WEeding Awards, vol. 2
May 4th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
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Last week there was only one winning text. This week, I will be awarding WEedies to six texts (click on the text’s title to jump to its WEeding Award announcement):
2: “The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change,” by Steven Hayward, Wall Street Journal
3: Speech to the NAACP, by Jeremiah Wright
4: Q&A After Speech to the National Press Club, by Jeremiah Wright
5: “Inspiration Versus Degradation,” by Erica Jong, Huffington Post
6: “Climate apocalypse: Shock new development!,” by Mark Steyn, NRO’s The Corner
7: “‘Willful Blindness’ to the Jihad,” David Limbaugh, Town Hall
Three from progressives. Three from conservatives. WEeding is turning into a growth industry.
And (spoiler alert!) four of the following texts beat the previous record for highest WEediness Quotient, held by “How the South Won (This) Civil War,” by Michael Hirsh.
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“The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change,” by Steven Hayward, Wall Street Journal
Reason for Nomination:
A:
“It is likely that U.S. per capita emissions were never that low – even back in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood.” -Steven Hayward
Reason for Winning:
Sentence A contains one WEed. It begins with an identification of the “U.S.” as a stable entity, which is debatable. But that isn’t the WEed. The WEed occurs when Hayward speaks in the first person about what he (and you and I) did “in colonial days.”
No one is that old.
WEediness Quotient: [FAQ]
1/13 = 0.0769231
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Speech to the NAACP, by Jeremiah Wright
Reason for Nomination:
A:
“In the past, we were taught to see others who are different as somehow being deficient.” -Jeremiah Wright
B:
“In the past, we were taught to see others who are different as being deficient. We established arbitrary norms and then determined that anybody not like us was abnormal. But a change is coming because we no longer see others who are different as being deficient. We just see them as different. Over the past 50 years, thanks to the scholarship of dozens of expert in many different disciplines, we have come to see just how skewed, prejudiced and dangerous our miseducation has been.” -Jeremiah Wright
C:
“And we were coming up with more meaningless solutions like reading, writing and Ritalin.
“Dr. Hale showed us that in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks.
“And in so doing, we kept coming up with meaningless labels like EMH, educable mentally handicapped, TMH, trainable mentally handicapped, ADD, attention deficit disorder.” -Jeremiah Wright
D:
“Some of you all came on a decks of ship and some of us came on the bows and hauls of the ship, but we all are immigrants.” -Jeremiah Wright
Reason for Winning:
A is the same as B’s first sentence (”B.1″), so I’ll begin with B. The obvious questions to ask in response to B.1 is, “You were? I was? We were?” How did we ever break free of such thinking, if this is what we were all taught? And does Wright really mean that both those who were discriminated against and those who were doing the discriminating looked down on each other? If so, wouldn’t the entire victim-victimizer structure break down?
As for B’s second sentence (”B.2″), the obvious question to ask is, “If you were going around ‘establish[ing] arbitrary norms and then determin[ing] that anybody not like [you] was abnormal’, what made you change your mind?”
B.3-4 provide us hope, because “we,” evidently, have changed our minds. Thank goodness. But given the way Wright has talked about racism in other contexts, it’s difficult to believe that the “we” who “no longer see others who are different as being deficient” is the same “we” referred to in B.2.
And as for B.5, I have to be grateful that my education wasn’t as bad as Wright is claiming his was.
In C, Wright makes some startling admissions regarding the “meaningless solutions” and “labels” which he used to employ. Thank goodness Dr. Hale, who set Wright straight.
Finally, it is difficult to believe that Wright actually thinks each member of his audience was born in another country and then immigrated as part of the slave trade. In fact, Wright is a native American, born in Philadelphia.
In each of these cases it is clear that Wright speaks in the first person about things which he does not believe about himself or his audience. If he did, he would have been accusing himself and the NAACP of being one of the most biased organizations of which I have ever heard. And I don’t think he thought he was doing that.
Therefore, the occurrences of the first-person plural above are WEeds.
WEediness Quotient: [FAQ]
10/70 = 0.142857 [A new record for number of WEedy sentences!]
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Q&A After Speech to the National Press Club, by Jeremiah Wright
Reason for Nomination:
A:
“[H]ave we asked the Japanese to forgive us? We have never as a country, the policymakers — in fact, Clinton almost got in trouble because he almost apologized at Gorialan (ph). We have never apologized as a country.” -Jeremiah Wright
B:
“We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people. So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.” -Jeremiah Wright
C:
“We have troops stationed all over the world, just like Rome had troops stationed all over the world, because we run the world.” -Jeremiah Wright
D:
“[W]hite Christians have been trying for a long time to reconcile, that for other white Christians to understand that we must be reconciled is to understand the injustice that was done to a people, as we raped the continent, brought those people here, built our country, and then defined them as less than human.” -Jeremiah Wright
Reason for Winning:
I’ve already written about A. Wright himself neither killed any Japanese people, nor held them in concentration camps. And yet he speaks in the first person of doing so (and of not apologizing to them for doing so).
In B, Wright speaks in the first person of selling weapons to Saddam, and being capable of unethical “scientific” experimentation on humans. He never did the former, and I doubt he actually believes himself capable of the latter.
In C, Wright speaks in the first person of “run[ning] the world.” Neither he nor you nor I run the world.
In D, Wright speaks in the first person of “rap[ing] the continent,” importing slaves, and “defin[ing]” people of African descent “as less than human.” He has clearly never done either the first or the second, and I doubt very much that he has done the third.
Therefore, the instances of the first-person plural in the above quotations (except the first “we” in C, perhaps) are WEeds.
WEediness Quotient: [FAQ]
7/20 = 0.35
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“Inspiration Versus Degradation,” by Erica Jong, Huffington Post
Reason for Nomination:
A:
“Haven’t we been squandering hard earned taxpayer money on overseas adventures while we starve poor children? Haven’t we been supporting dictators while prating of democracy? Haven’t we been enriching profiteers at the expense of health care and education? You betcha.” -Erica Jong
B:
“Italians love American and feel pain when we slide away from the great ideals our Constitution and Bill of Rights have given the world.” -Erica Jong
Reason for Winning:
In A, Jong speaks in the first person about some truly terrible things. Why she thinks I should listen her, when she commits such atrocities, is beyond me.
In B, Jong speaks in the first person about “slid[ing] away from the great ideals our Constitution and Bill of Rights have given the world.” Again, why I should listen to her, when she does such things is beyond me.
Clearly, Jong does not believe herself to be guilty of the things of which she claims to be guilty. Therefore, the uses of the first-person plural above are WEeds.
WEediness Quotient: [FAQ]
4/3 = 1.333…
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“Climate apocalypse: Shock new development!,” by Mark Steyn, NRO’s The Corner
Reason for Nomination:
A:
“[. . .] but hopefully not before we’ve wrecked the global economy to ‘address’ the ‘problem’.” -Mark Steyn
Reason for Winning:
Clearly Steyn does not believe himself to be “wreck[ing] the global economy.” And yet he speaks in the first person about doing so.
WEediness Quotient: [FAQ]
1/0 = ∞ [A new record for highest WEediness Quotient!]
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“‘Willful Blindness’ to the Jihad,” David Limbaugh, Town Hall
Reason for Nomination:
A:
“If we continue to treat them as criminal suspects rather than enemy combatants, they’ll always be many steps ahead of us in a war that only they are fighting.” -David Limbaugh
B:
“[W]e must take that into account in formulating our security doctrine, such as punishing states . . . .” -David Limbaugh
C:
“Instead of approaching the war tentatively, we must be aggressive, offensive and pre-emptive.” -David Limbaugh
Reason for Winning:
In A, Limbaugh speaks in the first person about prosecuting “enemy combatants,” even though he is not involved in any such prosecution.
In B, Limbaugh speaks in the first person about “formulating our security doctrine,” and gives examples “such as punishing states.” And yet he is not involved in the former and cannot do the latter.
And in C, Limbaugh speaks in the first person of doing things only soldiers can do, even though he is not himself a soldier.
Therefore, the instances of the first-person plural above are WEeds.
WEediness Quotient: [FAQ]
3/13 = 0.230769
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Call for Nominations:
Have you encountered any texts online (posts, articles, comments, speeches, websites, etc.) which need WEeding? I welcome nominations for future WEeding Awards, so keep your eye out while you’re surfing! Just use the Contact page, and send me the URL.
Thanks!
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