In my last post, I pointed out that, if one ignored the real difficulties of the spoken word, then almost anyone could be caught in lots of infelicities or passages that would look odd out of context, passages that were as bad as most “Bushisms.” I offered two “Slatisms” by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg (who is nonetheless remarkably fluent and careful in his speech), including this infelicity:
“Well this a, of course, when we were up there, we were talking skiing a little bit, and we were were talking talking politics.” (NPR, Jan. 23, 2004)
I was just surfing and found that Weisberg had co-written the memoirs of Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. The first Rubin transcript I found online had this quotation on the front page (the interview was with ABC):
“For the following three and a half years ago we have had horrendous fiscal policy over the last three and a half years.”
I did not find a tape, so I am not sure if the quotation is correct (it may well not be). If Bush had said this (or even if he had not, but there was a false transcript floating around), it probably would have been a Bushism.
But Rubin’s meaning is clear and it’s spoken English, just like most of Bush’s verbal gaffes.
Again, I am not saying that Rubin isn’t more fluent than most (I’ll bet he is)–and from what little I know, he was a superb Treasury Secretary. Normally, you would have to be a Slate editor to treat an infelicity like Rubin’s (or most of Bush’s) as even worth comment, let alone ridicule.
Of course, technically this is not a Slatism, because it was “committed” by Weisberg’s co-author, but I think it makes my point that, if almost anyone were miked as often as George W. Bush is, there would be hundreds of awkward and inarticulate statements to ridicule–if one were inclined to be as churlish and unfair as the editors of Slate.
I suspect that the reason that Slate continues the series is that collections of these Bushisms are the sorts of books that people pick up as they are checking out at bookstore cash registers.
UPDATE:
In checking trackbacks to my earlier post, I see that Isaac Schrodinger points out that he used the word “Slatism” in a post on Friday, apparently referring to quotes misattributed to Bush, rather than my slightly different meaning of awkward or odd sentences spoken by Slate editors. I actually wrote most of this morning’s post (including the term “Slatism”) on February 10 (after another of Eugene’s criticisms of Bushisms), but decided to wait to post until the next one flagged by Eugene.
Further, “Slatism” is a fairly obvious coinage: I see in searching the web that Bendomenech on Jan. 7, 2003 used “Slatism” to refer to an awkward sentence published at Slate.com. I am nonetheless happy to point out that Schrodinger posted his use of “Slatism” several days before I actually posted my use of the term. I didn’t see either of Schrodinger’s posts until a few minutes ago; I was busy at Harvard on the weekend.
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