Saturday, September 10, 2016

Hillary Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables"

Hillary Clinton had her 47% moment yesterday. Apparently, she and her advisors believe that the polls are not going in the right direction. So, the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua has chosen to lash out, mindlessly and ineptly, at “half” of Trump’s supporters. I trust that the other half will not feel overly neglected.

One can find much to criticize in her juvenile rant, but did you notice how badly she mangled the English language.

For the record, here are her remarks:

"To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," Clinton said. "Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it."

She added, "And unfortunately, there are people like that and he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric."

Let’s see: she misused the clunky word “generalistic.” She might have wanted to say something about generalizing or about mindless generalities or even about being a generalist, but her capacious intellect was apparently overwhelmed by her emotions.

The expression “basket of deplorables” is agrammatical. People Hillary meant that they are deplorable people. But why does that imply that they belong in a basket. Was she suggesting that they are basket cases? Speaking of the agrammatical, the word “deplorable” does not have a plural form.

As for the charge of giving voice to their websites, the phrase is semantic hash. You might draw attention to a website, but you do not give voice to it. You might say that she was using a metaphor, but, if so, then she has merely demonstrated that she does not know how to construct a metaphor. As for Trump's ability to lift people up, this has never been considered a fault or a flaw.

And finally, you do not tweet and retweet rhetoric. You might use certain rhetorical tropes in your tweets, or in any other message, but you do not tweet rhetoric.

Does it matter that Hillary is barely literate? Does it matter that she cannot construct a coherent sentence when she is speaking off the cuff—though some have suggested that she was reading from a teleprompter? If you want to sell her candidacy in terms of the rule of the best and the brightest, you are not feeling very good today.

Keep in mind, our current president wrote a best-selling book called “the audacity of hope.” Strictly speaking—actually you do not even have to be very strict about it—the phrase is grammatically incorrect.  Unless, of course, you are referring to your audacious neighbor, Hope. In that case it is merely pretentious.

As it  happened, no one-- yours truly excepted-- much cared that Obama got the grammar wrong. And no one dared to correct him—because no one dared threaten his fragile self-esteem. And no one paid too much attention to the fact that the phrase originated with Obama’s mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who once delivered a sermon called: the audacity to hope.

At least, the Rev. Wright got the grammar right. But, isn’t it worth noting, yet again that Obama comes to us straight from the pulpits of a hate-monger, a man who hates Americans, white people, Jews and Israel. And Rev. Wright is also, by the by, a close personal friend of that notable hate monger, Rev. Louis Farrakhan. As Obama's potential successor and the nominee from his party, Hillary is standing in quicksand. It's no wonder she can't even get the grammar right.

9 comments:

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Actually, Obama's grammatical error with Rev. Wright's original title is instructive. Wright's perspective strikes me as being active, yet Obama's is passive. Seems befitting. Obama's book title implies that hope itself is audacious, so it's ruminating on an idea at the core. It's thinking, not doing. It's reflecting on a course of being/action, and feeling good about one's thoughts. Counter that with Wright's audacity TO hope, that you have the audacity to hope in the face of whatever you are dealing with. This is an active mindset, not ponderous. Wright's implies courage to hope. Obama's implies that it's enough to just hope, and that this way of being is somehow courageous in and of itself. It's intentions rather than actions, feelings as enough on their own versus feeling driving action. The shoe fits.

AesopFan said...

"Does it matter that Hillary is barely literate? Does it matter that she cannot construct a coherent sentence when she is speaking off the cuff—though some have suggested that she was reading from a teleprompter? If you want to sell her candidacy in terms of the rule of the best and the brightest, you are not feeling very good today."

The lack of literacy only matters if you are Republican or conservative.
"Bushisms" gave the Media and the rest of the Left endless paroxysms.
Obama's "Obamateurisms" (chronicled daily by Ed Morrisey on HotAir for a year before he gave up) -- never mentioned in the Official Press.

Anonymous said...

It's about time someone in the smartypants conservative world called it like it is:

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Clearly it is not deplorable to give Iran a big basket of $1.3 billion in cash. Yet it is deplorable to ask Hillary to identify a single achievement or success while she was Secretary of State. Actually, it's probably deplorable to ask her anything substantive.

Susan said...

Can you even say "les deplorables" in French? it's usually an adjective, as in "les deplorables effets de...." Of course there's always "Les Miserables" as a paradigm. Maybe Clinton should run for office in France.....

Ares Olympus said...

Indeed, a deplorable comment to say the least, and not something that can be retracted by any "generalized" apology.

Calling this the same as Romney's 47% is appropriate, even if different characterizations of slightly different groups of poor (and ignorant) Americans. And you could even say Romney's America and Hillary's America are similar - both would prefer to let the elite run things. And yes, Obama's "bitter clingers" is another example.

And she did it TWICE, no accident. It's either what she really thinks, or what she thinks will make her audience feel superior or both.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-basket-of-deplorables/
---
Clinton had earlier divided Trump's supporters into "two big baskets," what she called "the deplorables," in an interview with Channel 2 News Israel that aired Thursday.

"If I were to be grossly generalistic, I would say you can take Trump supporters and put them in two big baskets," Clinton said. "There are what I call the deplorables -- the racists, you know, the haters, and the people who are drawn because they think somehow he's going to restore an America that no longer exists. So just eliminate them from your thinking, because we've always had an annoying prejudicial element within our politics."
--

I'd say Hillary's psychology has a strong shadow of something she's trying to escape, so rather than, for example, seeing the deplorable behavior of her husband over the years, she projects it on to a safer scapegoat of contempt.

I'm also reminded of this recent speech by Nancy Isenberg "White Trash: The 400-Year History of Class in America", based on a book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cPII2l-K4s

This Isenberg speech shows our deep history of demeaning our neighbors who have too many unkept children, and can't take care of themselves.

Social class is a dark side of america, but racism fits in there too, so as the upper class demean and scapegoat the lower class, the lower classes mean and scapegoat minority groups and immigrants.

And while we condemn Hillary's poor characterizations we should also consider that she's doing a poor job at calling out Trump's picking up the scapegoating of certain groups based on their worse behavior.

George W. Bush, for all his bumblings had some skills for bringing people together, like after the Dallas shootings.
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/12/12164176/george-bush-dallas-shooting-speech-video
---
“Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”

It was a pitch-perfect line from former President George W. Bush’s speech in Dallas on Tuesday, memorializing the police officers killed in a mass shooting last Thursday.

The line is a forceful rebuke of much of the prejudice that lingers in America today — a statement that you should not judge all police, black people, or Muslim Americans just because one person in their group does something bad.
---

Dennis said...

Anon,

Another smart pants conservative

"Nothing says woman of the people like a political candidate who got filthy rich while serving in the Senate and State Department insulting millions of voters while surrounded by celebrities, right? Hillary Clinton shifted her attack from Donald Trump to his supporters at a fundraiser in New York City, putting “half” of them into “a basket of deplorables.” That’s a memorable turn of phrase, but will Hillary want to forget it?"

Ed M of Hotair fame.

Apparently Hillary might have trouble being the president of all the people and it makes one wonder how she would use the power of government to destroy a significant number of American citizens whose only sin, to her, is that they disagree with her. All hail the Queen and her non apology apology.
When the mask falls we get to see the real Hillary.

Interesting most of us might disagree with Hillary voters, but none of us would say they were not Americans.

I am normally and Apple user, but have a Windows 10 @ and 1 I am using just to keep conversant. Apologies if I messed up.

Sam L. said...

Hillary doesn't like us! She really, truly, doesn't LIKE us! It's mutual.