CNN has figured out why Obama’s poll numbers are plummeting and why so many Americans thought Obama’s speech sucked eggs. It’s because ur too stupid to understand tha wonderfulosity of Obama. Seriously.
CNN reports:
President Obama’s speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.
Tuesday night’s speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.
Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence “added some difficulty for his target audience,” Payack said.
He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: “That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge — a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s secretary of energy.”
“A little less professorial, less academic and more ordinary,” Payack recommended. “That’s the type of phraseology that makes you (appear) aloof and out of touch.”…
At a micro level, the average word in the speech contained 4.5 letters, a bit longer than is typical for the former constitutional law professor, Payack said.
Obama’s nearly 10th-grade-level rating was the highest of any of his major speeches and well above the Grade 7.4 of his 2008 “Yes, we can” victory speech, which many consider his best effort, Payack said.
“The scores indicate that this was not Obama at his best, especially when attempting to make an emotional connection to the American people,” he added.
So all u stoopid peeple out thare shood just accep that Obama’s grate and if yoo dont git what it is hes doin just figgur that its cause hes reelly reelly smart. Hes a Constititootional professor type ya know.
June 18, 2010 at 3:13 am
Rule 1 for communications: KISS. Keep it simple stupid. But Obama is stuck on stupid. If you want to know why go to http://divine-ripples.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-is-obama-stuck-on-stupid.html
June 18, 2010 at 3:19 am
Years ago I heard the more intelligent a man is, the better he's able to communicate with any audience. Never seen anything to disprove that.
June 18, 2010 at 3:21 am
Ok, I read that and kept waiting for the "hard" part; now I'm disappointed.
Maybe I have too many years of schooling to be dumb enough to find it difficult? (Yes, I know – parse that).
Or perhaps CNN is the one having the problem with it since they can't "understand" why people aren't "getting it". Not enough Rah! Rah!
Maybe people simply have "speech fatigue", or – this is novel – maybe it just wasn't any good.
June 18, 2010 at 3:26 am
Maybe it's Obama fatigue? But then again, I'mm reellly stooopidd.
June 18, 2010 at 3:31 am
I just feel sorry for BP. All they do is spill a little bit of oil in the Gulf and all these small people down there are getting all upset over nothing! I think we should be helping BP so they don't have to pay for this by themselves. The small people can take care of themselves. We need to help companies like BP. Dear BP, I am so sorry for the way all these small people are acting. The people who are upset about this little spill are not patriotic. There just a bunch of little socialists looking for handouts from private companies.
June 18, 2010 at 4:41 am
I read about this earlier today – and dang it, I can't remember where – that analyzed Obama's speech vs. GW Bush's speeches, and they found that Bush's were at a higher grade level than O's. And yet Bush was always mocked for his stranglification of the English language and "cowboy" image.
I'll keep looking for that article.
Oh – BTW – "wonderfulosity"…great word!
June 18, 2010 at 4:45 am
Found it!!
Obama Speaks At Lower Grade Level Than Bush
June 18, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Wow, I understoood that senteance in ta arteecle. To quote my favorate teecher, Homer Simpson:
"I am so smart! S-M-R-T… I mean S-M-A-R-T!"
June 18, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Maybe should stick to those 3 letter words. Like, "J-O-B-S".
The article was right about one thing: As someone who I thought was in his target audience all I heard him say was "Blah, blah, blah, wind mills…blah, blah, blah, Cap and Tax".
June 18, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Naw it's because we can call a shoved a shovel (being PC)
and do NOT want a stalin/hitler….. want a be for pres.
poor MSM they are begining suspect they have egg on THEIR faces and are trying to blame us.
June 18, 2010 at 4:21 pm
So, it was written for "a 9.8 grade level" but that may have been "too high for his target audience"?!?
Who was he targeting, exactly?
June 18, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Well I can disprove CNN right now. I have a 161 IQ and when I was 8 I had the reading level of a Doctoral level college student. The speech was just as terrible for me as it was for your average American with an IQ of 98. It had nothing to do with the sizes of the words and sentences and everything to do with the message he was sending.
June 18, 2010 at 11:41 pm
When Obama came into office I started reading every one of his speeches. My IQ has now dropped to about 35 and he's making more sense to me every day. That has to be a total of like 5 IQ points I've lost now – I think. Can't do math anymore. I used to think when you spend more you have less, but now I've learned that the more you spend the more you have. But I'm not sure.
June 18, 2010 at 11:47 pm
I guess I think the bigger problem here is that a speech written at a 10th grade reading level is "above the heads" of so many people. Seriously? Good thing I'm going to homeschool my kids. It might not make the speech itself any better, but by gosh, all my children will understand a speech written on the 10th grade level when they're adults.
June 19, 2010 at 2:00 pm
So what does that say about our public education system?
June 20, 2010 at 3:16 am
jimbo – LOL!
June 21, 2010 at 4:47 pm
So much pettiness. =(
In any case, as for Obama's poll numbers "plummeting, they've been pretty stagnant in terms of approval and disapproval through 2010 pretty much.
As for reading level, Presidential speeches have been declining in that measure since the nation's founding, it's nothing new. Particularly with recent presidents, it probably has more to do with media predilection towards soundbytes.