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Fast brain versus uh, uh, uh
Chicago Tribune ^ | May 27, 2011 | Meghan Daum

Posted on 05/27/2011 11:08:14 AM PDT by Gondring

Apparently, a lot of people consider President Barack Obama to be bumblingly inarticulate. "The guy can't talk his way out of a paper bag!" a reader wrote to me recently. "Sarah Palin is a brilliant speaker. It's the president whose sentences are undiagrammable," said another in response to a column I wrote about Palin. It's not just my readers, nor is it exclusively conservatives, who hold this view. A Google search of "does Obama have a speech impediment" turns up several pages of discussion among the president's supporters and critics alike. Admittedly, the president is given to a lot of pauses, "uhs" and sputtering starts to his sentences. As polished as he often is before large crowds (where the adjective "soaring" is often applied to his speeches), his impromptu speaking frequently calls to mind a doctoral candidate delivering a wobbly dissertation defense.

Not to be confused with a stutter, which the president decidedly does not have, the intellectual stammer signals a brain that is moving so fast that the mouth can't keep up. The stammer is commonly found among university professors, characters in Woody Allen movies and public thinkers of the sort that might appear on C-SPAN but not CNN. If you're a member or a fan of that subset, chances are the president's stammer doesn't bother you; [...]

That's kind of ironic, given that the godfather of the intellectual stammer is arguably none other than the paterfamilias of the conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr. [...]

Obama's problem is not that he's an intellectual (for the sake of argument let's define it as someone who is scholarly, broadly informed and distinguished as a thinker). It's that he sounds like an intellectual. [...]

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: dithyramb; intellectualstammer; obama; teleprompter; totus; uhuhuh
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He sounds like someone trying to be an intellectual. Those who claim he can't speak without a teleprompter ignore the times when he's delivered very effective rhetoric without it. But the teleprompter helps prevent the "uh" problem of searching for words.

But the fact is, he's far more comfortable in the protected academic arena, where he was coddled and helped along beyond his abilities.

It's funny that Ms. Daum credits the ditherer with decisiveness, though!

1 posted on 05/27/2011 11:08:17 AM PDT by Gondring
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To: Gondring

The word she was looking for is “bufoon”.


2 posted on 05/27/2011 11:12:24 AM PDT by Republican Extremist
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To: Gondring
OMG now they are trying to make him intelligent..He is a bumbling idiot and that is the fact..
3 posted on 05/27/2011 11:15:17 AM PDT by PLD
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To: Republican Extremist
The word she was looking for is “bufoon”.

I, uh, think you meant...
The word she was, uh, looking for, is, uh, "buffoon."

4 posted on 05/27/2011 11:15:28 AM PDT by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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To: Gondring
"the intellectual stammer signals a brain that is moving so fast that the mouth can't keep up"

OMG...her whole face must be brown.... what did they say about President Bush? HHmmmmm???

5 posted on 05/27/2011 11:15:38 AM PDT by goodnesswins (...both islam and the democrat plantation thrive on poverty)
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To: Gondring

Time for the weekly “no one understands Obama because he’s just so darned smart!” spew from his media lapdogs?


6 posted on 05/27/2011 11:15:38 AM PDT by kevkrom (Palin's detractors now resort to "nobody believes she can win because nobody believes she can win")
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To: Gondring

It’s funny that Obama’s considered a great orator. Even high school speech students are warned against “uh” filler. In paraphrase of what a college friend said about himself, “[He’s] a reader, not a talker.”


7 posted on 05/27/2011 11:16:24 AM PDT by newzjunkey (teleprompter + autopen in chief.)
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To: Gondring

so what sort of strategy/excuse do you think they’re going to use to keep Obama out of debates next fall?


8 posted on 05/27/2011 11:17:07 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Gondring

She’s an idiot.

When he reads words that others write for him, he sounds brilliant! When he speaks for himself, he sounds like a stammering fool.

Conclusion: He’s brilliant!


9 posted on 05/27/2011 11:18:43 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (The USSR spent itself into bankruptcy and collapsed -- and aren't we on the same path now?)
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To: Gondring

Up is down, right is left, stupid is smart...


10 posted on 05/27/2011 11:19:09 AM PDT by ZirconEncrustedTweezers (PAVE THE PLANET!!)
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To: All

Meanwhile George Bush is considered a ________________


11 posted on 05/27/2011 11:24:25 AM PDT by Celerity
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To: Gondring

I think they are trying to place Obama in the guise of the “Absent Minded Professor”, they sure got the “Absent Mind” part down pat.

The guy still thinks it is 2008 for crying out loud.....


12 posted on 05/27/2011 11:25:08 AM PDT by GraceG
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To: Gondring
Ironically, Dubya seems to have this to a minor degree. One can observe that the Texas drawl can't always keep up with the CPU.

Conversely, Mister Obama does not seem the least bit professorial.

In the first place, does he not seem perennially ill prepared? He does not appear to want to do the work and homework involved in preparing for the important duties and tasks his job requires.

Professors have too much info whirring around, and work to reign in in so they can present it in a cogent fashion. Obama is (apparently) too preoccupied with "self" to invest time to have enough "stored info" to be confusing.

He always seems behind the curve, and people always seem ready to make foolish excuses.

.

13 posted on 05/27/2011 11:25:23 AM PDT by Seaplaner (Never give in. Never give in. Never...except to convictions of honour and good sense. W. Churchill)
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To: Gondring

.....Not to be confused with a stutter, which [obama] decidedly does not have, the intellectual stammer signals a brain that is moving so fast that the mouth can’t keep up.....

NONSENSE!!!!!


14 posted on 05/27/2011 11:27:33 AM PDT by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: Gondring

Rush is reading this now.


15 posted on 05/27/2011 11:27:39 AM PDT by newzjunkey (teleprompter + autopen)
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To: Gondring

It requires much more intellectual horsepower to lie convincingly than to tell the truth. So, it’s not surprising that he stammers and goes CPU-bound when TOTUS isn’t there to feed him his precomputed lies in the preoptimized order at optimal pace.


16 posted on 05/27/2011 11:30:20 AM PDT by cynwoody
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To: Gondring
Ms Daum rymes with Rahm who now owns the Tribune.

See how easy it is when you get yer' embeds ?

17 posted on 05/27/2011 11:30:40 AM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true)
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To: Gondring

I just heard Rush read the whole article.


18 posted on 05/27/2011 11:31:15 AM PDT by hamboy
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To: Seaplaner

The Bolshviks did this with Lenin. They said he had such a highly developed brain that when he died they did a study of it. The German scientists that did it concluded that he had very few convolutions on his hemispheres and compared his brain to the that of a low brow criminal. They got that right.
Someone post Marty Feldman with the “Abby Normal” brain.


19 posted on 05/27/2011 11:31:41 AM PDT by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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To: Gondring
Stammering is a trait demonstrated by malignant narcissistic personality that is unsure weather or not the mental preoccupation of intent will be publicly acceptable.

Thus, the parsing of speech at moment of utterance.

Same type does not have awareness of time or date, as the brain is running through calculation of the ability to present a face that will be... loved by all, while still achieving personal goal.

I am no fan of Palin, but at least she demonstrates mental clarity of thought when speaking publicly, and does not seem to be out to advance a personal mania.

These are just observations, not facts... Obviously

20 posted on 05/27/2011 11:34:01 AM PDT by mmercier
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