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PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   34063 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Various Biden friendly transcribers have done a reasonable steelman of his words with clever punctuation (not least of which is the white house's):

"And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been. "

There's a few other clever transcriptions around culture war Twitter which try to make it look like he was only talking about the comedian (sorry I can't find any easily, but I've seen them out in the wild).

The video is pretty damning if you take it as face value, but it could be taken as a senior moment if a viewer was going to be charitable.

I think Team Trump is making hay out of it with a Deplorable/Facists/Garbage meme at the moment (again no link sorry), reinforced by the positive Trump tweet.

tldr; I think this will shift the needle slightly, but the speed of the culture war is moving so fast right now, it might all be forgotten by tomorrow as the next event hits.

The video clearly has Biden saying "supporters (period)" It was the end of the sentence. His voice tone went down. He took in a breath after. The words "garbage" and "supporters" were both emphasized and Biden was linking the two.

How on Earth do people fall for this? "An expert transcriber told me it was actually an apostrophe-S. Trust the Experts!" What is wrong with people?

Suppose Alice is having a picnic at the pond with her parents. Her parents are clumsy eaters, and their plates and utensils get blown into the pond. A local cop sees the trash floating in the pond and asks Alice, “why did you dump your garbage in the pond?” Alice replies, “The only garbage I see floating out there is my parents’.” This is a completely normal way to use possessives in colloquial American English. It’s not the most likely interpretation of what Biden said, but it is a reasonable interpretation.

For that to be a reasonable interpretation, there would already have to be a referent to "hatred" or another idea. Instead, the referent is to Puerto Ricans, "people." I know what people are trying to twist it into, but it's obviously not what he said.

"They [Puerto Ricans] are good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see out there is his supporters."

There is already reference to an idea, the 'garbage' - as in the garbage his supporter(s) are putting out. Put without using an apostrophe, 'the only garbage I see floating out there is that of his supporters'. As above not saying this actually is definitely what he said, but it's definitely not impossible.

Have you listened to the clip and do you actually believe that's what he meant?

The tonal context of the statement says exactly what he meant.

I think the intonation is definitely consistent with "the only garbage I see out there is his supporters'", as in the garbage of his supporters in terms of rhetoric in reference to Puerto Rico or just generally.

Even trascripts are not be trusted. I already knew that when Donald J. Trump's speeches that contain asides weren't transcribed to include punctuation, making them seem even more rambly than they are, but this is more egregious than the ACLU misquoting RGB. The latter at least included square brackets, this transcript of Biden doesn't contain any clue it is altered.

That transcript is not grammatically consistent. So it doesn’t make to assume that is what he meant.

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