Mark Sanford can't even
« previous post | next post »
From Steve Benen, "Trump question leaves House Republican stumbling", MSNBC 2/11/16, the most spectacularly disfluent interview segment that I've ever heard:
Note to self: avoid trying to use words like "prognosticator" on national television, especially if "procrastinator" and/or "protagonist" are locally primed for some reason. Just stick with easy equivalents: "I like everybody else …"
This is Representative Sanford's first LLOG appearance since 2009, when he contributed ten days of juicy linguistic goodness:
"Out of pocket", 6/22/2009
"The biggest self of self is indeed self", 6/25/2009
"Doing stupid", 6/30/2009
"If I wanted to know that I knew that I knew", 7/1/2009
"Birth of a Euphemism: Hiking the Appalachian Trail", 7/2/2009
If you'd like to listen to the clip in context, which is less psycholinguistically interesting but allows you to guess what he would have said if he could have untangled his syllables, here is it:
john burke said,
February 15, 2016 @ 5:22 pm
Sanford smilingly associates South Carolina with "rebellion." A dog whistle to the Sons of the Confederacy? Sure sounds like it to me.
Laura Morland said,
February 15, 2016 @ 5:35 pm
I'm glad that you provided the entire context, because Sanford actually sounds intelligent enough for the other four minutes of the interview.
Moreover, I disagree that the interview is not "interesting" in and of itself: as a citizen of the United States of America, I'm extremely interested, because what the South Carolina Republican electorate may do in these next five days could determine the future of our country for the next couple of decades. (I hope not, but it could.)
I realize that you don't care, in principle, *what* Sanford said, but *how* he said it. Still, for me it was well worth a listen for his ear-to-the-ground insights.
[(myl) Fair enough — I've changed the wording to "… less psycholinguistically interesting …"]
Thomas Les said,
February 18, 2016 @ 1:26 am
If only I knew how to turn those marvelous eight seconds of mumbo jumbo into a ringtone for my iPhone…