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- I really appreciate it, Amanda ... what do you think of the new draft? -- AdamCarlis 26 Feb 2008
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< | Adam, | >
> | [Adam, I will continue to edit this comment, because it's partly for my own benefit: giving you advice forces me to question and re-evaluate my own advice -- be patient for my sake ... -andrew] | | | | |
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< | It looks like you're using "inexperience" to mean two different things: why you think Obama is inexperienced, versus why other people do. Yet you don't show how you know there's a difference -- aside from the fact that they're not voting for him, and [you imply] you are. | >
> | Your message pretends that you're value-neutral. But your language implies that you have SOME opinions. It's possible to teach and argue in one place, but it's harder to build the reader's trust -- you must
- ) convince him that you can separate the news and the editorial
- ) i.e. both "show" and "tell" him that he can trust your ability to choose and define words
- ) i.e. tell a really invisible lie.
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< | You might have settled for a different (equally fallible, but more relevant-sounding) breakdown in the way you see inexperience with respect to Obama:
- allegations of inexperience whose causes you can't precisely account for, versus allegations whose causes you can;
- inexperience as a datum, a thing seen and attested to, versus "inexperience" as a synonym for "QED," i.e. appearing after a list of "experiences" whose relevance to presidency the paper takes for granted;
- "subjective" versus "objective" inexperience.
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> | Under that definition (of how to teach and argue in one place), you could do more to win my trust:
- Although you SHOW that "inexperience" mean two different things to you (how most people arrive at calling Obama "inexperienced", versus how you do), you never TELL us this.
- Although you SHOW that you have certain opinions (e.g. vote for Obama (implied)/certain people who don't are evil (stated)) you never TELL us this.
- Although you distinguish between inexperience as a datum, a thing seen and attested to, versus "inexperience" as a synonym for "QED," i.e. appearing after a list of things relevant to experiences that we take for granted (e.g. citing a poll in which General Election call Obama "inexperienced," versus listing "experiences" McCain has that Obama lacks), you never tell us which is which.
- Although your words present both "objective" facts and "subjective" beliefs, (see examples), you never defend a mechanism for distinguishing between the two.
- examples: Given his thin resume/being viewed as inexperienced is a handicap/voters' anxiety regarding his readiness to govern/Because of the perceived inexperience and subsequent failures of the Bush administration ... the public wants/general election voters cite "inexperienced" as the word that best describes him/Obama is poorly positioned to [convince Americans that he has sufficient relevant experience, because 1. his resume has few experiences, 2. outside the resume, he doesn't remind people of an "experienced politician", 3. the media remind us of these facts/opinions]
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< | This poor overlap could be a problem with my labels, but it is also could be a problem with your paper. Arguably, my labels successfully account for what you are doing half-successfully: since you support Obama, you're smart to be labeling persons who call him "inexperienced" as hopelessly subjective, in order to argue that their arguments are unaccountable, and thus vulnerable to abuse, such as being mingled with race. But, if that's your goal, you fail to recapture the authority to define Obama's experience in a way you prefer. You might tell us: why aren't you put off by Obama's lack of experience? Why do we consider what McCain? has "experience"? If Clinton has experience, and it's so different from McCain? 's, why can't Obama be experienced in a way different from McCain? 's as well? In other words, why can't we defend Obama's experience? | >
> | Looking at your paper as an editor instead of as a reader, I'll speculate that you want people to vote for Obama, and you think that his greatest vulnerability is that 1) "inexperience" is an epithet, and 2) it's hard for Obama to refute that epithet. If so, you're smart to be saying that when the public calls him "inexperienced," their reasoning is hopelessly subjective, i.e. unaccountable, i.e. vulnerable to abuse, i.e. mingled with race. But I suspect that because you want to appear neutral, you miss the chance to "objectively" characterize Obama's experience level as appropriate to the presidency. You might tell us: why aren't you put off by Obama's lack of experience? Why do we consider what McCain has "experience"? If Clinton has experience, and it's so different from McCain's, why can't Obama be experienced in a way different from McCain's as well? In other words: take one step back and tell us why can't we defend Obama's on experience grounds to those who criticize him on experience grounds. | | | | |
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< | And that itself is a meaningful question: why is it hard to defend Obama on experience grounds to persons who criticize him on experience grounds? My theory: it's because we all get our political news from similar sources, so it's hard to explain our political disagreements in terms of other than subjective preferences. | >
> | I suspect it's because we all get our political news from similar sources, so it's hard to explain our political disagreements in terms of other than subjective preferences. But if you can stereotype our information sources as somehow biased (cf. all that critical theory mumbo jumbo about the mass media that Eben believes in), you can make an argument for against Obama out of it. (I acknowledge that you do this, by criticizing the media and the opponents' campaign tactics.) However, question-begging enters here too, because you have to show how you can see the bias that others can't. I suppose you'd want to portray yourself as somehow detached, which is hard to do, since you're clearly voting for Obama. | | | | |
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< | But then, does the fact that you're voting for Obama really tell us anything about the people who aren't? Imagine again that poll of General Election voters (pro-Obama and anti-Obama) who used "inexperience" to "best describe Obama." If they'd also been asked, "What word do you think most OTHER people imagine best describes Obama?", I too suspect that a larger proportion of people, freed from political correctness, would say "Black." But I wouldn't call that racism: you and I both just did it.
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> | I think the question-begging is inevitable because you're using [the fact that you're voting for Obama despite his inexperience] to tell us something about [the people who aren't voting him because of his inexperience]. If that poll of general-election voters had asked a follow-up question, "What word do you think those people who openly characterize Obama as "inexperienced" would use if they weren't afraid to be called racists?", I, like you, suspect that a large proportion of people who answered "inexperienced" to the first question would answer "black" to the second. But I wouldn't call that racism: you and I both just did it.
| | | -- AndrewGradman - 21 Mar 2008 | |
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