From ABC News:
President Obama today stood by his comments that the Cambridge, Mass., police department acted "stupidly" in its arrest of Henry Louis Gates, telling ABC News that the Harvard University professor should not have been arrested.
President says he doesn't regret his criticism of Cambridge police department.
"I have to say I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement, because I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who's in his own home," Obama said.
In an exclusive interview with ABC's Terry Moran to air on "Nightline" tonight, Obama said it doesn't make sense to him that the situation escalated to the point that Gates was arrested.
"I think that I have extraordinary respect for the difficulties of the job that police officers do," the president told Moran. "And my suspicion is that words were exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates and that everybody should have just settled down and cooler heads should have prevailed. That's my suspicion."
At this point, Axelrod must have been feeling a bit better about Obama getting back on script.
The president said he understands the sergeant who arrested Gates is an "outstanding police officer."
Good, thinks the President's handler, Now just wrap it up, get back to health care, and you can go smoke a whole pack of Lucky Strikes.
But he added that with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."
Oh, noooooooo! What with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, what doesn't make any sense is for my client, the President of the United States of America, to get publicly obsessed over a local police incident!
By the way, if you want to understand why Obama slips loose from Axelrod's master plan and does these kind of self-destructive things every now and then, please buy my reader's guide to the President's memoir, America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's "Story of Race and Inheritance."
Cambridge Police Department Commissioner Robert C. Haas said in a press conference late Thursday that his department was "deeply pained" by the president's comments yesterday.
Watch "Nightline" Tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET for Terry Moran's full interview with President Obama
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
I disagree with Obama's comments, but I wouldn't call them self-destructive. I have a feeling that the public is not with us on this, Steve, but with Obama. Excoriating perceived racism is the safest thing a public figure can do.
ReplyDeleteWonder if this was Valerie Jarret's idea?
ReplyDelete"Axelrod's master plan"
ReplyDeleteThere is no G-damned Lex Luthoresque "master plan."
These Rove/Axelrod political operatives can't think beyond the next news cycle.
There is no long term vision to be observed. The DC hatchet men just go from election to election making shit up.
If Axelrod were this great genius you imagine him to be, would he have allowed Obama to wreck the chances for enacting socialist health care reform with the stimulus?
Were our Beltway elites smart enough to design a secret master plan the budget would have been balanced by now.
Your book was uncertain as to whether or not Obama has matured in terms of racial issues.Is it safe to say, given this present lapse, that Obama's mind has not demonstrably changed since he wrote his autobiography in 95 and that he does not subscribe to Axelrod's vaunted half-blood prince motif?
ReplyDelete"I have a feeling that the public is not with us on this"
ReplyDeleteI disagree, it's getting quite a bit of media play and I think some whites, even in the SWPL like crowd, will see this as a bridge too far and come over to the right side.
This isn't an isolated incident, there was a case of a black NFL player arrested recently and on the way to the police station he repeatedly screamed that he was going to rape the arresting officers mother and daughters (anyone remember the name?). Far from being treated more harshly, blacks are acutely aware that cops don't want to be accused of racism and accordingly act very aggressively towards police, knowing the cops will be hesitant to beat them like they would with a white guy acting that way.
We may be at the point where there is significant backlash against black race hustling. Yay!
Obama says, "And my suspicion is that words were exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates and that everybody should have just settled down and cooler heads should have prevailed."
ReplyDeleteJudging from what we know, the only "words exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates" were on the police officer's part completely professional, and on Gates' part, an insane tirade. Obama says, "everybody should have just settled down and cooler heads should have prevailed," when the only person who needed to settle down and get a cooler head was his friend Skip.
This is Obama's moral style when faced with any conflict between the NAMs he likes and the white people he doesn't: he splits the difference. Ergo, who are we to say that a police officer is any better than a black man screaming insults at him as he tries to do his job?
Let's hope people get tired of this routine before he can do too much more damage. Honestly, I thought it would wear thin before the election, but then, look who he was up against.
Ah, but Obama has "a suspicion." He knows what's happening even without reading the story. He's knows if you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good...
ReplyDelete"By the way, if you want to understand why Obama slips loose from Axelrod's master plan and does these kind of self-destructive things every now and then, please buy my reader's guide to the President's memoir, America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's Story of Race and Inheritance."--Steve
ReplyDeleteOK, Steve, let's look at what "Obama" really is. Let's pretend that he is 100% white.
What do we get?
1. 112 IQ white boy does not get into Columbia, does not get accepted to Harvard, does not get elected president of HLR.
2. 112 IQ white boy goes regularly to a white racist preacher...
Get the picture?
Obama is an untalented punk, and the loser5s thatr elected him are beneath contempt
Polanski
Obama is a stuffed suit and people are slowly starting to realize it. (He's not the second coming of Stalin like some deranged commenters here have said.) His modus operandi is to say he understands the problem and then rely on advisors for solutions -- which is pretty much the same thing Bush did. So now Obama is in office and he understood his people but all he's done in the meantime is double-down on Bush's policies, because neither one of them was much more than a guy to rubber stamp suggestions from his appointees.
ReplyDeleteTo jump into the middle of an incident Obama admitted he didn't have any knowledge of and start calling people names, shows that Obama is the racist, and the stupid one, in this situation.
ReplyDelete"OK, Steve, let's look at what "Obama" really is. Let's pretend that he is 100% white.
ReplyDeleteWhat do we get?"
Hey Polanski,I think I missed the online link to Obama's IQ, could you please post it? It's not that I don't believe that you have read his IQ test yourself, it's just that I would like to look at it myself.
Thanks.
It will be amusing to watch Obama as he starts to fall apart as his term progresses. All his life he has received affirmative action and been deferred to. On the rare occasions that he has been challenged, racial bluster has worked to deflect criticism. Now as POTUS the stakes are too high and people are starting to question him. He does not seem to be taking such criticisms well and his responses would be considered undignified whining were he white (think his response to DeMint's 'waterloo' comments or Palins jibe about 'community organizing' during the convention). The more frustrated he gets with the 'impudence' of people daring to question him, the more he will slip his true self and go to his tried and true racial outbursts as were on display in the Gates affair.
ReplyDelete"Hey Polanski,I think I missed the online link to Obama's IQ, could you please post it? It's not that I don't believe that you have read his IQ test yourself, it's just that I would like to look at it myself."--Truth
ReplyDeleteTruth, it is rather simple to arrive at Obama's approximate IQ:
1. Undistinguished record at Occidental--YET he is accepted to Columbia as a transfer student.
2. Graduates from Columbia with no honors with a ridiculously soft poli sci major--YET...
3. He only applies to 3 law schools: Harvard, Stanford, Yale--and gets accepted by Harvard EVEN THOUGH HE HAD FAILED TO GRADUATE CUM LAUDE FROM COLUMBIA
4. Obama knows he's an obvious AA admit, so if he had extraordinary test scores, I think he would have released them to the media.
5. Even though he managed to conceal a paper trail at Harvard, he publishes one of the most incompetent defenses of affirmative action ever written, full of basic errors like subject-verb agreement.
6. He marries another mediocrity named Robinson, who, arguably, wrote the stupidest thesis ever written by a Princeton graduate.
7. He looks stupid--has that ever occurred to you?
Polanski
Obama does not know anything about health insurance and it showed in his speech last night. He is a race hustler community organizer and that showed as well. Obama is an eel.
ReplyDelete"I disagree, it's getting quite a bit of media play and I think some whites, even in the SWPL like crowd, will see this as a bridge too far..."
ReplyDeleteSounds about right to me. An Asian school acquaintance of mine put up an article about the Gates incident on Facebook, claiming it was an outrageous example of 'racism', and a couple of his SWPL friends gently swatted him down, saying, "Not so fast, it sounds like Gates was being belligerent..."
Even Chris Matthews was getting into it with an NAACP guy on his show, saying Gates' treatment may have been justified.
How do you know so much about Axelrod and his supposed master plan? Aren't you overstepping yourself with speculation?
ReplyDelete"1. Undistinguished record at Occidental--YET he is accepted to Columbia as a transfer student."
ReplyDeleteSo you've seen his undergrad record? Please provide a link.
"2. Graduates from Columbia with no honors with a ridiculously soft poli sci major--YET..."
See point #1
"3...EVEN THOUGH HE HAD FAILED TO GRADUATE CUM LAUDE FROM COLUMBIA"
See points #1 and #2
"4. I think he would have released them to the media"
You "think"; Excellent "proof" there.
"5. Even though he managed to conceal a paper trail at Harvard, he publishes one of the most incompetent defenses of affirmative action ever written, full of basic errors like subject-verb agreement."
Have other presidents published their college grades? BTW I don't remember this paper, please enlighten me as to where I can find it...Or where you thinking about a paper written by his wife.
"6. He marries another mediocrity named Robinson, who, arguably, wrote the stupidest thesis ever written by a Princeton graduate."
A "mediocrity" who passed the legal bar?
"7. He looks stupid--has that ever occurred to you?"
No. But your scientific and thoughtful analysis on intelligence here has forced me to submit. I know when I've been beaten by a better man.
This is likely a bridge too far. Obama's ratings have been slipping, his failure to do anything for White guys and his reflexive anti-White guy attitudes infecting his whole administration makes him gangbusters with women but most men who are not Black or Hispanic have soured on him quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteFailure to create a patronage network with the stimulus was a critical mistake, one FDR did not make. Instead Obama/Axelrod acted like the US was Chicago super-sized.
Health care probably did it. Even Susan Estrich came out against it, knowing her health plan would be in the toilet and she'd be in the queues with the rest of the peons. THAT was a disaster -- taking stuff away from the middle class, sticking them with taxes, to pay for Black and Hispanic health care. With Soviet style health care rationing in return.
True there is no master plan. But Obama is a cheap race hustler at heart who during the campaign had the media swoon for him and play the race card constantly.
Now in hard times he's given White men the back of his hand patronage wise, threatens most people with rationed health care instead of their old plans, with high taxes, and acts like an obvious race hustler.
The question was planted -- he wanted to talk about that as the end of his press conference. It was his own stupid idea and will help chip away at him.
Here it is, Truth. It's so poorly written I am stunned--a sad testament to the dumbed-down standards for NAMs in the Ivy League:
ReplyDeletehttp://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2008/10/30/Election2008/Record.Retrospective.Obama.On.Affirmative.Action-351
Polanski
Is it not true that the wife of the Alien in Chief lost her right to practice law many years ago?
ReplyDeleteFull Licensed Name: Michelle Obama
ReplyDeleteFull Former name(s): Michelle Lavaughn Robinson
Date of Admission as Lawyer
by Illinois Supreme Court: May 12, 1989
Registered Business Address: Not available online
Registered Business Phone: Not available online
Illinois Registration Status: Voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law - Last Registered Year: 1993
Malpractice Insurance:
(Current as of date of registration;
consult attorney for further information) No malpractice report required as attorney is on court ordered inactive status.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090131210503AAleNxy
This just occurred to me and sorry if someone else thought of it in another thread I didn't get to the bottom of.
ReplyDeleteWhy would police ask, 'is there anyone else in the house?'
If this question has an important rationale that police have to take seriously, then the refusal to answer it has to prompt persistent police intervention, in this case escalating into the crazy-acting guy getting busted just like anyone else would be busted for acting like that, and like anyone except militantly black people, Harvard professors and especially both of the above would realise when they calmed down they had asked for.
The theory Steve put on the front about how police have to consider men breaking into their houses as potential locked-out husbands with a grievance against in-the-house wives is important and it's surprising it isn't get more play even in sane corners.
Here is another idea. Think of Panic Room or a hundred other movies where a householder has been invaded and is under coercion to tell the poilce who come to the door that there is no-one else in the house. Cops watch movies too. When they watch scenes like that they are taking mental notes - if I get a burglary report and turn up and the guy who answers looks like a respectable homeowner but is agitated and freaking out, maybe the burglar is still in the house. I should ask him if there is anyone else in the house. That way he can say no loudly but nod his head.
Maybe police even get trained around this and don't have to rely on movies.
Basically, the President just went out of his way on prime-time TV to tell policemen, if the homeowner in this scenario is black, just walk away. Forget about whether there is a crackhead inside with a knife on his kids. If you show the least curiosity about the situation, you will be singled out for public vilification by the most powerful man in the world.
Do you think any black people have enough perspective to see why this might be a problem?
Axelrod's Master Plan is simply to maintain the facade he created for Obama.
ReplyDeleteI did not see the press conference, but a talk show host on a Boston station said that he thought the question was a plant. He said that the health care thingy was breaking down and the Pres. had to defend what could not be defended. So Chicago friend, Lynn Sweet asks the question.
ReplyDeleteObama, instead of saying I just don't have the info, and don't want to comment, says the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" and it's on page1. Discussion of healthcare is on page 17 below an announcement of the newly scheduled quilting bee at Mrs. O'Malley's residence.
Don't know if this is reasonable. Supposedly Obama is coming to Cambridge and if he can effect a kumbaya moment with Crowley and Gates, it's gold.
Polanski,
ReplyDeleteThat link to Obama's paper didn't work. Came back 'file not found'.
But he added that with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."
ReplyDeleteThat's a great idea. Local cops should stop enforcing local laws and should concentrate their efforts on health care, getting the economy moving, and ending the wars abroad.
What a maroon. (That's Obama, not Sgt. Crowley.)
Judging from what we know, the only "words exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates" were on the police officer's part completely professional, and on Gates' part, an insane tirade.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to let Sgt. Crowley off the hook here. We don't know how he asked Gates for his ID, but if it was anything like the way cops typically ask in this kind of situation, it wouldn't have been deferential or delivered in a tone suggesting the cop acknowledged that the person in front of him may well have every right to be where he was. Since Crowley was responding to a 911 call regarding a possible B&E, I'm betting he decided he would "take control of the situation" until he could sort out the facts, which would have meant treating Gates like a suspect until he had demonstrated that he was a lawful resident rather than a burglar. That's just what cops do under these circumstances, as Washington Post writer Neely Tucker explains here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072102782.html?sid=ST2009072103463
I think that we are reaching a point a diminishing return when it comes to race baiting. We have hit a saturation point. The public is too aware of the trick even if they will not say so publicly.
ReplyDeleteWe keep hearing about black men getting pulled over by the police. That is a staple on the networks after every episode like GatesGate. It is an endless sop that allows the media to remain focused on black victimhood rather than exploring anything else. I would absolutly love to see a show that had white police officers talking about what they have to put up with policing minority "communities".
In my opinion Gates looks like the cow's ass.
gangbusters with women but most men who are not Black or Hispanic have soured on him quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteRasmussen today: men 47%, women 50%.
Hoo boy, what a gender gap.
~Svigor
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteObama is a stuffed suit and people are slowly starting to realize it. (He's not the second coming of Stalin like some deranged commenters here have said.)"
You're right, of course. He isn't the second coming of Stalin. He's the second coming of Lenin. The Stalins of the world remain in the background until they seize power.
Truth,
ReplyDeleteA few posts back I mentioned being at the NuArt to see Rudy Ray Moore back in the 90s. I also briefly mentioned that I was with friends. Well, what I didn't state was that it was a multicultural group of friends, like a Sprite commercial, and that one of them was Obama. All of us had taken IQ tests earlier in the day and were comparing the results before RRM came out. We knew that IQ meant everything in life, so there was, admittedly, a bit of tension. "I got a 187," I said in fourteen different languages. I knew, from looking at that number, that my future was made. "I got 52," said my black friend Joe, and we all laughed because he'd actually gotten a 37, but couldn't read the digits. Obama, though, was quiet. "What'd you get, Barry?" someone asked. He sighed. "A 112...right in the middle of the super smart white guy and super stupid Black Joe." Then he smiled his electric smile and said, "Don't worry though. It won't keep me down. Someday I'll be President of the United States." Rudy Ray Moore, who'd just come out, heard him say that, and shouted, "Not if I get there first, motherf###er!" and the crowd burst into laughter.
http://www.audiolunchbox.com/album_art?name=images/albums/198k/198842-500.jpg
Anyway, true story. Obama told me his IQ was 112. Later that week I mentioned it to Polanski in a coffee shop.
Here where I live, the cops in Huntington Beach have for several years been busting people drinking beer in their own front yards on July 4. Betcha the arrest reports all cite "disorderly conduct" as the reason for the busts.
ReplyDeleteObama made a huge mistake by wading into this the other night and offering an opinion. His observation about the police "acting stupidly" was what you might call an "unforced error" or a "rookie mistake." Either way, I am very sure it shocked a lot of people, especially the SWPL types who voted for him thinking they were getting the transcendent, post racial president, only to discover that who they got was Al Sharpton, only better looking and with the sharp edges filed off.
This is going to come back and bite Obama in the ass worse than health care, bowing and scraping to the Saudis, or being seen as weak in front of thugs like Hugo Chavez. Very few people openly advocate discriminating against minorities, but by the same token most people also don't want a president who reflexively takes the side of his "tribe" against the larger majority.
"Full Licensed Name: Michelle Obama...llinois Registration Status: Voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law"
ReplyDeleteWhen Edgerin James used to play for the Indianapolis Colts, he skipped "voluntary" minicamp one year to ride his motorboat around the Florida Keys.
The predictable firestorm of controversy in the local media ensued over him "being a good role model to the younger players, being the team's highest paid player and not "selling out for the team", shirking his responsibility, etc.
When training camp started later, one of the local media asked him about skipping minicamp and he said;
"well, I aint' go to a whole lotta college, but I do know what "voluntary" means.
Hey Polanski:
ReplyDeleteYour link doesn't work, Sport. Maybe you can write Michelle Obama to help you learn to Hyperlink. I think she would take an hour out of her day for that.
"This isn't an isolated incident, there was a case of a black NFL player arrested recently and on the way to the police station he repeatedly screamed that he was going to rape the arresting officers mother and daughters (anyone remember the name?)"
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/040208/met_264114945.shtml
Anonymous said:
ReplyDelete"OK, Steve, let's look at what "Obama" really is. Let's pretend that he is 100% white."
"What do we get?"
"1. 112 IQ white boy does not get into Columbia, does not get accepted to Harvard, does not get elected president of HLR."
Where does the 112 IQ number come from?
Steve is the link from Anon new to you?
ReplyDeletehttp://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2008/10/30/Election2008/Record.Retrospective.Obama.On.Affirmative.Action-3515294.shtml
Obama on affirmative action
Issue date: 10/30/08
...
Obama's tenure as Law Review President was not without controversy. Indeed, an unusually low number of women were selected to be Review editors from the class of 1992, leading to considerable debate about the Law Review's selection policies and the importance of its affirmative action program, which at the time, was limited to consideration of race and physical handicap.
Obama personally responded to the controversy by writing a lengthy letter explaining both the Review's selection policy and his personal experience with affirmative action. The letter was published in Volume 91, Number 7 (November 16, 1990) of the Harvard Law Record. It is reprinted below in its entirety.
A.K.
Review President Explains Affirmative Action Policy
To the Editor:
...
It is at this stage that the Law Review as for several years instituted an affirmative action policy for historically underrepresented groups: out of this pool, the Selection Committee may take race or physical handicap into account in making their final decision, if the Selection Committee believes that such affirmative action will enhance the representativeness of the incoming class.
...
As I stated in the first Record article, we decided last year as a body that based on the percentage of women in the Law School and our previous success of attracting a large number of women to editorial and leadership posts at the Review, an affirmative action program for women was unnecessary. Because of the drop-off of women editors this year, that policy is subject to change if the majority of Review editors think it's appropriate. In the meantime, we've been in contact with members of the WLA [Women's Law Association] to ensure that we effectively recruit women to participate in this year's competition.
...
I'd also like to add one personal note, in response to the letter from Mr. Jim Chen which was published in the October 26 issue of the RECORD, and which articulated broad objections to the Review's general affirmative action policy. I respect Mr. Chen's personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action, and do not question the depth or sincerity of his feelings. I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review's affirmative action policy when I was selected to join the Review last year, I have not personally felt stigmatized either within the broader law school community or as a staff member of the Review. Indeed, my election last year as President of the Review would seem to indicate that at least among Review staff, and hopefully for the majority of professors at Harvard, affirmative action in no way tarnishes the accomplishments of those who are members of historically underrepresented groups.
I would therefore agree with the suggestion that in the future, our concern in this area ia [sic] most appropriately directed at any employer who would even insinuate that someone with Mr. Chen's extraordinary record of academic success might be somehow unqualified for work in a corporate law firm, or that such success might be somehow undeserved. Such attributes speak less to the merits or problems of affirmative action policies, and more to the tragically deep-rooted ignorance and bias that exists in the legal community and our society at large.
Barack Obama
President, Harvard Law Review
Published November 16, 1990
David Axelrod's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
ReplyDeleteObama on The Passion of the Gates
Ah, two witheringly sarcastic slams. That's (one of many reasons)why we keep coming back.
"Health care probably did it. Even Susan Estrich came out against it, knowing her health plan would be in the toilet and she'd be in the queues with the rest of the peons. THAT was a disaster -- taking stuff away from the middle class, sticking them with taxes, to pay for Black and Hispanic health care. With Soviet style health care rationing in return."
ReplyDeleteI'm uninsured by choice and work out acceptable payment plans with my medical providers. When I heard ObamaCare wanted to FORCE everyone to buy health insurance and FINE them $2600/year if they did not, I thought: "For years these socialists have whined about poor folks who can't afford health insurance. 'The uninsured,' they call these folks. They're the basic reason for health care reform. But now, it is they who will bear the burden. This turkey will be financed on the very backs of the poor! (Not necessarily on the backs of the poor who are freeloaders - since the reform likely wouldn't apply to illegal immigrants - just the poor, period, whom the socialists' hearts were allegedly bleeding for).
Don't think this point was lost on the average low-income Obama voter. People forgo health insurance for a variety of reasons; being a bum is only one of these reasons.
Shellacking the uninsured. What a reform. Who wrote this bill - hospital administrators who regularly charge $20K for one night in their noisy septic motels?
"What a maroon. (That's Obama, not Sgt. Crowley.)"
ReplyDeleteI always thought of Obama as more of a Burgundy myself.
"A few posts back I mentioned being at the NuArt to see Rudy Ray Moore back in the 90s..."
ReplyDeleteI think you're in the wrong place Dawg;
Whiteboysonlsd.blogspot.com is only a few blogs over.
Truth
ReplyDeleteThe link works. Copy it into the browser--you'll see a longer link come up click on that and it will take you directly to the genius's screed
Polanski
While proper comma placement will forever elude Truth, using Google to find Obama's turgid, ungrammatical letter should have taken even him about thirty seconds, tops.
ReplyDeleteBut wait--that would actually have required something from Truth besides self-satisfaction and snark, wouldn't it? My bad.
I'm sorry Bro:
ReplyDeleteThe link...
Does not...
Work!
Hey guys, I read the letter:
ReplyDeleteIt was "turgid" and "one of the most incompetent defenses of affirmative action ever written!"
I've seen 2nd graders who can write better than that!
After reading that I'm wondering if our president can even read!
Ooops, my bad, more self-satisfaction and snark.
But you guys make it soooooo damn easy!
How many hours did it take you to find that damned letter, anyway?
ReplyDeleteAnd you still haven't spotted the grammatical howler in the very first sentence, have you?
TRUTH=EPIC FAIL!
Would you be referring to the capitalization of Law Review" without the "Harvard"?
ReplyDeleteWould you be referring to the choice of "has been" instead of "have been" as a modifier for "merits?"
Or would you be referring to ending the sentence with a period instead of a colon?
Of the three "errors" I would term the first as completely negligible as he was not referring to a generic "law review" but that of Harvard and this is easily assumed.
Of the third, a colon may have been a better choice in this situation, but one could not term this an error because both qualify as proper English usage.
The second is trickier:
At first glance, modifying "merits" with "has" would seem a subject-verb agreement error, but look deper; is the term "merits" here meant to be taken as a collection of individual merits, or is the term meant to be taken as a collective function? I would argue the latter from the construction of the the sentence and the essay.
Assuming this, the use of "has" in lieu of "have" while sounding clumsy, is in fact correct.
A lot of so called English errors (such as not ending sentences with prepositions) are actually an anachronistic centuries old attempt to apply romance language rules to a Germanic language. A lot is also blatant pedantics often tied in and with a agenda.
For instance, in your first response you followed "my" (possessive pronoun) with "bad" which technically is not a noun and therefore cannot be possessed.
You begin the second paragraph in your second response with "And." To the best of my knowledge one never, in proper English begins a sentence; much less a paragraph, with a conjunction.
Keep in my here my friend; your two posts were only a few sentences long and you have made more than one grammatical error.
In light of this; could what the president wrote really be termed as as "turgid?"
PS. >In light of this; could what the president wrote really be termed as as "turgid?"<
ReplyDeleteTell me something, old spurt: Just how many hours did it take you to make the two mistakes in that sentence? (You CAN spot them, right?)
A little more proofin', a little less Troofin'!
TRUTH=EPIC FAIL!
So I guess this means we are supposed to get into corresponding grammar flames for the next 20 responses?
ReplyDeleteSorry Bud, it just isn't that important to me; but if it makes you feel good, please continue by all means.