“I’m looking forward to campaigning in Oregon where I can ditch the suits and wear a comfy pair of Keen’s.”
It’s true that Hillary Clinton is heading to Oregon to campaign. And it’s true that hip shoe maker http://www.keenefootwear.com/ is headquartered here. But, as to this sentence — April Fools !
“I know that there are a lot of experts who may disagree about how to get to universal health care, but they agree with me that in the absence of universal health care it’s very difficult to control costs, and it’s extremely hard to incentivize quality improvements at the level you need to really see results.”
Actually, this sentence is the opposite of stunning. Incentivize?! I dislike adding suffixes to real words to make new ones which supposedly sound more important. Politicians love to do this. Incentive is the noun which has been hijacked into the fancy “incentivize” or incent (as a verb). I was surprised that Merriam Webster actually lists this as a word. After people misuse a word long enough, I guess good old Webster relents and decides it’s a word.
Head to http://www.nyt.com/ for Clinton’s interview.
For lovers of language, the current Democratic Presidential race is fascinating. The candidates speak well-chosen words yet there’s often more meaning in what is unsaid. They hide malicious things in the subtext, or the content underneath their words.
In orchestrated chants, Obama’s crowd said “yes, we can” and in response Clinton’s crowd yelled “yes, she will.” The word change is subtle but, of course, her real meaning is that he is a “sayer” not a “doer.”
Continuing to reinforce that subtext, Clinton said this week, “Together, we will turn promises into action, words into solutions, and hope into reality.” You know, unlike that guy on the other side who’s just a puff of empty promises.
Obama has been using stronger subtext recently. Since he has been criticized for being short on specifics, he’s using the word “real” more often as in, “…that’s the kind of vision I hope to make real as President of the United States. “
To present himself as the change candidate, Obama said, “I didn’t spend my career in the halls of Washington..” Translate the subtext to mean unlike my Washington establishment opponent. As a Senator he must know those halls pretty well himself — but perception is reality!
The subtext is so obvious sometimes I can almost see a little thought bubble over the candidates heads containing the real words they want us to hear. Watch for it — it can provide needed comic relief to the current battle.
I want the citizenry to elect Hillary Clinton as president of the United States next
November — if only so that we might all get a respite from seeing her offhand,
controversial 1992 comment that she could have “stayed home and baked cookies
and had teas” (rather than pursuing an outside profession) parsed and squeezed
and hung out to dry again and again like the moldy old dishrag that it is.
Sometimes book reviews are as fun to read as the book itself. This one made me laugh and maybe we all need a break from the increasingly bitter battle for the White House. This review in The New York Times was written by Alexandra Jacobs about the book Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers edited by Susan Morrison. Yes, why bring up that old dishrag when we have important issues like, say, national security to discuss?
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