Tweet
I read this last night and couldn’t quite believe it got printed. Helene Cooper in the New York Times:
Democrats often complained about President George W. Bush’s frequent use of a rhetorical device as old as rhetoric itself: creating the illusion of refuting an opponent’s argument by mischaracterizing it and then knocking down that mischaracterization.
[]
Now that there is a new team at the White House, guess who is knocking down straw men left and right? To listen to President Obama, a veritable army of naysayers has invaded Washington, urging him to sit on his hands at the White House and do nothing to address any of the economic or national security problems facing the country.
“There are those who say these plans are too ambitious, that we should be trying to do less, not more,” Mr. Obama told a town-hall-style meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif., on March 18. “Well, I say our challenges are too large to ignore.”
Mr. Obama did not specify who, exactly, was saying America should ignore its challenges.
I mean, really? This is an example of the commanding political intellect and keen powers of observation at work at the NYT? Every right wing knock on Obama for the first hundred days always insinuated "he’s doing too much." I find 37,000 examples in one quick search. (Publius has a fine collection, too.)
And it’s not like this was some selective observation of the left. Here’s Rammesh Ponurru at The Corner:
I suspect that I will not have many opportunities to defend President Obama from New York Times reporters, so I will seize this one. The related notions that Obama has too much on his plate, that he is overloading the political system, and that he is spending too little time on the economy and too much on health and the environment are staples of centrist and center-right commentary about the president, and have been for months.
If this was her first column after being in a coma for the past four months, they should have mentioned it.
21 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
Perhaps she can write while still in a coma?
A functioning brain does not appear to be a requirement for having articles in the NYT.
Perhaps she can write while still in a coma?
Perhaps we couldn’t tell the difference?
Heck, I’m in a coma, and I make more sense than the NYT.
Just mentionning…
Perhaps she can coordinate with John Yoo, of the formerly decent Philadelphia Inquirer.
kinda interesting that the right-wing blasts at Obama seem to be: “what a dick. He’s acting just like our people did for the last eight years.”
I couldn’t believe it when I read that last night. And no examples of Rove setting up straw men?
Just this little gem alone:
Tom Clancy, the author is as far to the Right as you can get in America, and he once posited that politics was “digital”. And like Helene Cooper, he get’s it wrong too.
Here in the Sonoran Desert, we, the Natives, understand quite forthrightly. Take, for example, American politics is “binary” as in “them” or “us”, and that’s not going to change for the foreseeable future.
So, Jane, you are indeed correct in your observations, that knocking down both the primary and secondary ’straw man’ needs to be accomplished effectively.
Otherwise, this latest version of American history will invade the Latin America Region. However, when Latin American “history” invades the United States, America will be up in arms for expressing their angst and anger. Consequently, this invasion of history into the United States, will have to be addressed, not in financial, economic, or political constructs, but from within the obvious Sociological Construct, and that means that our fellow citizens here in the United States will have to inculcate our public educational system in order to teach our children both English and Spanish, and starting at its inception, or K-12.
And of course, one should not be intimidated by America’s latest morphology and that being that America is the Land of GEE, or for Globalization, Exploitation, and Entertainment. (Okay, I’ll keep the snark to a minimum.)
Jaango
And if I were to explain this to Helene Cooper, she would have not inkling of the damage she is causing to our body politic.
Big Dan nails the alleged “Mainstream Media.”
If this was her first column after being in a coma for the past four months, they should have mentioned it.
someone misinterpreted her hoof taps.
wow. that’s pretty bogus stuff.
but i’m happy, ya know? the magic won. spendin’ a holiday chillin’. gotta go make some mac salad.
happy memorial day everybody.
And one last observation for today. If you’ll notice, that among all the wingnuts in America, none are fluent in both English and Spanish. (Oop, a tad too much snark.)
Jaango
Inspires me to make a crab salad this afternoon.
Wolf medicine music
after reading the column, i have no idea what cooper’s point is other than it makes no sense to me — it can’t be a strawman unless an opponent’s position is misrepresented. in addition to google, i wonder if a dictionary might also be of use?
however, i do think obama has been using a rhetorical device to create an illusion. of course it’s true that big coal doesn’t want a carbon tax and insurance companies don’t want single payer and rightwingers are pretending once again to be for small government (also, to be fair, it’s not just right wingers and corp interests – it’s also true that some of us wanted less bankster bailouts). but when he says:
my impression is that obama is creating an illusion: that his actions are more of a departure from the status quo than they actually are.
While I agree with you that they are not as much as a departure from the status quo as we’d perhaps like, I don’t think there is any argument with the “some would say.” That is empirically what they did say.
But yes, he’s using a rhetorical device that cast his actions in the light that his right-wing opponents shine on it, which doesn’t tell the whole story.
Obama whimpers before he caves. For example, representatives of single-payer healthcare are not invited to the table. Our Capitulator-in-Chief needs to stop with the whining and the “nudges” and instead take a decisive stand for doing the right thing.
i agree completely.
the MSM has not been doing much actual “reporting” for many years. While the NYT used to be the “paper of record” it no longer is. Like the WaPo it rests on its reputation while being in the pocket of the rethug party. The NYT printed the lies fed to it by the bushies on Iraq, when called on that they did nothing. No, the MSM is no longer doing its job of informing the people, rather it is censoring what we see, hear and read by not giving us real news but instead pushing “news” and confrontation that is manufactured. The Obama/cheney “debate” comes to mind. While looking to CNN last nite(I never check on fns for breaking news) to see what they had on the nuke test in NK-which I found out about at 9pm CDT on 5/24 on KBS, a Korean network where my wife and I were watching a Korean movie-all CNN had was 2 talking heads blathering about Obama/cheney and who was right. Manufactured “news”, non stories about non confrontations. We need to face it, our MSM gives the sheeple what the corporate interests want. And what they want us to know is not in our best interests, but theirs.
The best reporting on major stories in the US can be found mostly in stories from non US networks. While we are spoon fed mostly celebrity news about people we really don’t need to know about. The last time I watched US network news, the real “news” was over by the first commercial. I get better national news coverage from my local network affiliate than from the millionaire “anchors”. I understand why most people under 30 would rather get their news from “The Daily Show”. A fake news program gives us better understanding of the news than the networks do. And Jon Stewart is a much better interviewer than the current MTP host-david gregory- ever thought of being. Color me disgusted with the US version of the MSM
i guess i think obama is caving while pretending not to cave. in other words, using your health care example, he pretends to stand up to the insurance companies while caving to their demands. it’s really quite clever if the goal is to stitch together a governing coalition that includes diametrically opposed interests — in this case corporate interests and the interests of those who voted for him. the corporations get the $$$ and the voters get the nice sounding words and clever marketing.
another v recent example was obama’s speech on gitmo. there was some beautiful rhetoric about rule of law and the constitution, etc AND indefinite detention without trial and conviction.
if cooper wanted to write a column about rhetorical devices, i think there is lots of material to work with. no need to make shit up.
I think Cooper is essentially calling our president a liar. But, as the internet search showed, it’s pretty clear she is the liar. Damn Liberal press!
Helene Cooper is a repeat straw(strawman) offender. She made the same absurd claim that Obama’s responses to his real critics are equivalent to Bush’s responses to his imaginary critics
Helene Cooper April 8th
“He often reverted to his favorite rhetorical devices — straw men — to make his points to the students. For instance, he said that “some people say that I’m being too idealistic” and ask him why he’s reaching out to Iranians,”
Of course, some people do say he was (and is) being to idealistic when reaching out to the Iranians, as I pointed out as soon as I read her article on the web the day before its official date.