Do conservatives, on the whole, speak and write well?
I don't think so. I has not been in my experience. I have long thought that conservatives tended to be poor communicators, Ronald Reagan being an obvious example contra (pardon the pun).
Popular media news outlets tend to edit out the boring parts. They have to do so, being "all the news that fits, we print." TV, in particular, saves the great and interesting "sound bites", and airs those. However, it redacts the endlessly boring stuff. It leaves out the drunken tirades, the spittle, the name-calling, and ad hominem attacks, et cetera. It may or may not keep in the politically incorrect statements, depending on the supposed impact on news: "Dog bites man: not news. Man bites dog: news."
I leave it to an honest world of Kossacks to read some examples:
- Many years ago, I heard Jeanne Kirkpatrick speak live, and she rambled aimlessly.
- Rush Limbaugh is infamous for speaking redundantly about a subject.\
- Is Donald Trump ever able to shut up?!
- We have all watched some endlessly boring rant by a Right-wing preacher on the dangers of brain-dead Lesbian terrorists getting abortions, or whatever they need to rant about.
- We have all watched some bloviating Republican on CNN make a speak for the folks back in Bunk, NC.
- I recently was forced to sit through an innocuous, yet incredibly boring, sermonby Bishop Rt. Rev. William H. Love of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany at his episcopal installation. The poor kind soul wandered over the Gospel of Saint John like a lost sheep. I had to read the story (see link) the next day, merely to get the gist of his point.
- Bishop Love's predecessor, The Rt. Rev. Daniel Herzog, once spoke endlessly on the comparisons between Herod's slaughter of the Holy Innocents and abortion today.
- The recent State of the Union speach by President George W. Bush recalls this problem once more. Bush is shown smirking, for hour after what seems likes hours, spouting the same things over and over, leading to drinking games regarding how many times He says "freedom" or "democracy." (You can Google those games if you wish.) The mass media would convince the ordinary FOX or MSNBC viewer, or New York Post reader, that Bush has a flock of evil geniuses -- lots of little Karl Roves -- writing speeches for him.
- The conservatives get all the good press about how well they can communicate. However, when one actually reads or listens to the speeches, they are just plain awful. It's as if they take classes about how to right in cliches.
- I can't even get through a page of D'Sousa's books to get angry over them. The man just can't string two independent clauses together.
I thought of this idea when I read this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, in by Dr. Russell Jacoby of UCLA:
Excellent Writers, Facile Thinkers By RUSSELL JACOBY
Do conservatives write better than leftists?
Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys (Threshold Editions), to be published this month, is a collection of essays by a dozen conservatives on their political peregrinations from left to right. Almost without exception, each essay is lucid and articulate. Would it be possible to assemble a countercollection by leftists that would be equally limpid? Unlikely. Why?
Now, this is in stark contrast to Al Franken's hilarious and well-written "Lies and the Lying Liars.... I love all of Al Franken's writing, so I am a bit biased. I can't wait to hear his campaign speeches for the U.S. Senate from Minnnesota.
Any comments or opinions?