No actual post here, but can you imagine saying THAT in a serious interview as a presidential candidate? See here.
Can we just get the morons out of the way? This is all consuming, with the future of the world in the balance, etc., etc., but I'd like to get back to language. Please?
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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11 comments:
That does kind of scream 'confused, out of touch old man', doesn't it?
As your alter alter ego, can I second that plea: back to language, please?
Seems like a petty complaint. Presidential candidate or not, sometimes it's hard to hear what people are saying to you. So yes, I can imagine saying THAT.
My dearest Mr. Verb, as you can plainly see by the numbers, adding ed keer's voice makes it veritable groundswell of support from your readership: back to language!
Shame on you, Mr. Verb! I dislike McCain greatly, but you've failed to do your research here. Did you actually listen to the interview? The scary part is that McCain doesn't seem to know where Spain is, not that he said "What about me, what?" If you actually listen to the interviewer, she says "What about Europe?" McCain (understandably) misheard her heavily accented English and thought she had said "What about you?" This would indeed be a strange question in the middle of the interview, and so he replied, as I think most of us would have, "What about me, what?" Mr. Verb, I expect better from you!
Ahhhh, it's good to see folks get riled up. We'll get back to language.
What the second anonymous said. The Caracol interviewer may very well have said "Europe" but it sounded like "you". Even Mark Liberman transcribed it as "you" here. I listened carefully after reading your post here and I could barely hear the "r" but not the "ope" at all. Whatever you think of John McCain, you can hardly blame him for getting confused at this point
I think he thought when she said, "What about Europe?" that she was saying "What about YOU?" whcih would seem a bit puzzling. Also, might explain his confusion over it being Spain... Her pronunciation of "Europe" has a very different vowel than the standard American pronunciation does.
Especially since he was on the telephone with her, not in the studio.
Yeah, I jumped the gun here.
Of course, she had signalled a topic change by saying "Senator, finally, let's talk about Spain.. f you are elected president, would you be willing to invite President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House?"
So even if he didn't recognize Zapatero's full name, he should have had a clue, there. He just refused to admit he didn't understand what she said, and buried himself.
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