Once upon a time there were three regular audio-visual
networks in America
and not a single cable network. A first time visitor to the country would have
seen a reflection of it in those media as well as their print sisters. In fact,
everyone in the business of communicating with the public sought to reflect an
image of the self as being the quintessential American. And this meant that the
ideas and the concepts mattered more than the words that carried them to the
audience.
For example, the television networks had two hours in the
morning during which time they broadcast (a) segments containing the national
and international news; (b) segments containing interviews conducted usually
with experts in the field being discussed, and carried out at the highest
intellectual level; (c) segments representing lighter moments such as
interviews conducted with entertainers of one kind or another, allowing them at
times to perform live on the set.
All this being a true reflection of the nation, you met
people that came with a bow-tie or a T-shirt, people that came with a stiff
upper lip or a loose tongue, and people that were naturally courteous or
naturally vulgar. As to the noon hour, one network had a dry and formal half-hour
news broadcast, and nothing else. In the evening, all three networks had half-hour
news with the occasional two-minute commentary. Then one day, one of the
networks went to a full hour broadcast of the evening news, and the others
followed suit.
This was the post WW II America, an era that lasted a
generation and a half or maybe two. Then several developments happened almost
simultaneously, both in the realm of communication technology and the
demography of the nation. This brought about a rapid change in the way that America 's face
looked to its people and to strangers. It was a development that turned the
word into an end in itself, thus put the comprehension of the ideas and
concepts beyond the reach of most people.
In technology, fiber optics gave birth to cable television,
and this changed the face of the audio-visuals where 24 hours of cable news
allowed the quips and the sound bites to replace the ideas and the concepts to
being the preferred mode of communication. As to demography, the second and
third generation offspring of the post-war baby boomers made it their pastime
to fight the established order with the aim to absolutely eradicating the old …
without having a clue as to what should replace it.
And while all this was happening, the old timers died off
one after the other ... from the youngest such as Charles Kuralt to the oldest
such as Mike Wallace. A handful of these people are still alive, but most have
retired and have gone out of sight with one notable exception. That would be George
F. Will who wrote a column under the title: “The Adolescent President” and the
subtitle: “The rhetorical excesses of Barack Obama.” It was published on April
23, 2014 in National Review Online. Having all that background in mind, it
should be easy to understand why he wrote the column the way that he did.
George Will criticizes young President Obama for using the
quips “meanwich” and “stinkburger” while talking to a young academic audience,
so he calls him an arrested-development adolescent. He goes on to say there are
four figures of speech that teenagers use when communicating with each other
that the President has used lately. Expecting him to show four strong examples
that will make the President look like a true adolescent, you are blown away by
Will's massive failure with his first example.
Look at what he calls the invocation of a straw man. To make
his point, he quotes the President as saying: “They said nobody would sign up.”
He then followed with his own observation which is to the effect that: “Of
course, no one said this.” The fact is that some people did say “nobody would
sign up.” They said it because it is a figure of speech that does not literally
mean anybody, but means very few people, at best, will sign up. In fact, George
Will's own observation illustrates this point. When he said “no one said this,”
he did not mean it in a literal sense because only a fool would try that.
Do you know why? Because the attempt would be a futile
effort to prove the negative. The only way he can prove positively that nobody
said that, is to obtain seven billion affidavits from the seven billion people
who inhabit the Earth, each saying they never said that. Since he cannot do
this, he proved himself to be a fool for ascertaining that “no one said this.” And
he proved to be an even bigger fool when he called the President a pyromaniac
in a field of straw men.
George Will did not make that colossal mistake because he is
of the old guard; he made it because he shed the old without embracing the new
which is why he is currently living in a cultural purgatory. And you can see
the effect of this reality in the other three figures of speech he says the
President borrowed from teenagers. One of these being that Obama said the
debate is settled and over. Well, teenagers may or may not have a good reason
for saying the debate is over; the President has the duty and the power to call
for cloture. The principle is in the constitution of every parliamentary
democracy. Check it out, George.
Another point to which he objects is Obama's assertion that
ACA is working. No, says Will, it is not working. Well, if one of these two
must be considered adolescent, it will have to be the columnist because the
President has millions of people on his side saying that ACA is working for
them.