she would have had the same reaction. At least he basically ignored her. (I also noticed her continual use of the word "Sir" as if she had read somewhere that this is a way to make a sentence sound polite if you add it at the end of a question.)

Putting "Sir" at the end of the question with the right intonation doesn't sound respectful; it sounds hostile. It's a way of fulfilling the forms of politeness while conveying contempt.

I refer to that as "the idignant sir." It's the affectation you use when you think you're speaking truth to power, subtly mocking your interlocutor's (obviously undeserved) authority, like you're the protagonist of an Aaron Sorkin show dressing down an arrogant superior.

I've seen plenty of defense of it, and the 'decrying' only came from people with a vested interest in keeping blacks from voting for Trump.

And shows Trump's ability to triangulate himself into an advantageous position even after intentionally entering a possibly hostile arena. Same thing he did back in 2015-16 during the Republican Debates.

Almost goes without saying Harris would never put herself into a situation that could even BE that hostile.

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