Can I ask, does the phrase , “My friends” completely grate for others like it does for me?
They are not, and I think I explained why FOUR TIMES.
I guess I have to do it five times: regardless of the phrasing, if McCain says “I will win” and then says “I guarantee I will win,” he is predicting the same event (a victory in the same election). That’s why they mean the same thing. If he had included the word “guarantee,” I agree that he would have been trying to make the prediction sound stronger, but his statement is a guarantee of victory regardless of whether or not he used the word guarantee. When you say “I will do something,” you are guaranteeing it will happen.
Once again, you’re arguing about what I feel “deep down,” because the only way you can win your argument is to assume the conclusion, rather than arguing the facts. The fact is that you are trying to assert that these three headlines are meaningful data when they are not.
As a rule of thumb, I think a typical MSM outlet is about as biased to the left as a typical big city policie department is racist. That is, slightly, but greatly exagerrated by its critics.
You can’t really go by conservatives’ assessment of media bias because conservatives are extremely biased. How can extremely biased people parse the difference between slight bias and no bias?
Conservatives don’t want the media to be completely objective because it wouldn’t be much different. What they’re trying to do is a): Browbeat media outlets into giving equal time to their viewpoints, regardless of their merits, and b): Maintain the ability to dismiss any inconvenient fact as the product of the “liberal media”.
Of course, it’s one thing to talk about news reporting and how it may slightly biased to the left, it’s another thing to talk about the punditry, which is overwhelmingly dominated by conservatives. And increasingly in recent years, people have had their views shaped by this pre-digested news rather than their own analysis of the raw information.
Do you remember when you were a kid? Do you remember moments when you asked for something from your parents and they said “I will get you that”
Why then did you respond with “Promise me ?”
I can understand that the word “guarantee” doesn’t mean much any more and that for some people its just redundant but for a whole lot of us that harken back, a guarantee is an assurance, a promise if you will, and if you don’t mean it or don’t deliver, you are an idiot or an asshole.
Check the dictionary. A guarantee is an assurance. a promise.
Every political candidate says they are going to win. Its expected .They say it all the time for rah rah purposes and it doesn’t make any headlines. Its just not news.
Many people only read headlines, and if the message is that McCain promises a victory, given what everyone already knows, then McCain is either a liar or a fool.
Maybe not to you and tomndebb, but certainly for a lot of people of the older generation who believe the word guarantee should be taken seriously.
So, given that he said “We’re going to win,” is he a liar or a fool? Or is it irrelevant because he didn’t use the word guarantee in that context, meaning it’s an opinion and not a promise?
:shrug: I don’t really understand your position. Two phrases either mean the same thing or they don’t. “I predict I will win” doesn’t mean the same thing as “I guarantee I will win” even though both phrases are predicting the same event.
The fact that you seem to apply a different standard to yourself and to Obama than you do to McCain bolsters my argument and is worth mentioning.
I totally agree with this.
Read what I said. It was for rah rah purposes only, not to express a genuine opinion and definitely not a promise.
Every politician will say the race will be close. He doesn’t want his workers to relax. Every politician will say they are gonna win. He wants to keep up morale. Rarely does a politician guarantee a close race so I’m going to believe that McCain really believes that. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, its either a landslide or its close and landslides are fairly rare when it doesn’t involve incumbants. but if McCain promises a victory, I’ll no longer believe that he is the honourable man I thought he was.
And that is the crux of the problem. There will be those who will not vote for McCain because they understood he promised something he can’t deliver.
Piffle.
No one who is “older” (and, hence, even more likely to be cynical about politics), is going to read it as anything but campaign rhetoric–particularly at this stage when the whole election is treated as a horse race with far more emphasis on “winning” that “being elected.”
The earlier Joe Namath comparison is apt (if not for the semantic discussion). The elections have reached the point of pre-Superbowl hype where the coach either declares absolute confidence in victory or tries to downplay his team so that he can claim a subsequent victory as an upset or a subsequent loss as inevitable. McCain is going for the former tactic and the headline does nothing to “unfavorably” depict his intentions.
I remember that. Headlines all over the media that a quarterback was interviewed say he was gonna win the AFC-NFC Championship game.
The coverage basically challenging his nerve.
Don’t quarterbacks say they are gonna win all the time?
Or could it be the Namath used the word “guarantee”
Agreed. I made the same point about guaranteeing victory a couple of times earlier this thread.
That’s probably true. If he thought he was going to win in a blowout, it’d be pretty strange, and he wouldn’t say it anyway.
That’s nonsense, and if it was true, it’d be the ultimate in circular reasoning. Other than you, though, I don’t think anyone would see McCain’s prediction as dishonorable even if he doesn’t believe it.
Fair point. Still:
Let’s grant for the sake of argument that “I guarantee we will win” means the same thing as “We will win.” You are still wrong to say the paper conveyed McCain’s intent fairly. For as you yourself have said in this thread, putting “I guarantee” before a sentence makes a difference, if not to the meaning, then to (what you referred to as) the strength of the expression.
When I say “I guarantee X” I’m trying to do something different than what I am trying to do when I say “X”. McCain said he would win, but he did not say he guarantees he will win. He tried to do what you do when you say “X” but he did not try to do what you do when you say “I guarantee X.”
Yet the headline reports that he did what you try to do when you say “I guarantee X.” This means the headline is wrong.
-FrL-
Piffle?
I’ll tell you what’s nonsense. When you make a claim that “No one who is “older” (and, hence, even more likely to be cynical about politics), is going to read it as anything but campaign rhetoric…” when you already have at least four out of twenty- eight posters that are taking issue with how the word “guarantee” was applied. Why don’t you just call us liars.
The comparison is apt, because the only reason Namath’s quote is seared in our memory is his use of the word “guarantee”.
I said earlier that tying the word “guarantee” to a win, rather than just a close race, was a bad decision. What I don’t object to is describing McCain’s remarks as a guarantee.
When the guarantee is completely verbal I don’t think this matters, that’s what it comes down to. I might add here that we have parsed McCain’s extemporaneous words for much longer than he did before he spoke them, and have reviewed the headline for more time than the editor and writer did. In these situations, when people are arguing about what the meaning of a specific word, my conclusion is usually that they’re overanalyzing it.
But I explained to you why you should object. To guarantee is a different act than merely to assert. To describe McCain’s statement as a guarantee is to say it was of the act type “guarantee” when in fact it was of the act type “assertion.” Since it misreports the kind of act McCain engaged in, it (the headline) is objectionable.
That’s the argument, which is what you asked for earlier. Why, then, do you still not object to the characterization of the remark as a “guarantee”?
Earlier in this thread, didn’t you already say you don’t think that I should say that you “guaranteed” something when in fact all you did was assert it? Doesn’t that show you do think it matters even in completely verbal contexts?
The reason I am talking about this is because I think you are wrong in an interesting way about an interesting topic in semantics and conversational pragmatics.
-FrL-
NO. We have multiple posters who have a desperate need to quibble over whether including the word “guarantees” in a headline means one thing or another, with four of them taking one side of the argument against the others.
We have no serious investigation into the actual responses of people away from this message board to the actual headline.
(And don’t show such a fragile ego: I have called no one a liar; I simply think the need by a few posters to see prejudice where none exists has led into error.)
I see your posting on this issue with desperation, especially when you resort to such characterization of posts as “piffle” and skirt the more powerful points.
And if all we are talking about what “guarantees” mean, there are at least two other posters that have allowed that the word carries greater force.
And we have no proof that God doesn’t exist.
And we have no proof of the “bradley effect”
And we have no proof of the “big bang”
You call that a point of argument?
A desperate point of argument maybe.
You sure have a bag of tricks in “debating”
Have you beaten your wife lately?
I never said you called anyone a liar.
Well, I thought the debate had gotten beyond the prejudice (hard to prove) and into the significance of the word “guarantee”.
Now I’ll ask you point blank, Please yes or no,
Would we still remember Joe Namath’s prediction that the Jets would win over the Colts if he hadn’t employed the word “guarantee” ?
So, how’s
"Pol Pans Press, Polls; Progs Prez Pick: Paw!"
There are no “more powerful points.” The whole semantic debate is the typical message board game of trying to score on the opposition, regardless of the actual significance of the issue.
Fine. It remains irrelevant to the claim of the OP that the intent of headline or the effect of the headline was a deliberate effort to smear McCain unless it can be shown that the general reading public would take the headline in a negative way.
No. You simply “asked” why I did not just call you liars–a rhetorical question intended to strongly suggest that I was claiming you have lied. I am pointing out that, in my world, one may indicate the presence of error witout ascribing malice to the person in error. It would seem that your world view does not accommodate that interpretation.
The significance of the word “guarantee” is simply a sideshow in which various antagonistic posters have chosen to engage while ignoring the OP.
I have no idea and I do not consider it relevant to the thread, only to the hijack which I have chosen to ignore.
Well it is relevant if even a portion of the general public read it that way . Every vote is important.
I had no such intention. I strongly had no such intention. I strongly assert that I did not even weakly or strongly suggest that you were claiming that I had just told a little white lie or a strong bold lie.
My world too. That is why I rarely imply others are idiots and silly except in cases where my opponent chooses to do so. In those cases I have to assume my opponent ascribes some relevance to implied ad hominem attacks,
I’m sorry that you inferred that I was implying malice on your part. Its just not true.
The original point of the OP ran its course long ago.It was a futile exercise. You’re the only one that wants to keep it alive.
Should I start a new thread ?