Bush censored?
 

You can put this thread wherever you want since I wasn't sure where it should go. During the Q&A part of Bush's 1 o'clock speech it sounded like a portion of what he said was censored. I remember him saying something to the effect of "And the vice president has said *bleep for a second* and I..." Or it was something like that. It was early on in the Q&A, like 4th-5th question I think. Did anyone else hear it? I know a friend of mine who was listening on the radio heard it too, and I was watching it off of CNN seperately. What was the sound? Was it a technical difficulty or did they actually censor him?

I can testify that I also heard this bleep. It was rather long - too long to indicate curses or anything.

I was listening on the radio, so I couldn't read any lips. What was it all about?? It must have been a technical difficulty? I thought that was a live speech.

There's nothing in the transcript to suggest he was censored. Probably a fluke.

I don't know anything about a bleep during the Q&A, but during this speech you are talking about, did anyone else notice that Bush repeated a five-minute segment of his speech, word for word? He was talking about the track record of Rumsfeld's replacement Robert Gates, and once he was finished, he said something along the lines of "This war in Iraq is a costly war" or something to that effect, and I thought "Didn't he say that exact thing a while ago?" After that, he talked about Rumsfeld's replacement again, and word for word, repeated that part of the speech. I could have followed along it was that exact. I guess the teleprompter messed up.

I'm not a Bush fan or anything, but I feel sorry for the guy when I hear or watch him speak. Actually, I get really nervous and usually have to change the channel when I watch him speak. It's like watching an actor on stage messing up and being more nervous than they could ever be at the moment. Anyway, I wish I kept the radio on the speech longer. I would have liked to have heard this beep. My guess was that it was just techinical difficulties.

Could you link me to it? I can't seem to find it.

Hmmm... They haven't censored much of anything in the past whenever he has said anything, so who knows? If it was live, then it was probably most likely a glitch, I have heard many glitches like that on live TV before.

i think this is what you're referring to:

i found it in the transcript of the press conference on the White House website (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...061108-2.html). it doesn't seem like there are any bleeps in this...

[edit] also, the associated press' transcript says the same thing (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...type=printable)

You know what - I was watching the speech on MSNBC and I'd remembered hearing a very long bleep in the middle of the speech too. I just chalked it up to a technical error because I figured that if the president was cursing like that on national television then the media probably would have made a far bigger deal about it considering how already visibly testy and agitated he was at the time.

Actually, I rather think that he has fair speech abilities. Also, if you were talking to more than 200,000,000 people, wouldn't you be nervous?

Yup that was the section, thanks for going to the trouble of looking it up for me. I suppose it was just one of those freak technical glitches... a shame.

Eloquence might've been the noun you were looking for.

In regards to Bush, though, I'd expect more of a Yale Alumnus. Especially one that has been afforded the kind of lifestyle and resources the Bush family enjoys.

Money does not buy smarts, intelligence, or common sense Duo. :)

I'd expect more of our president, honestly. I don't understand the attraction to a president that's at the same (or in this case, a lower) intelligence level as I am. I want my president to be way, way smarter than me.

I know I couldn't lead this country.

Well, yes, but I feel that went without saying.

Are you sure about that? Not being able to lead the country, I mean.

I'd like to clarify that statement, but to do so you'd have to have a intimate level of understanding of my thoughts/beliefs on the subject and this thread I feel is not the appropriate place.

I would argue that it does help accelerate individuals toward their ultimate potential, though. As well, children raised in affluent environments also have a lot of advantages in their formative years. I consider myself lucky because when I was very young (less than 5 years of age) my parents had steady jobs that allowed them time to spend with me, reading and such, before I was even old enough to attend school.

It's a deeper issue than what you might think, actually. The question seems simple, but when you start deconstructing the different forces at play, it becomes quite complicated. Anti-intellectualism has sort of taken a foot-hold in American culture. It's related to the social revolution we went through in the 1960s, but its roots go even further back.

Traditionally, educated people, "intellectuals" were generally a product of the upper-echelon(s) of society. Not always, but it definitely was a vast majority. This plays into the whole classist struggle, which came into the eye of the mainstream public through all of the activists in the civil rights movement who advocated Marxist theory. The whole idea behind the classist struggle is that the educated, established, oligarchy would continually dupe the masses into perpetuating their (meaning the upper class') sociopolitical hegemony.

Therefore, those who spoke with eloquence and affectation were regarded as untrustworthy, sort of like the familiar serpent who used flowery language to deceive us. Conversely, those who attempted to communicate on the level of the average working class citizen was regarded as trustworthy, because they weren't trying to disguise their intent within oration.

+1, but with a caveat. Money can help you realize your full potential, but not everyone has limitless potential, especially as you get older and more set in your ways (say past your teens and early twenties).

An excellent summary of anti-intellectualism. It's a disturbing trend, although the exploitation of workers/the working class that was seen in the earlier part of the 20th and the latter half of 19th century was even more so. Luckily, collective bargaining is a great solution for when there's more workers than demand.

Sad to say it doesn't scale well to industries where demand is more plentiful than workers -- computer programmers, for example, do not have a union. I predict that this will change in the next ten years though. For an example of the same sort of exploitation that has led to the formation of unions in the past, look at EA. They're one of the most egregious offenders in this regard. I could go on and on, but this isn't the right thread for that, for sure.