bramcohen: Oratory Skills

Bram Cohen (

bramcohen) wrote,
@ 2007-11-21 13:45:00

Oratory Skills
Say that you're at the end of a presidential primary debate, and the very last question is a softball one, hand-picked especially for you, which noone else gets to answer. Could you make a good impression with your answer?

Hillary Clinton found herself in exactly this situation, with the question "Which do you prefer, diamonds or pearls?" The correct answer to this question is "I like looking pretty just as much as the next woman, but I'm not fundamentally a materialistic person." Kind of an easy one.

Instead, the answer she gave was "I know I’m sometimes accused of not being able to make a choice, [but] I want both."

Way to look like a materialistic bitch, Hillary!

(Post a new comment)

	root_fu 2007-11-21 10:05 pm UTC (link)
	Erm... Why are we criticizing a politician for answering a question without engaging in the use of smoke & mirrors, for once? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	relaxing 2007-11-21 10:09 pm UTC (link)
	I suppose we should be thanking them for exposing their true evil selves? Still, her job is to be a politician and politically, that answer fails. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	root_fu 2007-11-21 10:22 pm UTC (link)
	I h8 that! Screw what the candidates look like or what impression they're giving off. I want to hear the question answered, dagnabbit! ; x Sucks to be in a reality where pretension rates higher than directness... (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	bramcohen 2007-11-21 10:37 pm UTC (link)
	The answer I suggested would be a completely honest and direct one if she weren't such an obviously flawed person. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

scosol
2007-11-21 10:59 pm UTC (link)

Add me to the "I'd rather see directness than oratory gymnastics" camp-
And perhaps most distressingly, have you become one of those people whose opinion of someone hinges upon the most minute of utterances, inflection, or tone?
That's what mainstream media is for.
Don't become that person :)

As for Mrs Clinton- name one great person in history who has not had some obvious flaw-
My list goes on for days- Oscar Wilde liked little boys, Winston Churchill was a drunk, etc etc etc
My own opinion is that to have such capabilities in one area of your psyche, there must be deficiencies in others, since there is not a limitless capacity.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

bramcohen
2007-11-21 11:35 pm UTC (link)

The idea that the president should never engage in any spin is either useless or delusional. People in politics need some skill at politics, or they rapidly find themselves not involved in politics. As far as qualifications for president, not being able to handle even the simplest of questions is a far greater problem than being an unpleasant person. Although that second one definitely aggravates the first one.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

honesty

ianbicking
2007-11-21 11:04 pm UTC (link)

Honesty is most attractive when worn by nice people.

If you are a bitch, or fall into largely equivalent male category of asshole, it does not look so nice.

It's come to light that the current president is most certainly a complete asshole -- not in terms of policy or politics, but that he's really an asshole in his personal life. Though hardly the greatest of his sins, I can't help but think that this personality flaw is what led to his many other flaws.

I like nice people. Is it too much to ask that nice people get ahead?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: honesty darius 2007-11-21 11:29 pm UTC (link)
	I'd rather think of 'asshole' as a gender-neutral category, BTW. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: honesty

root_fu
2007-11-22 12:32 am UTC (link)

I think a "nice" person would say... "I would make a terrible President, don't vote for me, thank you, this message has been approved by blah blah blah blah".

I'm not interested in voting for the virgin Mary as being the next President. Someone being a materialist--even a blatant one would not necessarily be a negative mark against them in my eyes. Because, even a materialist could make a great President.

In realistic terms, I'm more interested in someone who is interested in being honest to the point of revealing those negative foibles in the name of "i am who i am". Rather than being interested in someone skilled at *looking good*.

In a recent study it was found that physically attractive employees were typically paid higher than un-attractive ones. The conclusion--employers believed physically attractive people were better suited to do the job & would be more productive, etc.

I suppose what we're seeing here is just some misguided extension of this behavior.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: honesty

ianbicking
2007-11-22 03:01 am UTC (link)

In realistic terms, I'm more interested in someone who is interested in being honest to the point of revealing those negative foibles in the name of "i am who i am". Rather than being interested in someone skilled at *looking good*.

I suppose honest and an asshole is better than dishonest and an asshole. That's a shitty choice to be presented with. I for one am interested in someone who *is good*, more than just "looks good" or "is honest".

I find it perturbing that the highest virtue anyone seems to care about these days is honesty. I personally think doing good is better than being honest. Sure, both are great. And if you don't do good, I guess it's better to be honest, but I don't feel very strongly about it. If you aren't doing good, then really your honesty is a rather trivial aside. Along the same tack, I do not consider hypocrisy to be a particularly egregious sin; if you are being hypocritical then it's kind of implied you are doing something bad, but it's the badness of what you do that matters more than what you say about it.

And I don't think it's too much to ask that our leaders be good people. It's depressing that this is considered too high an expectation. I also suspect that several of the Democratic candidates are actually good people, so there's no reason we should have to put up with less.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: honesty bramcohen 2007-11-22 03:41 am UTC (link)
	Are you suggesting that Hillary Clinton answers questions in an honest and straightforward manner? This one she answered straightforwardly because she didn't know better, but most of the others she completely weasel-words. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	She is MONEY! flipzagging 2007-11-21 11:39 pm UTC (link)
	I had the same reaction, but I'm not sure it had the same effect on everyone else. Many people seem to be proud of being grubby materialists nowadays, that's "keeping it real". (Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: She is MONEY!

root_fu
2007-11-22 12:23 am UTC (link)

It's not so much "keeping it real" as addressing precedent.

If candidates are allowed to question-dodge & have it be considered good form. This would seem to me to be a bad precedent to maintain.

I also question the judgment of sacrificing someone upon an altar of "justice" for merely stating that they want both "diamonds and pearls". So I like drinking water and coffee. If you asked I'd tell you this, does this make me a fruity materialist, too?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: She is MONEY! bramcohen 2007-11-22 04:07 am UTC (link)
	So you're saying that because she came across badly, that implies that she's being especially honest, so we should think better of her for it? (Reply to this) (Parent)

enochsmiles
2007-11-22 12:21 am UTC (link)

maradydd just answered this as "I'm very picky about my diamonds based on where they come from, because of the abuses of the diamond industry, and the pearl industry isn't much better. I like cultured pearls, though."

(One could play up the ecological problems in non-cultured pearl harvesting, or use this as a springboard for attacking the diamond cartels for their abuses in Africa, besides just deflecting it and giving the impression of not being materialistic.

(I agree that Hillary said just about the worst answer possible, but I think she could have leveraged it to her advantage better than your "correct answer".)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	spider88 2007-11-22 02:54 am UTC (link)
	If I were a female politician and got asked that question I'd probably have them beheaded. Oh, wait. That's if I were Queen Bitch of World and got asked that question. But, seriously, wtf kind of petty, sexist, shit is that question? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	bramcohen 2007-11-22 03:48 am UTC (link)
	It's a stupid question, but also a completely softball one, so it isn't something people would generally complain about getting asked. Most of the media coverage talked about how the question was hand-picked, without noting how she completely flubbed the answer. You probably shouldn't go into politics, but you knew that already :-) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	bramcohen 2007-11-22 03:45 am UTC (link)
	Yes, you can segue into something else, what I meant was that my answer was the correct simple and direct answer. I haven't heard of any presidential candidate ever giving DeBeers the smack-down, probably because the voting public doesn't like being told that they not only were stupid but outright destructive with those stupid rocks they couldn't afford. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	truthiness is so much more fun! maelorin 2007-11-22 01:56 am UTC (link)
	shrugs over here were about to elect our next national government. been snowed in with domestic politics as a consequence. perhaps hilary thought her answer was funny? she does seem to need some help in the 'coming across human' department. (Reply to this)

	Hillary peruano 2007-11-22 03:13 am UTC (link)
	That answers was the one that least concerned me.... however some of the other ones gave me a better perspective of who could be a better candidate... (Reply to this)

randallsquared
2007-11-22 06:10 am UTC (link)

No one seems to be challenging your statment that your preferred answer is a good answer. I don't think it is.

It avoids the question, while her actual answer doesn't avoid the question quite so badly. When politicians avoid the question, it's usually a "safe" answer (as yours seems to be), but it's not a *good* answer. It's just the politically opportune answer. Maybe I'm not representative, but I'm *so* tired of politically opportune answers. One reason I hated Bill Clinton before he won his first term was that he always had a pat answer, in the same way a used car salesman does. It's smarmy. Politician-like. :)

I prefer politicians who answer questions directly, even when the answer is not the one I'd prefer, over politicians who avoid answering the question in favor of some empty platitude. I would prefer Dennis Kucinich to Hillary Clinton, even though on paper her positions are closer to mine (which isn't saying much; they're both far from my positions), because he's a politician who seems to have principles, whereas she's a politician who seems to have no principles at all, saying whatever will get her in the White House, as far as she can tell.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

bramcohen
2007-11-23 12:29 am UTC (link)

You're probably well off staying away from professional public speaking. Giving 'straightforward' answers to the sort of complicated yes-no false dichotomy questions Wolf Blitzer was asking is just plain awful public speaking, falling into the trap of letting someone else force you into making a misleading comment. Why the Democratic debate allowed the questioning to be download hostile is another question, but the better speakers used the questions to say what their position was on the topic at hand, not be forced into saying something simplistic and unpleasant.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	America is a materialistic country. j03 2007-11-22 02:10 pm UTC (link)
	America is a materialistic country. Her answer, truthful or not, was the correct answer given her goal. More Americans than not can empathize with her materialism. Had she used your answer, she would have been seen as 'out of touch' or 'better than thou' rather than the image she is trying to cultivate, that of an average, materialistic American. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dragonladyflame 2007-11-22 11:10 pm UTC (link)
	Seriously. "Oh my God, a materialistic politician! No way!" Give me a break. She's materialistic -- so what? She's super-ambitious -- so what? If she were a man, these would be considered good qualities. Consider the following question as applied to Bill: "Hey Bill, blondes or brunettes?" Then imagine him giving Hillary's answer. Would you jump on him? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

bramcohen
2007-11-23 12:26 am UTC (link)

The issue isn't so much that she's materialistic - which I dislike a lot, but hardly find unexpected in a politician, but that this supposedly most electable of candidates can't even answer softball questions without making an ass out of herself. In answer to your question about Bill, if he said 'I want both' I would chastise him even more or that answer, because it would sound even worse than Hillary's, but Bill is far too talented of a politician to ever say something so suicidal, true as it may be.

There are plenty of other comments from Hillary I could have picked on, but that would have required some set-up of context, while this one can stand alone as a beautiful self-contained shining example of oratorical ineptitude.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

dragonladyflame
2007-11-23 01:29 am UTC (link)

Hmm. Well, my apologies for missing your point, then. I'm going to have to go with one above commenter, though -- I doubt most Americans will have much of a problem with her answer. In fact, there's a certain "Sex and the City"-style "you go girl!" quality to it that is admittedly kind of annoying, but also somewhat compelling. It's not, "Oh no, she looks like a materialistic bitch who wants it all," but "Awesome, she looks like a materialistic bitch who wants it all!"

-- Which was, kinda, a side part of my point with the Bill example. People all over the country chastised Bill for not being able to keep it in his pants, but lots of people were also like "Yeah dude, good going," and I suspect that if he answered "Well, I want both blondes and brunettes" those same people would laugh and nod knowingly at his manliness / ambitiousness.

Your preferred answer is reasonable if you assume that most Americans want a president who's not fundamentally a materialistic person, but this is not the case. The fact is that the vast majority of Americans will not care if the president is immoral or an asshole as long as s/he is seen as being able to get the job done. And getting the job done is seen largely as a function of aggressiveness -- which she's displaying in spades. Again, Bill Clinton makes a great example here.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonladyflame 2007-11-23 01:32 am UTC (link)
	PS. It strikes me that I don't know all that much about the morality vote -- so I should perhaps qualify this by saying that some subsection of the population may care about morality, but I doubt that subsection is likely to follow Hillary anyway. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonladyflame 2007-11-23 01:38 am UTC (link)
	PPS. My boyfriend walked in while I was writing that PS. I told him the whole story, and when I read him your preferred answer his jaw dropped. "Maybe that's the preferred answer for elitist bloggers, but Americans aren't going to vote for someone who's like 'Down with property!'," he observed. Well, I thought it was funny. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

bramcohen
2007-11-23 08:39 pm UTC (link)

Well yeah, you'd probably avoid using the word 'materialistic', because a lot of people don't know the word if nothing else, but with a bit of rewording any 'down with property' implication could be easily removed.

The simplistic model of how the general public thinks which is adopted by most pundits, a disease made epidemic by how high school and college debate team is judged, is mostly just wrong, and if a person seemed to come across as a transparent jerk to the people in the know then they probably came across as a transparent jerk to the people watching at home as well. The one exception is when people reference statements of fact, which some people know the truth values of but the general public does not. Commentators are supposed to fill people in on whether the debaters were full of shit, but the media these days doesn't, but that's a whole other set of issues.

It's funny that a bunch of people thought I was ragging on Hillary for being materialistic, which I sort of was secondarily, when I was primarily ragging on her for not even being able to put words together well. I dislike her in lots of other ways, but nobody really disagrees with public speaking being a core presidential skill, and that's one which one can see she's deficient at just from watching a debate, with no other evidence or research.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonladyflame 2007-11-23 10:31 pm UTC (link)
	I mean ... most people don't see what she said as such a big oratorical deal. That's why people missed your point. She may not be a great public speaker, but what she said in this instance was actually pretty well-calculated to appeal in, as I said, a certain "Sex and the City" way. (Reply to this) (Parent)

randallsquared
2007-11-23 06:26 am UTC (link)

I don't think "materialistic" is necessarily expected for a politician. Rather, I'd expect politicians (well, successful ones) to be more about power than stuff. If someone is about stuff, at least you can assume that they'll probably end up helping others, even if unintentionally, just to create enough wealth to accumulate that stuff. If they're power-hungry, they're far more likely to hurt others, just as we see politicians doing, in general.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Your logic is faulty.

j03
2007-11-26 06:30 pm UTC (link)

Your logic says her answer was "inccorect and inept" because she identified her self with materialisim and materialsism is bad.

But, your logic is faulty because you begin with an inccorect premise: "Materialisim is bad."

The truth is that materialism is what most Americans identify with. So her materialistic answer was perfectly aligned with her goal of getting Americans to identify with her.

I dislike Hillary as a candidate, but there's enough real reasons to dislike her that I don't need to make one up.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Joke

brian_jaress
2007-11-23 08:52 am UTC (link)

I think it was a joke. I laughed, and I heard about it from you.

Once you hate a politician, you're going to hate anything they say.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Joke bramcohen 2007-11-23 08:39 pm UTC (link)
	It was meant as a joke, but it's a joke which Rush Limbaugh would make about her, not a joke which someone who understands how they're coming across makes about themselves. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Joke

booger_dawson
2007-11-25 09:02 am UTC (link)

Hey Bram how are you doing man? Long time no post for me... Anyways, I saw your post over the Holiday Break and found it funny (considering I don't like Hilary either). I missed her say it so I wasn't informed until I read your post. I'm surprised to see this post kick up such a fire storm for you haha. But I was also surprised to see how people were like yeahhh...show off what you got... ohh hell yeah Sex In The City attitude... WTF is that? Is that what the public looks for these days to decide to vote for a candidate based off a show about hoes in the city? Thats whats 'hip' these days for a candidate? Wow the world has changed from when I was a teen. I guess this would be a perfect time for Marie Antoinette to run for President if she was American... "Let Them Have Cake" Looking at the posts people left, i'm sure they would love that quote and lock in the vote for her... Anyways, Have a good and safe Holiday man... I liked your posts, give em hell man haha...

"Way to look like a materialistic bitch, Hillary!" <--- looks like a line I would use in a email to my ex haha jk... :-)

Take Care

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Joke bramcohen 2007-11-26 04:14 am UTC (link)
	No, that's just what certain armchair intellectuals and rich materialistic people think. The general people isn't quite so dumb as people like to think they are. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	notabu 2008-03-10 08:39 am UTC (link)
	she was being sincere :P (Reply to this)

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