Comments on: Grammar Time!

By: Tirxu

Tirxu — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:40:08 +0000

Of course it sounds like a call to arms. That is the point. But these arms are votes: it is a military image for an actual election.

I agree with you on the subject of conservatives’ martial rhetoric. I just think that this particular incident should only be filed as “Palin still unaware that words have meaning”, rather than “Palin does not know what a metaphor is”.

By: Tom M

Tom M — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 01:45:24 +0000

Palin certainly seems to equate arms and votes (at least per the story) but she has just enough awareness of current political convention to simultaneously deny her plain import. I think Palin actually believes that her experience of the Alaskan outback serves as an adequate normative depiction of the political landscape but hasn’t the nerve to nakedly aver her belief (yet).
She wants to be President. Until then, she’ll mask her beliefs but once there; well, I think the vernacular is: bookmark it, Libs.

By: jackd

jackd — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:12:11 +0000

An even better quote from the Politico article:

Connie Soto, a 48-year-old interior designer from Lake Elsinore, Calif., said “we’re peaceful people”….She wouldn’t let a POLITICO reporter take a photograph of her with her handmade sign reading “Obamacrats: exterminate the vermin,” because she asserted it would be used to portray her as violent, but she also said there was no need for the movement to temper its rhetoric.

By: MikeJ

MikeJ — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:32:16 +0000

So you’re in favour of extending the franchise to bears? Colbert isn’t going to like this.

By: IM

IM — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:23:47 +0000

Th right to bear arms = the right to arm bears.

Perhaps she was talking about the ursine self-defence bill:

http://www.nurserycrime.co.uk/armbears.html

Lot of bears in Alaska and you bi-coastal elites don’t understand small town ursines.

By: SEK

SEK — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:54:38 +0000

The verb “is” is not symmetric. In your example “Obama is the president”, you can reverse subject and object because (in context), there is only one Obama and one (“the”) president. In my defense, in my example I was talking about my example. But you make a valid point about number, which is structurally consistent even though it changes (one President, multiple arms; one Obama, multiple votes). But "Our arms are our votes, and we’re ready to fight" is endorsing the democratic process Maybe I need more coffee, but with that word order, it still sounds like a call to arms; moreover, while the politics-as-war metaphors are common enough, so are a host of other electoral metaphors, e.g. the horse race, but Palin and her fellow conservatives are doubling down on the martial metaphors in front of crowds of people who collect weaponry because, you know, when they shoot some small animal, they'd rather not be able to tell what it was they shot.

By: SEK

SEK — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:47:08 +0000

It’s not a simple logical/copula situation

You can toss in “Our arms ARE our votes,” too, and it keeps the first sense you described … but it’s the fact that she made an ambiguous declaration against violent rhetoric in language that can be seen to authorize it that caught my attention. It could be a Freudian slip, a poor transcription, or a dog whistle, and I think that reasonable interpretations by reasonable people tend to downplay that last option.

By: SEK

SEK — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:40:58 +0000

Now we wait until someone starts shooting elected officials/liberals/Enemy Groupmember X

But this would never happen! (watches the news) Good thing we caught ‘em in time!

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:24:38 +0000

You know who else used a lot of exclamation points?!?