Ok, of you say it was a stumble, and also not a mispronunciation, what do you imagine he might have been trying to say?
Oh a friend of mine (and avowed opponent of racism) said he may have simply lost his train of thought and uttered “neg” (as in “negative”), while trying to come up with another adjective. I mean he probably underwent the same aversion therapy/speech training/operant conditioning as every other Republican, right?
I think it very likely. In fact, I think it’s probable. So I guess we’ll agree to disagree.
I think it will be clear once the audio is cleaned up and the churchbell sound is removed. I suspect this will be the end of Senator Johntorum’s career.
Throat warbler mangrove.
When I’m stumbling around for words, which I’m prone to do, I’m saying almost nonsense syllables as I try to get my brain and my mouth back in alignment. I’m not mispronouncing a word. If this never happens to you, well, you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about. But it does happen to me.
A short while before this, he said “Ovama.” I don’t think any of us would say that’s indicative of anything but a misfire, right? If we chose to (and I don’t, because he’s gross) listen to the rest of the speech, I bet there are other areas where he stumbles or mispronounces words. Everyone does it at times. He appears to be more prone to it than many.
I actually don’t disagree, even though I’m the one who posted the link. I think it’s at least 50/50 that he just made a nonsensical stumble and not a Freudian slip. I’m mainly just laughing because holy crap, if that was an innocent stumble it sure as hell didn’t sound good in context.
This reminds me a lot of the “Chink of the armor” thing back with Jeremy Lin. “Honest mistake, I swear!”
Well, sure. I’ll be the first to admit that I think anything that makes him look bad is funny. Against my better judgment, I listened to a little more of the speech. He’s a terrible speaker. He calls Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefish “great governor and lieutenant governor Puh… Walker and and Kleebuh… and Kleefisch.”
My kids were standing here fooling around with their baseball cards when I played the Santorum clip. My 8 year old looked at the screen and said, “Jeesh! Shut UP!” I, of course, admonished him for the language, but I had a little moment of inner pride.
Apparently, if a man takes off his jacket and puts on a hoodie in the middle of a televised speech, he becomes instantly unrecognizable and could be a threat to Congress, according to Rep. Allen West:
"OMG, I can’t see Representative Rush anymore! He just disappeared! Poof! Gone, right in the middle of his speech!
Hey, where’d that guy in the hoodie come from? Do you think that guy in the hoodie did something to Representative Rush?"
“Government nr" was the term used for “welfare queen” before the word "nr” became unacceptable in polite company.
Citation: I’m old enough to remember it.
This was not an “accident.” This was a deliberate “gaffe,” which accomplishes two things for Santorum:
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It gets liberals screaming that he’s a racist, which benefits him politically by building an image that he’s “persecuted” by the left. At the same time, he doesn’t take a major hit among independents, and the few non-racist conservatives, because they’re completely in denial about the right’s racism, and won’t believe he caught himself saying “n****r.”
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It signals to racist conservatives that he’s on their side. They know the term, and know very well what he was about to say, and they’re giddy about it.
I wasn’t sure after his “get blagh people off welfare” comment. But this is the second time it’s happened, and that’s pretty good evidence this is intentional.
Jeebus…you’d think Allen West would occasionally have the grace to be embarrassed to be the Kongressional Kaka Kaucus’s favorite kapo, wouldn’t you?
This reminds me of the time that Al Qaeda guy referred to Obama as a ‘House Negro’. Gawd, that was sooooo stupid! Everybody knows Obama was in the Senate.
To avoid the same mixup, Santorum is using the more general term ‘government’. It shows that Republicans are getting smarter, but still have so far to go that you can’t really tell the difference.
We don’t have to take your word for it, either. There are plenty of instances of the use of the slur before the current Presidential campaign, in both the “welfare queen” sense and the “house nigger” sense: i.e., meaning either a shiftless recipient of government benefits or a servile lackey of government bureaucracy.
Exhibits include:
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Ted Joans’s poem “The Nice Colored Man” from the 1960s (“Uppity Nigger Middleclass Nigger Government Nigger” etc. etc.);
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some racist asshole on a news comments page in 2007: “[…] I’ve seen just one government nigger breeding grounds complex […]”;
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some other racist asshole on a news comments page in 2011: “I never been or plan on being on an airplane…due to the fact i’d probably rage hard and call anyone in TSA a useless government nigger”;
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yet another racist asshole commenting on a wheelie-bike video on March 5, 2012: “how about you either ride you bike off road like a civilized nigger instead of makin yourself think your cool or just spend your government nigger checks more wisely and pay a light or water bill hell maybe even the rent who knows”;
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and one last (I wish!) racist asshole posting on teh interwebs in 2010: “YES, white liberals and the strong majority of niggers would walk off a fucking bridge if they were told to by a government nigger…”
When I look at this sort of filth and realize that that’s the constituency that Santorum is trying to dog-whistle to, I cannot tell you how pleased it makes me feel to remember that his name has become inextricably attached to fecally contaminated byproducts of buttsex.
Except I worry that it’s not quite fair on fecally contaminated byproducts of buttsex, which actually seem rather appealing in comparison with Santorum himself.
Had Santorum only used a more neutral term like “porch monkey” there wouldn’t be any controversy.
Yeah, I’m sure Kevin Smith would rush to his defence, they’re both Catholics.
As for “Ovama”: could be deindividuation, intended to sound like “vomit”?
It would have been great if, just before putting on the hood, he said “I don’t know half of you, half as much as I would like, and I like less than half of you, half as much as you deserve”
The Wall St. Journal has taken up Santorum’s anti-education cause:
BTW, I’m afraid I may be violating SDMB rules by quoting this article in its entirety. (It does seem to stop in the middle of a clause, so perhaps I was too stupid to figure out where to click to read the rest of the article. Or, perhaps readers need to first prove they’re stupid before being allowed to read the article. :dubious: )
You’re not quoting the entirety.
Most WSJ content is now behind a paywall. To read the whole article, you need to be a subscriber.