Obama: Helpless Fool or Willing Tool?
6th November 2013
Guy Somerset is delightfully dyspeptic today.
One cannot be perpetually ill-informed or uninformed on every issue of any substance for the better part of a decade without having people conclude that Barack Obama is either a colorful cut-out made to dance and shuffle for the American people down the stairs of Air Force One, or he is an idiot.
Either way, the effect is the same. We’re fucked.
Incidentally, the Barry Stutter (by which he stumbles, repeats, and pauses over the first syllable of words) is a very old linguistic technique of quasi-hypnotists. Its purpose is to commence a phrase, use quick repetition without completion, hesitate long enough for the listener to anticipate what is to come and thereafter continue, creating positive reinforcement in the audience. Onlookers hear what they were prepared to hear moments prior yet believe they thought it first. When Barack says what he conditioned them to expect, they feel intelligent. Since he is confirming what they “already thought,” Obama is “brilliant.” Politicians and newsreaders use this trick to exhaustion.
We saw this same trick in the Bush/Kerry election, where Bush was touted as ‘stupid’ and Kerry as ‘brilliant’ even though Bush got better grades at Yale and had a Harvard MBA, something that Kerry could only dream of.